Our Experience: Why Founders Should Consider San Francisco Startups Networking Opportunities
When we visited San Francisco with the Metatable.ai team, we were amazed by the concentration of innovation and technology centers. As we worked on increasing awareness of our product, we explored various networking opportunities firsthand.
Historian Niall Ferguson has summed up seven main insights from the networking theory in his book "The Square and Tower: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power."
No man is an island
Birds of a feather flock together
Weak ties are strong
Structure determines virality
Networks never sleep
Networks network
The rich get richer.
Keep them in mind while reading how networking works in the San Francisco startup community and how to find worthwhile tech events. You will also discover how to gain the attention of investors there to grow your business. All based on our own experience of visiting San Francisco, of course.
Why Did We Decide to Visit San Francisco?
Networking opportunities
San Francisco is a hub for conferences and meetups where investors, startuppers, and industry experts can get acquainted. During our time in San Francisco, we found that these events are perfect for exchanging contacts, meeting new people, and discussing the latest technological advances. They proved invaluable for us in finding business partners, customers, and potential participants for our projects.
Remember that networking is always about mutually beneficial acquaintances. You must also offer something to people: experience, capital, knowledge, skills, or expertise.
Access to startups' San Francisco investors
In San Francisco, you can build the right connections and even get significant investments to start a business or to scale your enterprise. Well-known names of the investors include venture capital (VC) firms like Benchmark, Venture Partners, and others. The Y-Combinator company, one of the giant startup accelerators supporting famous companies like Airbnb and Dropbox, is also located in San Francisco.
We attended events such as SF New Tech, TechCrunch Disrupt, and Startup Grind, where we met investors who showed genuine interest in our ideas. These conferences are worthwhile as they provide opportunities to connect with potential investors, much like the Instagram team met their investor, Steve Anderson, in a bar and secured a million-dollar investment, Steve Anderson, in a bar, and he gave them a million dollars.
Easier to find your first customers, beta users, partners
Through our experience, we found that networking is one of the most effective ways to find and retain potential clients. Apollo Technical's study shows that the close rate for in-person meetings is 40%, with nearly half ending in a sale or deal, highlighting the importance of face-to-face interactions.
Practical Tips for Startup San Francisco First-time Visitors
Attend relevant events
The easiest way to meet the right people is to attend meetups, conferences, and special networking events. Finding such events is quite easy: they can be published on MeetUp, Eventbrite, or Luma. There, you can choose from about ten gorgeous meetings a day. You can select free tickets, but an average ticket costs $20-25.
Do public speaking
Make as many public appearances as possible — seeing is believing. People will get to know you better as an expert and follow you on social networks. Below are some tips to follow to enhance your public speaking experience.
Interact with your audience: Answer the audience's questions and try to show yourself as an energetic and charismatic speaker. Eye contact, gestures, and interaction with the audience are essential because you have to build an emotional connection with people;
Try to be remembered: You can give a meaningful quote that summarizes the presentation. Think about collecting feedback from your listeners. Maybe even dare to ask to fill out a Google form? No kidding — people love to leave critical comments, don't we?
Strive for improvement: Analyze other speakers' presentations and improve yours, taking into account the mistakes of others.
Use the elevator pitch
The so-called elevator is your idea in a nutshell, wrapped in a 30-second, easy-to-understand narrative. Use Feynman's Technique; try to describe the gist to a six-year-old. Not sure it sounds good. Rewrite and retell until it flows like rap recitative.
Thanks to this method, the co-founders of Google received $12.5 million for the development of their company, which was unknown to anyone back in 1998. You can find examples of the right elevator pitch and its structure on YouTube.
Pay it forward
In many situations, providing a service costs you almost nothing but is of great importance to another person. In turn, you will gain a useful acquaintance. Actively communicate with people at events when you arrive with ideas for startups in San Francisco. Share valuable information, or offer your help.
After conferences, post positive reviews about event organizers and add links to their social media accounts. Organizers may notice you and even invite you as a speaker.
Assess the quality of connections over quantity
Deeper connections are better than 20-minute general conversations about what you're doing and how far you've come in your journey. If you get acquainted with an interesting person, plan your next meeting. You can invite the person to walk, have coffee, go to a bar, or even hike.
Living and transportation in SF
Accommodation
Finding accommodation in San Francisco is relatively easy given its popularity as a global destination. However, we noticed that rental prices are higher compared to other US states, comparable to New York. Below are the prices for one person per night in different accommodation types:
Hostel: $30-60 per night
Apartments: $200-350 per day
3-star hotel: $80-120 per night
4-star hotel: $90-250 per night
5-star hotel: $220-450 per night
Despite San Francisco's modernity and status as one of the most developed cities, be careful in some areas. For example, our staff has found that it is better to stay away from Tenderloin late at night, especially if you go alone.
Weather and clothes
Cold ocean currents greatly influence San Francisco's climate. There is frequent fog in summer, and in winter, it rains. The average summer temperature is 15-24°C, and the average winter temperature is 10-15°C.
Take warm clothing with you, even in summer. San Francisco is cool almost all year round—about +20 °C and windy.
It is a reminder for women: The streets of San Francisco are so steep in many places that it is impossible to walk on them in heels.
Public transport
It is convenient to use public transport here. The fare on buses is $2.50 You are given a ticket indicating the time range (3-4 hours) in which you can travel using the ticket you received.
The subway is part of the BART system, and the use rules are not particularly different from subways in other US cities. The cost of one trip depends on the selected distance, for most locations in the city, it is $3.0.
Tip for tourists: Change money before boarding San Francisco transport or add a Muni Card to your phone wallet and pay with a simple smartphone tap.
Trying innovative experiences
In San Francisco, you can enjoy many exciting tourist experiences—you can visit Castro Theater or GamedayVR to try virtual reality hardware and games, stroll in beautiful parks, and more.
We recommend you try Waymo, a robotic taxi service, and ride in one of the driverless cars. You should sign up for the wait list in the Waymo app. Chances are you will get an invitation in 5-6 weeks. Getting new experiences will give you another topic for conversation later on.
Value of SF's Ecosystem
Concentration of innovation
San Francisco is a thriving city thanks to the booming development of the technology field.
Silicon Valley is located 60 km south of the city. It is the birthplace and nexus of famous technology companies like Google, Oracle, and Apple. Today, Tesla, Netflix, Google, and other famous businesses have their headquarters and central offices in the San Francisco area.
The development of technological innovation has led to the fact that San Francisco is home to many successful and talented people. On May 7, 2024, Henley & Partners and the analytical company New World Wealth presented the report "The Richest Cities in the World 2024". This report ranks cities by the number of millionaires and billionaires living there. San Francisco takes the second place among cities worldwide with 305,700 millionaires.
Networking and reputation
In San Francisco, there are a vast number of meeting opportunities that seem to be interconnected and form one giant ecosystem. This ecosystem consists of several important components:
People with experience building or working in startups. These connections provided us with valuable experience, support, and inspiration for new business ideas.
People with access to money. In San Francisco, many venture investors, banks, and wealthy people have earned millions in the technology business. They are ready to invest in other companies, advising and helping them with contacts.
Professionals. Programmers, UI/UX designers, marketers, sales experts - all of these people will have a much greater chance of success if they grow up in an advanced environment. In San Francisco, there is every chance to make such acquaintances.
Consumers. If you are starting a company somewhere in Slovenia, the small market size will not allow you to compete with other global companies in your niche. The US is the world's largest monolithic market for most goods and services.
Valuable contacts in San Francisco can be found among tech event participants. Taking part in conferences and networking in San Francisco will make you stand out in the startup scene when you share your experience on social media. This city is considered a prestigious place to visit.
Less Effective Approaches to Attract Investors
Distance plays a role because the competition in the USA market is huge. Cold outreach is less effective than personal connection, especially in the age of ubiquitous AI assistants writing texts and responding to emails.
Ideally, it is best to attend events and conferences in person as a speaker. Being there and networking is essentially a hunt for potential investors' attention. It's about your soft skills and charisma. We've heard many stories of founders with great pitch decks who couldn't capture investors' interest. A memorable character and performance are crucial to breaking through investor fatigue. Stepping out of a crowd is hard work and a proactive search for genuine authenticity of your pitch and product positioning.
Top Tips for Visitors of the SF Startups Events
Main rules to get the most out of networking
Be polite and friendly. You never know where and when you might meet your potential partner or client, so you must behave in a way that creates a good impression of yourself. Talk not only about yourself but also show mutual interest in people;
Prepare in advance. Before you speak or attend an event, review the details and find out who will be attending. Create a list of potential questions you might be asked and be prepared to answer them. You can also create a short video that can be used during your first contact with investors;
Be proactive. Try to become a speaker at events. This way, you will make yourself known and have the opportunity to talk about your product to a large audience;
Build the right impression. You will have only one chance, so don't waste it. You must be careful even if you limit yourself to business meetings and public workplaces. Americans watch and evaluate your every move, including your clothing style or alcohol consumption;
Keep in touch. Follow your new acquaintances on social networks, comment on their posts, and remind them of yourself. You should actively share your cases and entrepreneurial stories on your page;
Give yourself time. The ideal stay in the city is about 20–30 days. You can find and attend different events, make new acquaintances, and possibly cross paths with some people several times, strengthening your connections.
Some helpful literature on networking
“Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi: The book is about how to meet more influential people;
“The New Code of Networking” by Gil Petersil. The book presents a series of life hacks and secrets for developing your own network, written to be simple to understand;
“Superconnector” by Scott Gerber and Ryan Paugh. It is literature for those who have achieved some success in networking but want to go even further and make another series of successful acquaintances;
Already mentioned Ferguson's "The Square and Tower".
Conclusion
San Francisco is a city with a myriad of opportunities. Visiting this place once can shift your paradigm due to all these valuable contacts, mentorship, attracting your first clients, or even receiving investments. You pay for accommodation for conference participation, so don't wait; go for a hunt. And as they say in the theater, break a leg. Oh, and while you're at it, why not let Metatable.ai help you break into the tech scene with a bang? Give it a try!