With budgets shrinking, investor demands increasing, and prospects everywhere inundated by cold outreach, sales teams can no longer pursue the same high-volume, high-cost approaches that have worked for them up until now. Instead, today’s conditions are ushering in a new, more strategic approach to sales — one that we’re calling the "networkization" of sales.

Networking is a crucial part of raising money, landing clients, and marketing your business, especially in the early days of growing a startup. At The Swarm, we help founders and startup leaders bring together their collective networks to power recruiting, sales, and fundraising. Needless to say, we believe in the power of networks to accelerate company building. Below, we dive into why super connectors are critical to your company’s success, how to identify them within your network, and how best to leverage them.

Lately, it’s felt like every single tech giant out there has had major layoffs — including Amazon, Coinbase, Intel, Meta, Stripe, Twitter, and others. With these layoffs and a looming recession dominating news, hiring planning might feel harder to navigate than ever. Startups aren’t sure if they should scoop up laid-off talent, slow down recruiting, or freeze hiring altogether. So, how can you best navigate this changing landscape? And how does network recruiting come into play?

Today, referral programs are one of the most powerful recruiting strategies available to companies. Referrals are 85 times more likely to be hired than inbound candidates, over twice as fast to hire, and they stay with companies — on average — 70% longer than non-referrals.

Using The Swarm, 500 Emerging Europe is able to unify and search through their collective network. They're already using the platform to introduce founders to top talent and plan to use it for sales and other high-potential introductions.

Bringing the right people on board is one of the most crucial parts of building any successful business, and few people understand that better than Monarch Money Founder Ozzie Osman.

Matt Maasdam, Ex Navy SEALs Instructor and Co-Founder at PECOS Outdoor, didn’t take the most traditional path to entrepreneurship. In fact, his career journey matches few others. Maasdam started his career with the Navy SEALs, where he spent 20 years working in candidate selection and training. He later carried the nuclear codes for President Obama during his two years as the White House’s Military Aide. Since then, Maasdam has run strategy programs at Under Armour and worked as the COO of startup Revtown. Today, he’s the co-founder of PECOS Outdoors, an e-commerce company that produces outdoor gear.

Experts explain the tactical, network-based approaches companies should take to succeed in 2023 — and why they matter: Richard Cho (Advisor & Former Chief Recruiting Officer at Gem), Nolan Church (CEO at Continuum), David Connors (Co-Founder & CEO at The Swarm). Panel event moderated by Opal Franklin (Events Lead at The Swarm).

At this stage, most leaders know that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plays an important role in their company’s success. Companies that are more diverse and inclusive are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors and 70% more likely to capture new markets. They also have a much easier time sourcing candidates, with two out of three candidates saying they actively seek out companies that have diverse workforces. Hear from experts on how to best infuse DEI into your recruitment strategy and hiring process.

With the recent economic downturn, many startups have slowed — if not altogether frozen — their hiring plans. And understandably so: as funding rounds stretch longer and inflation impacts people’s spending, leaders are keeping a more watchful eye on budgets. However, even if your hiring has slowed, your recruiting function should never stop.

If you’re a first-time founder, the thought of hiring your first 10 employees can seem daunting. Compared to an established company, you don’t have brand recognition, endless budgets, or teams of recruiters available to help. It might, in fact, be just you at this stage.

More than ever, founders need to do more with less, and they need their growth engines to be as efficient as possible. We’re excited to introduce new ways your company network can be activated to accelerate recruiting and sales, and for investors to build their own networks.

When we talk about uniting the individual networks of your team, investors, and advisors into a single combined network on The Swarm, what exactly does that mean? We’re glad you asked. Your Network Graph is where the magic happens.

The way we build and structure businesses has changed radically over the past few decades. The rise of the startup has created a whole new model for business, challenging the traditional, siloed corporate structures that have been around for a century or more. However, while businesses have changed, the way we recruit has remained the same in many ways. Network recruiting is here to change that.

The Swarm will be the operating system that early stage startups use to find and hire top talent. Here is what led me to start the company and why our platform could lead a transformation in startup recruiting.