With help from strangers: entrepreneurs’ networking for serendipity

Entrepreneurs leverage social networks to initiate and develop new businesses. Prior literature has primarily focused on the role of existing ties and taken its starting point as “who I know.” However, networking with existing ties might occasionally be insufficient. Therefore, in addition to existing ties, strangers are important. In this qualitative study based on 31 interviews in Nairobi, we identified and developed an understanding of strangers’ roles for opportunity-based entrepreneurs. We determined that strangers play a significant role in entrepreneurs’ networking, and this fundamentally challenges prior assumptions regarding entrepreneurs predominantly networking with existing ties and with predefined resources in mind. More specifically, we find that entrepreneurs, either through planning or by relying on serendipity, seek to form ties with strangers in their search for networking benefits such as learning, legitimacy, referrals, and identity, and that such tie formations take different path depending on how they were originally initiated.