How did you find your first design partners ? (I will not promote)

I'm building a B2B SaaS product for product teams and we're approaching the stage where we're thinking about design partners. I'm not looking for customers yet or trying to sell anything, just thinking of strategies while the product is being built. So, for those of you who've gone through this: How did you actually find your first design partners? Did you reach out through LinkedIn, founder communities, your own network, Reddit, cold email, or somewhere else? Did you offer anything in return (free access,