Everyone Is trying to Network But Nobody Is Building Real Relationships: Interview with Federica Labanca

We were told that success was all about networking, meaning go to the event, collect the business cards, build your LinkedIn, grow your following, and essentially reach out to people you've never met. 

Networking stopped meaning "building relationships" and started meaning "collecting people."

We became obsessed with access, access to founders, investors, creators, editors, celebrities and opportunities. As though careers were built by knowing more people rather than knowing people more deeply.

When we spoke with Federica Labanca, founder of creator-commerce platform FFLOW, we expected to talk about influencer marketing, technology, and building a startup. Instead, the conversation kept circling back to something much older than any platform could ever be: trust.

Not algorithms. Not reach. Not personal branding. Purely trust.

It's interesting because Federica exists in a world that often feels like the perfect representation of modern networking. She spent years at Prada before becoming a creative consultant, creator, and eventually co-founding FFLOW, a platform helping brands manage creator partnerships while measuring the actual commercial impact of those collaborations. The platform itself was born from recognising that creator marketing had become fragmented and difficult to measure, bringing gifting, paid partnerships, campaign management and performance tracking into one system.

But listening to her speak, it quickly became obvious that technology isn't really what motivates her. People are. Again and again, she described herself not as a founder or an influencer, but as someone who loves connecting people. Someone who built an entire company around relationships because she'd built her own career through them.

"I built my career through community."

It's remarkable how simple that sentence sounds. Yet today, community has become one of those words that has almost lost its meaning. Every startup promises community, every creator thanks "this amazing community, and every brand proudly claims they're building community instead of customers.

The word has become so overused that it often feels interchangeable with audience. But those two things are not the same. An audience watches you, where as a community remembers you. An audience consumes, while a community contributes. An audience disappears the moment something more entertaining comes along, a community loyally stays.

The creator economy has become extraordinarily good at helping people accumulate audiences. It has become considerably worse at teaching people how to build relationships. Somehow we've mistaken visibility for connection. Followers for friendships and networking for generosity.

Success stories often celebrate the person who knows everyone in the room. Rarely do they celebrate the person everyone genuinely wants to hear from. That's a very different skill.

Perhaps the most revealing moment in our conversation wasn't about FFLOW at all. Federica told me about a competitor who attempted to enter the UK market by throwing an enormous dinner. Beautiful venue. Huge budget. Dozens of creators. Nothing happened. People attended. They posted. Then everyone moved on.

The following day, nobody was talking about it. It sounds like a story about a failed event. In reality, it's a story about the limits of money. You cannot buy belonging. You cannot manufacture loyalty. You cannot outsource trust. The internet often makes us believe relationships can be accelerated if only the production value is high enough.

Host a bigger event. Fly more creators abroad. Spend more on gifting. Create more elaborate experiences. But relationships don't work that way. Trust is painfully analogue, iIt accumulates slowly, through consistency rather than spectacle. Through showing up repeatedly instead of arriving dramatically.

Federica mentioned something that most founders probably wouldn't even think was worth saying.

When they invite creators to their dinners, she writes the emails herself. Not an assistant, and not someone from the team, herself.

At first, it sounds almost insignificant. Until you realise that tiny gestures like that are exactly what people remember. In an industry increasingly automated by AI, CRMs, scheduling software and templated outreach, genuine attention has quietly become one of the rarest luxuries available.

Perhaps that's why people respond to it so strongly. There was another moment that stayed with me.

Federica laughed about how people often question why she posts herself smoking on Instagram.

"Brands won't work with you.", "You should curate yourself more."

Her response was refreshingly honest. Most of the influencers criticising authenticity smoke too. They simply do it outside the frame. It's a reminder that we're still living through an era where many online identities are designed less to communicate reality than to manage perception.

Perfection has become another form of branding. And while audiences once admired perfection, they increasingly seem to trust people willing to let a little mess remain visible. Not because authenticity has become trendy, but because exhaustion has.

We're tired of polished people, now we're looking for believable ones, and maybe that's why Federica's career feels so contemporary. Not because she founded a technology company, but because she seems to understand something many people have forgotten.

Creative careers aren't built by constantly asking, "Who can help me?" They're built by repeatedly asking, "Who can I introduce?" Who can I support? Who should meet? Who belongs in this room?

It's easy to dismiss generosity as idealism. Yet time and time again, the most enduring creative communities seem to emerge from exactly that instinct. Not protecting opportunities, but sharing them, and under no circumstances gatekeeping contacts. But opening doors for others.

For decades, networking encouraged us to think vertically.

Who's above me? Who can promote me? Who can accelerate my career? Relationships ask a different question. Who's beside me?

Those are usually the people who grow with you. Careers are often imagined as ladders but perhaps they're closer to ecosystems. Remember the old tale; nothing grows alone, well it's true. The creatives who last aren't necessarily the most talented, the loudest, or even the most visible. They're often the ones people trust enough to build with again.

Maybe that's why the future of creative work won't belong to those with the biggest networks. It will belong to those who make other people feel remembered. Because in an economy built on attention, genuine relationships have quietly become the rarest currency of all.