Interesting advice. As someone who is above all the tiers listed here, my take is completely different. Until you get to 9 figures, you don't need anybody else to help you. Don't need private deals and can be fully on-chain. Here are the things I do. 1. Experiment with any new product I hear about. 2. If I like the product and feel excited to use it, reach out to the team to see if I can support, sometimes with capital like for @ExponentFinance, @DeFiCarrot or @Claynosaurz, sometimes with advice like for @asgardfi, sometimes with both like for @sanctumso. 3. The space has grown so vast that there is no way we can keep track of anymore unlike 10 years back. So you look to like-minded people that run funds and scour these early opportunities like @mattytay with @colosseum and LP in those funds. Sometimes, they will let you co-invest or mentor in projects that might resonate with you. 4. Always maintain directional exposure, because, as some intelligent spartan once said, if you don't have exposure to the industry you wake up and spend everyday in, what are you really doing here? 5. Instead, I borrow against the directional exposure and use that for yield farming. In the process, gain points from protocols such as @kamino or @sparkdotfi. Spark was an unexpected huge airdrop for me tbh. 6. It's a myth that you cannot do airdrop farming at size. You can both hunt for the best yields and gain exposure to a ton of new protocols BECAUSE of size. I have been airdropped 8 figures this cycle so far. Just an example, if KMNO ever reaches 1$, that will be my first 9 fig airdrop. I screwed up HYPE by not accepting terms or something. 7. Your time is always your investment. Optimize it more than optimizing your capital. You need not target 20-30% basis trades and delta neutral strategies. Optimizing those without bots is a pain in the ass, even with somebody else managing it. Go for 10-15% on-chain yields. But use your time wisely, hunt new projects. Be the first to provide them feedback, good or bad. You don't know how much it comes back to you, both in terms of rewards as well as connections. I never knew anyone from @ArciumHQ or @monad but the investments happened because of this.