One of the most asked questions we hear at Boost is about finding a co-founder to complement the skills the team is lacking. "Do you know any good developers?", "Where can I find a CEO?", "Can you help me find great marketing people?" are some examples of the inquiries.

Starting a business and finding a co-founder has some similarities with marriage: you need to know the person really well before you share half of your life with them. You don't (unless it's reality tv or Hollywood) marry someone on the first date. You meet a lot of people, get to know them, learn how they act under pressure or in the bad times and then decide.

Same goes with co-founders so the first key thing is to start now. Start before you even know that you'll be needing a co-founder. Before you even know you will become an entrepreneur. For university students, start on the first fall of your freshman year. But don't get me wrong. Networking doesn't mean weighing people or relationships based on their utility value. It means building meaningful relationships by working with people, building projects or organizing events and nurturing those relationships throughout the years.

These projects don't have to necessarily be about your field of expertise. You can be active by organizing parties or company visits for your student organization, participate in hackathons to build things or volunteer in other organizations such as us or the SHIFT here in Turku. You will learn new skills, build resume, grow your network and usually have a ton of fun while doing so.

Get out of your silo. We have a tendency of hanging out with our own people. IT students hang out with it students, business students with business students and so on. It is good to know peers in your own field well but only sticking to your own group will make your bubble small. You gain so much more perspective in different things in life by getting to know and working with people from different fields and schools.

Startups events like the ones we organize, meetups, hackathons, startup weekends and social gatherings are great places to meet people. However, don't rush into them talking about your project and your needs only. Participate to genuinely learn about new things and learn about the people there: what do they do, what makes them tick and what are they looking for in life. Also spending time working on your projects in a place like SparkUp is a great way to meet amazing people.

My favorite book about networking is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's from the 1930s so some of the examples might seem bit outdated but the principles and the lessons still hold true. Another great one to follow up is Keith Ferrazzi's Never Eat Alone.

~~ If you have an idea about a business, why not build a team and join our Startup Journey this upcoming summer? ~~

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