Expansion of the Network

or about the “networking” in Silicon Valley

Events come and meetings go… time flies very fast and we are getting more and more comfortable in California. This morning I thought how we would be kicking ourselves (or the inside covers of the airplane) now if we had come for only two weeks… Finished! It’s over, that’s it, we have to go home…

Time is very valuable but it is not enough either.

One of the most important part of networking is that no matter who you talk to (independent of the results) you should ask them for a name, who would be worth meeting later on. It already happens subconsciously many times and they already give hints: you should go to this meetup, I know someone there, I’ll connect you with them on Linkedin, etc.

Tarantino characters on a developers’ pub meeting.

We got an address. We are looking at it but it doesn’t say anything. Let’s mount the bikes and we soon find ourselves in a familiar place.

“I can’t believe it! We have come to the same knife-throwing Mexican pub where we once chatted away an evening with our friends.”

Characters from a Tarantino movie come who perfectly fit the location. It is mind-blowing but the crowd is already gathering at the back of the pub. From the developers of Python (machine learning) to Unity (VR) everybody represents themselves.

There are people who try to find a developer but there are also developers who try to find their new startup.

The interesting thing is that there is a great overlap of people we have seen or met at the previous meetup. We have already seen one of the investors at one of the seed investors’ meetup. We are not fooled by her this time, we know she is not here as a developer, she is just observing the project from the inside 🙂 .While another lady is looking for a seed investor and developer at the same time. She comes to shake hands.
Despite the noise in the pub, we have an opportunity to pitch. However, the strategy is different here because everyone is trying to focus on finding the proper developer. Money doesn’t matter so much now. In the meantime, we bump into a VC, who shows great interest in our ENVIENTA project. We got business cards, too, we are going to write to them in the evening, our presentation attached…
But sometimes people show up randomly, who don’t understand anything, nothing we say is good enough. Either too black or too white…

For all, I can say it is like dating.

The worst thing in dating is being overly nervous. Or another typical mistake if you don’t even show up. The same thing with meetups. On one hand, you shouldn’t be too edgy about it because Americans are mostly casual (but in the meantime the gears are clicking in their heads). On the other hand, if we say “we are not going anywhere today” we lose that last tiny chance of getting closer to our goal.

If you would like to follow or participate in the ENVIENTA project, come and join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1549322302054465/

Source: ENVIENTA Open Source Everything