In this vlog, the creator recounts a challenging investor meeting that delivered tough‑love feedback on Jellybean, a discovery‑platform startup, prompting a need to rethink the product’s value proposition beyond existing social media channels. He then attends a Hackers & Founders meetup in the Bay Area, where co‑organizer Torrence explains the community’s bi‑weekly events, its presence in 88 cities, and a network of roughly 150,000 participants. The host discusses the advantages of organizing a local meetup, such as becoming a central hub in the startup ecosystem and gaining global organizer connections. The vlogger reflects on the day’s turnaround—from a rough start to a productive networking experience—and outlines upcoming engagements: a video‑project planning session with Anders for Startup Travels and a conversation with an Apple worldwide operations manager. The vlog ends with a promise to keep viewers updated on future developments.
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So I just got out of a meeting with the investor, and it was real— it was tough love, man. He gave me like really constructive feedback on what would Jellybean do in terms of the discovery platform itself. And yeah, I need— we definitely need to rethink What would we definitely rethink? A game plan that would make sense for people to actually come to Jellybean, and why would people actually want to use it besides Facebook and how— besides YouTube, I mean, and Vimeo and Vine and all this platform. And yeah, it's a lot of I need to do a lot of thinking and understand how do we actually bring value to you, to our users and you people. So yeah, it's a lot of thinking that I need to do past this few days. And yeah, I will definitely catch up with you guys and I'm actually going for another event tonight and we'll see how that goes. To show you guys the AT&T Park, uh, I think it's mainly— it's baseball, football, I think. I don't know, but looks really nice. Hey, it's huge, so big. I'm actually on my way to the Hackers and Founders event, and I'm actually looking forward to meet like-minded entrepreneurs and hackers. And yeah, we'll just see what happens tonight, but I'll definitely keep— I'll definitely update you guys tonight on day 6. Guys, right now I'm at a Hackers and Founders event, and Joining me is Torrence, and he's going to tell you more about what Hackers and Founders is all about.
Hi everyone, I am Torrence, and I work— I help Hackers and Founders organize events in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley. And so we hold events once every 2 weeks, pretty much in all the different cities. And the point of these events is for someone like you, if you're working on a startup or you're interested in learning more about startups and meeting with technical people, you can come to one of our events and you can meet with, you know, people around you who are all working on their own projects and are just looking to talk about what they're working on and getting ideas and feedback from what you're working on and what they're working on. It's a great way for people to get networked, meet each other, and, um, you know, build out their network as they kind of continue to grow their company. And the best way to kind of really help you, you know, learn how to solve really difficult problems is by talking about those problems with somebody else. And so after 8 years, Hackers and Founders is now actually in 88 cities around the world, and, um, and there's about 150,000 people who attend about 50, 60 events almost every week.
I don't think we are, I don't think we are in Kuala Lumpur, right?
I don't think so. Yeah, there's no meetup in Kuala Lumpur yet, so we're looking. If you're interested in hosting a meetup, you know, feel free. One of the benefits is that if you're working on a startup and you host an Hackers and Founders meetup, you will essentially become the most connected person and the hub in your local community on startup ecosystem, and you'll pretty much know most of the people in your ecosystem and start being able to connect them with people outside of your ecosystem. And so when you become an organizer, you get connected to all the organizers around the globe and get resources and feedback and ideas from all the people looking to do the same thing as you.
So there you heard it from Torrence, and yeah, if you guys are ever coming down to San Francisco or the Bay Area, do check out Hackers and Founders, or just go to meetup.com and sign up on Hackers and Founders. Okay guys, so this The end of day 6, and I think today is kind of like a good— well, it started off pretty bad, but it became good. I'm vlogging, dude.
I know, I didn't say anything.
Don't give me that look. Well, um, yeah, as I was saying, like, today Started off bad, but I went to the Hackers and Founders event and yeah, met a lot of people and it was actually really good. Like, what was bad was because it was technically tough love from the investor that I met and like, he really put into perspective of what Jellybean what I should really focus on doing with Jellybean because the prototype isn't really exactly a product yet. So I have to actually make it into a product where people are actually signing up and people are actually using it and getting feedback and trying to get the community to actually come together and just do really awesome stuff. So yeah, that's, um, that's what, uh, happened like this morning. And then fast forward, I went to the Hackers and Founders event and I met like a lot of people. And like you just saw Torrence, he's the co-organizer of Hackers and Founders. So yeah, if you guys ever do come down to San Francisco, you can actually check out, um, Hackers and Founders. Or you can go to Mountain View and check out hackers and founders in the Hacker Dojo. They are always available there as well. So yeah, I mean, um, they are really good, uh, really solid good people there, like just listening, giving feedback, and just meeting different people around. So Yeah, that is day 6, and tomorrow I'll be— tomorrow actually I'm technically free, but I need to meet like 2 other different people. I'm working with Anders tomorrow to figure out like the direction of the video project that he wants to do for Startup Travels, so that would be cool. And I'm actually meeting a, um, a person I met on We— She's a, um, she's a worldwide operations, worldwide operations manager or something from Apple. So I don't know, that would be pretty cool to actually hear the side of the story on what on the job that she deals with at Apple. So yeah, we'll just see what happens tomorrow. I'll keep you guys posted. See ya!
