You don't fish from your house, and you don't fish at the clubhouse, you have to go to the pond to catch a fish.
That is to say, if all you do is work on your thing, you're not finding customers, so you need to do something other than working. If you're in a more service-oriented field, networking is one of the easier ways of finding customers (in that, it's probably the only way that reliably works. You'll probably not find many customers just through online means, and they will probably be bad customers at that.)
I understand your frustration with these sorts of networking events, but it's not networking that is the problem, it's the type of event that you're trying to do it at that is wrong. You're not going to find customers among a group of other starving startup founders. They don't have any money and they won't be interested in using your thing anyway.
You have to get out of your comfort zone and go somewhere where there aren't any people like you. That's the entire point. If they were like you, they wouldn't hire you, they'd just do it themselves. If you were like them, they wouldn't hire you, as you wouldn't provide anything different than they already know.
So don't go to startup networking events. Go to other industry's conferences.
That is to say, if all you do is work on your thing, you're not finding customers, so you need to do something other than working. If you're in a more service-oriented field, networking is one of the easier ways of finding customers (in that, it's probably the only way that reliably works. You'll probably not find many customers just through online means, and they will probably be bad customers at that.)
I understand your frustration with these sorts of networking events, but it's not networking that is the problem, it's the type of event that you're trying to do it at that is wrong. You're not going to find customers among a group of other starving startup founders. They don't have any money and they won't be interested in using your thing anyway.
You have to get out of your comfort zone and go somewhere where there aren't any people like you. That's the entire point. If they were like you, they wouldn't hire you, they'd just do it themselves. If you were like them, they wouldn't hire you, as you wouldn't provide anything different than they already know.
So don't go to startup networking events. Go to other industry's conferences.