Help - I have questions as a 1st year analyst straight from UG

Background: decent GPA, public target school, solely investment internships before I graduated with ok, not great brands. Now work at a startup L/S fund straight out of college. I have questions that I can't answer because I don't think I have a network in the industry, and WSO has given me a lot of help over the years.

1. I'm thinking of potentially switching to a tech/growth role by trying to sell my L/S analysis skillset. I've gotten slightly bored of the work at L/S - it's not bad, and I could do this for a career, but long term I want to make a startup, and I think the problem solving would be cooler. I have no execution skillset though.

2. Job switching - I currently work at a $50Mish startup fund (just me and PM), PM is ex-midlevel from a very large fund. 1 year track record, 20%+ above SPY. I like the work, work great hours, boss is pretty decent, but I think I'm professionalizing quick and am going to be heavily underpaid in a year or so. I currently make ~$70k, no benefits, no bonus discussion. I currently have an interview with an ex. large Tiger Cub partner doing the same work - 90% analysis work, no input on portfolio, (totally fine of course, although it'd make me feel better if he slightly entertained my ideas), just me and him but at a ~200-400M fund. Track record is ok over 2-4 years (don't know specifics, but hasn't underperformed). What to think about switching 6 months into a job or so, a lateral, but to a better "brand", more pay almost assuredly (what would be reasonable to ask for?), harder work (I'm loath to give up my great hours but it's probably for the best that I nut up and work hard and learn more)? As a side note, the two know of each other in the industry, so it may be slightly awkward, and I don't want to burn bridges. 

3. How do I keep in touch with people I have networked with? A lot of people liked the pitches I wrote when networking, liked my work in general, but didn't have a place for me at the time and told me to keep in touch. I haven't contacted the majority of them since, as I haven't found a new exciting idea on my own that I could diligence and create a differentiated pitch for, and my view of the relationship is just sort of adding value by keeping in contact by providing polished work that's thoughtful. I tried striking up a running dialogue with a couple of them that owned names I knew about, but I think my analysis was a little subpar and it kind of fell flat, so I'm wary of doing that.

4. How do I best balance the needs of my PM with my need to develop as an investor at this point in my career? It seems my immediate opportunity set is working at these sort of 1 man band shops where I'm purely there to leverage my PM's time. That's fine, but I have a lot of questions I'd like to ask to learn, some of which borders on handholding simply because I don't have enough experience, but I don't want to bother them. How to best approach this?  And how do I break out of this opportunity set?

5. What would you think are the best career moves for me? What should I be doing? Medium term, I think business school would be great, purely for the brand and so I can buy more time to think about what I want to do. I also want to move up in the investing space - bigger names, more responsibility, more title, as I think I'm missing prestige (stupid, but we know people care about this, especially early career). What should I be doing to optimize for those?

6. I don't have sources to learn about knowledge around the industry and learn about industry practices/standards. I don't keep in contact with people from my internships (meh experiences), and I didn't have an analyst class at an IB as a network. Stuff like networking protocols, how PMs build these idea networks, how to talk to PMs, what PM's need the most, how to manage up if my boss doesn't give great directions, etc. I don't feel like I'm a full professional yet - just a college kid doing this stuff for a job now. Does this go away? And how can I learn more about this stuff without that analyst class network? 

7. What is protocol on work samples to network? Ex. my fund has a great idea I absolutely love, but I didn't come up with it, it was a pre-existing position. It's a super easy sell, I know the name very well, I even own it currently, but I just didn't come up with it and I'd feel a lil dirty sending it out since it's not mine. Another ex. I have a name I am close to a good pitch on, but need primary diligence to answer a couple of key questions, and I can't exactly use our Tegus/GLG budget for a personal project. How do I come up with that primary diligence stuff? I'm over cold emailing for diligence, especially since I can't use a student excuse anymore, but do I just have to do that?

Many thanks if anyone has any answers to these questions. Happy to talk and build relationships with anyone that's interested.