A Relationship Group, Not a Networking Group

Matt had networking on his mind after another great night with his own group, and a Business Insider story landed right on it. Alena Beliauskaya started inviting startup founders hiking because she loved the outdoors. That turned into 12 Scrappy Founders, a Bay Area community now 600-plus strong, mostly AI founders, generating around $10,000 a month, and she keeps it as a side hustle alongside a full-time job. What’s more interesting than the revenue is the design: no mixers. They hike, camp, dirt bike, play poker, do things together. You get to know someone over eight hours on a trail in a way a name-tag event never delivers. Matt connects it to a Denver group called Accelerent, whose leader gently corrected him when he said “networking group.” No, we’re a relationship group. They do everything a networking group does, just built entirely on intentional, high-end relationship building. His read: a lot of people are done with traditional networking, and there’s real opportunity in giving them a way to come together that’s non-salesy and built around something they actually enjoy. The on-ramp is smaller than people think. Get three people in a room. If each brings three, you’re at twelve, and then it compounds. He runs the economics (a hobby quietly throwing off a few thousand a month, with room to become a full business if she ever wanted it) and frames it the way he frames YouTube: the activity itself can be the product, or it can be how you monetize everything around it. Underneath it is the metaphor he keeps returning to, his Japanese father-in-law’s garden, known across the neighborhood, built from a few plants years ago and fed patiently ever since. That’s how you build community in 2026. The screen is a great bulletin board for staying top of mind, but people want to meet somewhere real. His advice: start in your own local community and dive in. His questions: what’s the best event you’ve been to lately, or the one you wish someone would host? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mattstone.substack.com