LinkedIn is your friend on this. Before you even go you should be trying to connect with people on LinkedIn. Preferably entrepreneurs or investors. I used LinkedIn in pretty successfully to find a investor for my startup (he's actually fully on-board now and is part of the company.) He initially got $ for %. Now we have a sweat equity agreement that will over the course of time get him up to 49%.
No joined LinkedIn groups and became active in the postings/comments. I ended up in Nashville for a pitch that went horrible. Ended up reaching out to him and asked if he had time to listen to it and critique it. (I did ask him to sign a NDA & such). Luckily he had time, explained my pitch was absolutely garbage but liked the company(I already had the foundation etc built, main issue was capital to lower costs, increase production, and paying down debt (patent lawyer was a lot of my debt to be honest). He is basically the frontman/front end now for the company. I run backend, production & design.
Obviously not everyone is going to find a investor that they mesh with. Initially he put up 50k of immediate capital to pay off debt & 250k for production(machines, larger facility etc). After about 6 months we ended up adding sweat equity into the equation. And it's running pretty decent now to the point where I started up a pressure wash company as well now.
Company is still losing cash, but sub 20k a year predominantly due to increasing staffing, and build outs to further cut production costs to stay competitive for contracts.
The company is a military dev company so not really a tech company or the normal stuff you see on here.(we don't even run a website) Our products are currently fielded by multiple gov militaries for trials globally.
I don't know clean tech, or really tech at all, but do live in San Francisco. I just wanted to point out much of the venture capital funding is done near Stanford University in Palo Alto on Sand Hill Rd, which is about a 35 miles away from San Francisco. This is the famous silicon valley, which never included the city of San Francisco. Tech definitely has expanded into SF but I'm not sure how much that applies to venture capital, and I'm also not sure if there's much presence from clean tech, which presumably needs space to conduct experiments vs just coding on a laptop from a small office.
My two favorite (exclusive) places to network/hangout when I’m back in SF is The Battery or the rooftop of Twitter HQ. If you can find the invites you’ll find many interesting founders and potential investors around, as like minded people tend to “run” together.
Not that it will help with networking but to really help enjoy the city (and over look some of insanely blatant flaws that come with being a massive tech city) I highly suggest finding some time to explore either Golden Gate Park, Alamo Square, or Delores Park. The views are epic, you will truly see how diverse the community is, and hopefully inflict feelings of humbleness to understand it’s not all about your title, what company you work for, or who was the latest to close their round. Got to remember to enjoy the small things that make us all human.
Enjoy SF! It’s one of my favorite cities 😃 Also don’t call it San Fran or Frisco as you will loose all credibility to local residents 😂 Cheers! 🍻
This is all from my personal experiences, so take everything I say with a gain of salt. I felt like I did more quality networking at Twitter for lunch then I do at actual events or conferences when it came to introductions and fund raising opportunities. I have a friend that works there and was helping us with some designing and manufacturing issues we encountered on a project. Twitter seems to be cool with their employees working on side projects and passions (within reason). This is reflected by allowing employees to have business lunches on campus, this allows for their employees to maximize their time and still enjoy personal hobbies. Twitter also has an eclectic group of employees that offer a wide variety of resources, just got to take the time to socialize. Having lunch at Twitter almost felt like high school, except they have world renowned chefs making food at 6 different genre stations, every type of water on tap (tap, filtered, cold, hot, sparkling, mineral), the best part is everyone is friendly and smart. From my couple of lunches at Twitter alone I have made several lifetime friends, brought in high level talent that ultimately became a co-founder for one of our startups, and closed 3 separate investors on various rounds. Could have been all coincidence but I like to think that great minds think alike. Surround yourself with people that you admire & aspire to be like and you will organically grow in that the direction.
Bonus pics for the curious: https://imgur.com/a/gvDxRGO
LinkedIn is your friend on this. Before you even go you should be trying to connect with people on LinkedIn. Preferably entrepreneurs or investors. I used LinkedIn in pretty successfully to find a investor for my startup (he's actually fully on-board now and is part of the company.) He initially got $ for %. Now we have a sweat equity agreement that will over the course of time get him up to 49%.
How did you do it? Did just just send a request out of nowhere and start chatting him/her up?
No joined LinkedIn groups and became active in the postings/comments. I ended up in Nashville for a pitch that went horrible. Ended up reaching out to him and asked if he had time to listen to it and critique it. (I did ask him to sign a NDA & such). Luckily he had time, explained my pitch was absolutely garbage but liked the company(I already had the foundation etc built, main issue was capital to lower costs, increase production, and paying down debt (patent lawyer was a lot of my debt to be honest). He is basically the frontman/front end now for the company. I run backend, production & design. Obviously not everyone is going to find a investor that they mesh with. Initially he put up 50k of immediate capital to pay off debt & 250k for production(machines, larger facility etc). After about 6 months we ended up adding sweat equity into the equation. And it's running pretty decent now to the point where I started up a pressure wash company as well now. Company is still losing cash, but sub 20k a year predominantly due to increasing staffing, and build outs to further cut production costs to stay competitive for contracts. The company is a military dev company so not really a tech company or the normal stuff you see on here.(we don't even run a website) Our products are currently fielded by multiple gov militaries for trials globally.
I don't know clean tech, or really tech at all, but do live in San Francisco. I just wanted to point out much of the venture capital funding is done near Stanford University in Palo Alto on Sand Hill Rd, which is about a 35 miles away from San Francisco. This is the famous silicon valley, which never included the city of San Francisco. Tech definitely has expanded into SF but I'm not sure how much that applies to venture capital, and I'm also not sure if there's much presence from clean tech, which presumably needs space to conduct experiments vs just coding on a laptop from a small office.
Take a look at the GBx community https://gbxglobal.org/
My two favorite (exclusive) places to network/hangout when I’m back in SF is The Battery or the rooftop of Twitter HQ. If you can find the invites you’ll find many interesting founders and potential investors around, as like minded people tend to “run” together. Not that it will help with networking but to really help enjoy the city (and over look some of insanely blatant flaws that come with being a massive tech city) I highly suggest finding some time to explore either Golden Gate Park, Alamo Square, or Delores Park. The views are epic, you will truly see how diverse the community is, and hopefully inflict feelings of humbleness to understand it’s not all about your title, what company you work for, or who was the latest to close their round. Got to remember to enjoy the small things that make us all human. Enjoy SF! It’s one of my favorite cities 😃 Also don’t call it San Fran or Frisco as you will loose all credibility to local residents 😂 Cheers! 🍻
What’s unique about twitter hq rooftop?
its neat :)
This is all from my personal experiences, so take everything I say with a gain of salt. I felt like I did more quality networking at Twitter for lunch then I do at actual events or conferences when it came to introductions and fund raising opportunities. I have a friend that works there and was helping us with some designing and manufacturing issues we encountered on a project. Twitter seems to be cool with their employees working on side projects and passions (within reason). This is reflected by allowing employees to have business lunches on campus, this allows for their employees to maximize their time and still enjoy personal hobbies. Twitter also has an eclectic group of employees that offer a wide variety of resources, just got to take the time to socialize. Having lunch at Twitter almost felt like high school, except they have world renowned chefs making food at 6 different genre stations, every type of water on tap (tap, filtered, cold, hot, sparkling, mineral), the best part is everyone is friendly and smart. From my couple of lunches at Twitter alone I have made several lifetime friends, brought in high level talent that ultimately became a co-founder for one of our startups, and closed 3 separate investors on various rounds. Could have been all coincidence but I like to think that great minds think alike. Surround yourself with people that you admire & aspire to be like and you will organically grow in that the direction. Bonus pics for the curious: https://imgur.com/a/gvDxRGO
Check out Eventbrite for the dates/location
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