That's what you might think at first. And that's exactly what I perceived to be the case. But as someone who frequents 2-3 networking (tech/startup related) eve

That's what you might think at first. And that's exactly what I perceived to be the case. But as someone who frequents 2-3 networking (tech/startup related) events a week in NYC for the past three years, that's actually not true at all. We want to talk about things outside of our daily grind first i.e. our hobbies, where we like to eat, what we do in our off time, etc., and where/what we work on will work its way in with time. Why the rush? You're (hopefully) trying to make a friend not pitch a random stranger that will forget you the next day if all they hear about is your company. You don't have to believe me, but I went from knowing nobody in the NYC tech community three years ago to knowing everyone. My initial approach was going up to people and asking "Hey, I'm Spencer, what do you do?" and playing the whole back-and-forth like a recorded conversation. That gets you a routine glazed over eyed response. I then started getting to know people and them getting to know me and everything flipped and I've now made dozens of friends for life where we now get together outside of work, go to each other's birthdays, know each other's girlfriends/boyfriends, go on vacations together, etc. And this all changed when the conversation shifted to being more about the people than only what we did for a living.