Read time:  7–9 min

Every founder I have watched struggle to get traction had the same underlying problem, even when they described it as a product problem or a market problem: they did not have the right relationships to open the doors they needed opened.

When I came back from the US after studying and working there, I thought I understood how to build a professional network. I had learned the American way: show up at events, exchange cards, find common ground, refer each other for work. Clean, efficient, transactional. I was confident it would work in Jakarta and Bangkok the same way it had worked in Los Angeles ans San Francisco.

It did not work the same way at all.

Why Relationships Work Differently Here

In the US, especially in startup and professional contexts, trust is largely task-based. You demonstrate competence, you deliver on commitments, and trust builds relatively quickly through performance. The relationship can come after work.

In Southeast Asia — and in Thailand specifically — trust is almost always relationship-based first. Business comes after trust, not before it. And trust does not come from a LinkedIn profile or a polished pitch deck. It comes from a third party who already trusts you, who is willing to put their own reputation on the line to vouch for you.

This is why a warm introduction from a mutual contact is worth more than the best cold email you will ever write. Not because the decision-maker is irrational — but because in a market where contracts are harder to enforce and institutions are less reliable, the referrer becomes the guarantee. If the introduction leads somewhere bad, it reflects on the person who made it. That person knows this. So when they vouch for you, it means something real.

"In Southeast Asia, you are not just selling your product or your skills. You are asking someone to lend you a share of their reputation. Understand the weight of what you are asking."

The ASEAN Context — Why It Matters More Here

In China, this concept is formalized as Guanxi — a network of trusted relationships where favors flow in both directions, obligations are maintained over time, and the system excludes those who break it. The mechanism is similar across Southeast Asia, even without the explicit vocabulary.

Dr. Matt Allen's research at Babson College found that an estimated 99.7% of Thai businesses and 94.5% of Indonesian businesses have some form of family involvement. These are not just companies — they are family institutions. They operate on different trust logic. When a family-run business considers a new partnership, supplier, or hire, the question is not just "is this person capable?" It is "do I know this person? Do I know someone who knows them? Would I be comfortable if things went wrong and we had to have an uncomfortable conversation?"

You do not have to be from a family business to understand this. You just have to recognize that doing business in this region is rarely purely transactional. It is personal, reputation-based, and long-term oriented in ways that Western business culture sometimes is not.

Build, Buy, or Borrow

There are three ways to access Social Capital when you need it. Understanding the difference saves enormous time.

Build

Building Social Capital means investing in relationships over time, before you need them. This is the most powerful approach but the slowest. The relationships you are forming right now — with the entrepreneurs you interview, the guest speakers who come to your program, the classmates you work alongside — are seeds. 

The ones you tend carefully, where you add value without keeping score, will be some of the most important professional relationships of your career. The ones you treat as transactions will not.

Borrow

Borrowing means working through a more established person's credibility — an advisor who introduces you, a mentor who vouches for you, an institution that co-signs your legitimacy. This is often the fastest path when you are entering a new market or approaching people well above your current level. 

I have connected many people to each other who I thought would benefit from knowing each other. What I learned is that the people you connect with will often ask themselves, silently: "If this goes wrong, who do I go to?" 

The answer should be you. That means you are not just making an introduction — you are becoming accountable for it. That accountability is actually the mechanism that makes the introduction valuable.

Buy

Buying means paying for access — hiring someone with the relationships you need, joining an organization with institutional credibility, or paying an advisor specifically for their network. This can be effective, but it is the least durable form of Social Capital. Relationships you pay for do not transfer as cleanly as ones built on genuine mutual investment.

"Build the relationship before you need it. A relationship you invest in for a year, with no immediate return, will be worth exponentially more in three years than one you tried to build quickly when you needed something."

Both is Better Than Either

Social Capital does not replace competence. The entrepreneurs who build the most durable businesses in ASEAN are the ones who have both: deep relationships and real skill. Relationships open doors. Skill determines whether you walk back through them.

If you are known for connecting people to each other — for being the person who makes the right introductions, who remembers what people are working on and surfaces an unexpected match — you become a node in a network. People want nodes in their network. That is Social Capital at work.

A student once asked me whether it gets tiring — always thinking about what others need, trying to add value without an immediate return. 

My honest answer: it comes naturally when you are spending your time with people whose success you genuinely care about. When the motivation is real, it does not feel like work. It feels like the right thing to do with your time.

Reputation Is the Asset AI Has Not Yet Taken

Almost every skill that can be made explicit and codified will eventually be assisted or replaced by better tools. The things that remain stubbornly human are the ones that require trust, judgment built through experience, and the willingness to be accountable for outcomes.

Your reputation is built on those things. It compounds slowly and depreciates fast. And unlike most assets, you cannot buy a good one — you can only earn it.

A Note for GVP Students

Your Social Capital plan in Block E is not a networking checklist. It is a genuine question: who do you need to know to make your venture real, and how are you going to build those relationships before you need them?

Think about the people you have already met through this course — the entrepreneurs you interviewed, the practitioners who gave time to your cohort, your classmates. These are real seeds of Social Capital. What you do with them after this course ends matters more than what happened during it.

Your ASEAN friend interviews this block are not just a requirement. They are the beginning of a habit: building relationships with people in other markets who will remember you when you are ready to go there.