i’ve started to think that networking is one of those words you’ve all agreed to tolerate because nobody’s invented a better one. it conjures images of conference badges, awkward coffee breaks and people politely pretending they’re fascinated by your last funding round while quietly scanning the room for someone more interesting to talk to. i’ve never understood the attraction. if you arrive trying to ‘optimise’ every conversation, you’ve already missed the only thing worth finding. the interesting relationships in life are almost always accidents. they begin with curiosity, not utility.
that’s really why the acid summer camp exists. not to gather hedge fund managers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists or musicians into neat little tribes where everyone speaks the same language. quite the opposite. i want the collisions. i want the entrepreneur sitting beside the photographer. i want the engineer arguing with the macro investor. i want someone who’s never looked at a balance sheet asking the question that makes everyone who’s spent thirty years staring at one suddenly realise they’ve been trapped inside the same mental model. expertise is useful. it’s also a magnificent gilded prison if you never leave your own corridor.
the trouble with modern life isn’t that we can’t find interesting people. christ, they’re everywhere. the trouble is we mostly meet the edited version. everyone knows their lines. everyone’s got the story they’ve told a hundred times before because it lands well and doesn’t get them into trouble. then you spend three days eating together, drinking together, getting lost trying to find some bloody beach bar, and the mask starts slipping. people stop telling you what they do and start telling you what keeps them awake. that’s when they become interesting. that’s when you realise the cleverest thing anyone’s said all week might come from the person you almost didn’t sit beside.
spend a few days together and something begins to crack. not because anyone’s trying to expose you. because it’s exhausting maintaining a performance twenty-four hours a day. eventually someone admits they don’t know. someone else confesses they’ve changed their mind. another tells the story they normally leave out because it doesn’t make them look quite so clever. that’s when people become interesting.
that’s also why the first day is always slightly awkward. good. awkward means nobody’s found the script yet. by the second dinner people stop introducing themselves by what they do and start talking about what fascinates them, what frightens them, the idea they can’t quite shake, the business they’re thinking of starting, the problem they’ve been carrying around for months without telling anyone. the room changes. strangers become co-conspirators. i’ve watched it happen often enough now that i no longer think it’s luck. i think it’s what happens when you put curious people together for long enough and remove all the usual machinery of modern life.
so if you’re wondering whether summer camp is for you, you’re probably asking the wrong question. the better question is whether you’re still curious enough to spend a week with people who don’t see the world the way you do. if the answer’s yes, then i honestly couldn’t care less what your job title is, how much money you manage or whether you’ve ever opened a bloomberg terminal. bring your curiosity. the rest tends to take care of itself.
hugh.
any patreon or substack annual subscriber is entitled to a 10% discount.
