Building Together: Growing San Diego’s Startup Scene
Podcast conversation (Feb 2025) among Neal Bloom, Jonah, and Hussein about rebuilding and growing San Diego’s startup ecosystem through in-person events. Guests describe grassroots event organizing (mixers, neighborhood-focused meetups), discovery pain points post‑COVID, and a local event platform (Startup Beach) that adds matchmaking and organizer tools; the episode ends with action items to seed more recurring, curated gatherings across the region.
I want to do like a solopreneur, like a pack of one meetup. Because I know there's a lot of people that are just sort of like, in their own seats. I've wanted to do this for a while since being like the. The guy in for all these big tech companies, being like, sitting there by myself, being like, cool, I'm in a co working space. This sucks. And then, you know, you start to meet other people in coworking spaces, so. But there's a lot of. I think there's a lot of people like that because I'm noticing. And what I don't know is, do I include sort of remote to HQ and SoloPreneur? Because I know there's a lot of people who are hitting me up. I don't know about you guys who are like, hey, I'm new to the city. I want to get plugged in. I just moved here because I wanted to, but I don't. I work out of wherever, so I'm not really sure, but I'm filling out. I'm filling out the platform now.
I think it's a good idea to include them because they feel like they're solo even though they have a team. Right. But they're. They're all here working on their own. I mean, that's why I started the mixer. It's because I was with Arthur doing my own thing.
Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.
You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech. You know, we got tacos and tech is on smash for the green guacamole Keep accountants counting beans Contador Quentan Frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy Wrapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times of craft beer and coffee coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing Coronado eating tacos El gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean Watch the sunset La Jolla shows entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana Estee be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach Interviewing founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Come on.
Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.
You want tech in tacos, tacos and tech, you know we got it. Hey.
Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.
You want checking tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it. Hey.
Well, welcome back, everyone, to this week in San Diego with my pack of besties here. Not just besties, but builders, builder besties. We're the builder besties of ecosystem building. So you got your startup founder who are building a company, solving the needs of individual customers with their technology. And then there's the ecosystem of founders, and there's the unique problems worth solving for the ecosystem to make it easier to build good companies for tech company founders. And so we are a group of ecosystem entrepreneurs here gathering, chatting, and so I'm stoked to have Mr. Jean Peak and Mr. Hussein Startup beach here live on the pod. Hey, guys, what's up? What up? Great day.
Love this, everyone.
It's so fun to. To have us here. We've been jamming over the last few weeks. I feel like, a little bit looser. Just like having really good conversations on various podcasts. And immediately Jonah and I were like, we got to get. We got to bring Hussein in. We got to have conversation about events and what's working, why, who, what do we need more of? And so we're just here to kind of chat through it. But, Hussein, you want to give us a quick background intro yourself?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on, guys. I'm super excited to be here on. What is it? Long time listener and first time on, I guess. But yeah, most of you know me as the host of the North County San Diego Startup Mixer. So we've got, I call it like a block party in north county. We have 200 people showing up. And then I'm also the founder of Startup beach, which is the platform that runs the mixer. And then separately, I'm also the founding product director for a digital wealth manager called OTA Finance. And I might be working on something new in the youth basketball space. Maybe we'll get into that. We'll see.
Awesome. Serial builder. That's what I know of you for sure. The art of piece came from a previous this fintech company that you built and sold, right?
Yep, yep. Yeah. So I had built a company called moneyminx, which was a way for you to track all your investments in one place. I know Neil, you and I had talked about that company quite a bit, and I think that's how we got introduced. But about three, almost four years ago now, Arta approached me and acquired the company. So my startup was acquired by a bigger startup and I'm still with the bigger startup now.
Got it. And we're doing an event in two hours together around it to introduce angel investing to an audience of financial investors, which will be really fun to do as well. I know you've tinkered on a bunch of other things as well too. We won't go too deep into that, but tell us about your experience as a founder in the ecosystem, finding other founders or what were you looking for within the community that kind of led you to running your own events?
Yeah, you know, the way it started is I, you know, as a solo founder, and then eventually when I joined Arta and I was a solo employee in San Diego, I just had this urge and need to meet other cool people working on fun things and cool things and products and building and things like that. Like, there's this energy that you get from other founders that I was craving. And I used to drive, you know, down to utc, Mission Valley, other areas to go to events, and they're all great, but there's a ton of us in north county, right. And the joke with Jonah is like, I don't leave Solana Beach. Encinitas is like my area. And I don't, I don't cross the 52 ever. But that, that's what started driving me to host an event in North County. And then what I found in north county is there's a ton of people here building really cool stuff. And that led to the mixer, which has been really fun to host and just meet more and more incredible people up here.
Can I ask you guys actually really quick about North County? Because I'm noticing, you know, as we came out of like 2022, we started to see a bunch of events come back online, you know, but if you go to some of the legacy platforms and you kind of look through, you notice a lot of sort of dead, inactive links. But I was curious. It was north county kind of sleepy before all of that, or had it had its own sort of startup ecosystem, energy events space that sort of then kind of shrank over, you know, 20 to 22, which is start to come back, because I've kind of noticed a bit of both. I mean, you're getting so many people coming to your events and then a lot of other people are now saying, hey, a lot of the events are in North County. It's about you know maybe a 60, 40, 50, 50 split. But yeah, what it was, what was it like before that? Before all, you know we all kind of took some time away the from.
What I noticed and I've lived in North county since 2014 now actually but moved from downtown and went to all events all over the community. I'm just like the San Diego Regional nomad if you will will travel for events. There's always been, I would say there wasn't like a one for one like if there was an event downtown, there wasn't like an equal version of it in North County. So there wasn't like say you know the JavaScript meetup in downtown and then there wasn't JavaScript North County. So you know there still was really like one event for whatever specific group and it happened somewhere in the county and traditionally it was not in North County. Most things most and all of them were on meetup.com by the way. But that used to be the platform where everything was. So you can go there and find some really large groups like two, 3,000 person meetup groups with no events in five, six years. But that's for another time. We'll talk about platform in a second. But yeah, I would say everything was pretty much happening in downtown to UTC and the first real flavor of a North county event was San Diego Tech Hub which started maybe in 2018. I feel like it was a very like pro Carlsbad, really like pro north county. But it, it was always rooted in Carlsbad. It was started by the head of office for Walmart Labs, Claude and Claude Jones. And he really rallied this group because I think he was completely unaware of what else was happening in the ecosystem. And he said I'm going to just gather tech builders here. And I don't think it was a startup focus at all by the way because he was kind of big tech. You know he had an office of 200 people of engineers, some longtime San Diego, some moved just for the Walmart Labs engineering office. But you had people who were rallying around the tech community of north county if you will. And that was the hit that I saw in north county. You'd have pop ups of startup grind Carlsbad that would kind of come and go for like a few events and then disappear but nothing else. I was seeing pre Covid in North county consistently and then everyone moved physically north. I feel like everyone or not everyone, a lot of people moved during COVID to just get space and to I Feel like I call it like kind of grew up like everyone either got married or decided to start to have kids or just I don't know just ever move north to the suburbs probably is really, you know is really what kind of happened. And I feel like now also we used to drive further for events go to more events volume wise pre Covid and now we are selective and we only go to ones that are closer to us as well too. So I think proximity has become even more important now because people won't drive as far and are only picking a few events per week to go to even if maybe a few events per month. But that's my perception. Love your guys.
Thoughts Feedbacks yeah, I agree with all of that. I would add two things is I think having example events that are working in north county has made it with our others are now saying I can just host my event in North County. I don't need to go downtown or to Mission Valley. And then the other thing is discovery. Right. So I think a lot of people didn't know where to go look for events or find events. So shout out to the the social coyote to help let us know where all of the events are. There used to be websites and things like that where you can go look for events but it wasn't ever properly curated. And so I think between finding examples of working events in north county it's encouraging others to host more and just knowing that events exist.
Yeah, well I think that makes sense. I'd be curious I don't know if because related to your event it's kind of like it's so you know simple is the wrong word but it's like casual. You know some people put a lot of effort into programming and there's a lot, you know you have to host a lot of stuff but you kind of went the other way with it which is like let's make it not that intense. Let's make it more casual. Let's get people kind of in here and actually discourage sort of pitching and selling. And I'd wonder if if seeing success from sort of a an event that doesn't take a ton. I'm sure there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes but it feels it doesn't. You know, you make it seem pretty seamless would encourage other people to say wait, if we can just get some people at a bar and get some rhythm then we could actually grow this thing pretty. Pretty great. Because I remember that first photo you posted was. Was pretty cool. You know, I was like counting the people. Now it's. I can't even get a photo of the whole room. Right. So I would imagine that has to help. But you know, you probably put a lot more into behind the scenes than we realize, but that's got to help a lot.
Yeah, I think just let's take it a different way a little bit because discovery was a really interesting one and I feel like meetup was a bit of its own. Platform of Discovery. The early days of Fresh Brew Tech newsletter that came out in 2018, we tried to do a summary of events. We were not comprehensive. We were just like, here's some events we're seeing. And we would put it out and we. That kind of dropped during COVID you know. And so I stoked to see the unbundling of that newsletter where we have a whole newsletter just about events. Because we were in early days of Fresh Brew Tech newsletter. We would put out who got funded this week, who got acquired, who's hiring. Like, we were just picking through a selection of five, five things of every little bucket. And I happy to see people take and run with very specific pieces. And I feel like honestly, Covid was this big reset for a lot of things from ecosystem, founders, brand new people in community and being like, how do I get connected even from where they're coming from? Actually, like pre Covid, I say people came from Midwest. Post Covid, people come from the coasts now, which is something interesting I've been tracking. And there's no like welcoming like you're new to town. Here's what you need to do, here's what you need to see. But we're starting to get there. So like Jonah wrote this post. Here's everything you need to know to get connected as quickly as possible. You know, Hussein's got the platform that is like, here are all the events that if you went to one, find more in that regard. And then you're like, oh, there's one or two events and then you go to the social, you're like, oh, here are the grand list of everything in that regard. So let's take it from that angle. Like, what do you think the community and founder has needed in looking for that has led to each of you building what you're thinking, building what you're like. Was it personal need like Joan, where you. You were already plugged in the community? What, what was the real genesis of being like, I need to curate, like, who's coming to you asking for that? Or was it a personal pitch or scratch to build that?
It's Kind of a combo of things. Actually, this really good question. I was writing this up the other day because I keep. I, you know, when. When I get invited to coffee, everyone's like, what's the origin story of the coyote? And I was like, great, I'm just going to burn 15 minutes of this time to tell you my story and talk about myself. I was like, I can't do that anymore. So I started to actually write this out. But it was, you know, it was a number of things. It was kind of like you had said a. There's, you know, six or eight places you'd have to look and you'd have to want to do that. But really what you had to do was get lucky, you know, and happen to see, you know, most likely your post, Neil, where you throw some on LinkedIn. I'd hope that the algorithm served it to me, and I saw it in the right time to add it to my calendar. And so there's this, you know, so much randomness and sort of luck to seeing the right stuff, which I found pretty frustrating because what ultimately happened was, you know, when, like, the final straw happened, when someone was just like, hey, you going to the thing tonight? I was like, I didn't hear about it. I can't obviously, just, like, go and leave that. You know, that kind of annoyed me to the point of saying, all right, this is stupid. I'm just going to start to spreadsheet out some stuff just for my own sake to. To know where things are. And then that kind of leads to, all right, well, you know, if we can, if we have enough people that we trust that are putting good things out, we don't actually have to go to every event to. To validate it as being pretty good. If you guys host an event, I know that already. And so, you know, let's just sort of help people get out and into these rooms. But the main thing I was realizing is when. When I got myself into a room, you know, people were really open and willing to make a connection and actually intro you to someone else. And so part of the genesis was like, well, you just need to get yourself into spaces, and then you'll be able to make the connections that you need to help yourself. I didn't want to necessarily be the one saying, meet this person or that. It's like, help yourself, but start here, get into these places. And that was really the ultimate genesis. You know, multiple different pieces coming together, frustration, saying, this is everywhere. And there's actually this huge opportunity that you can, you know, you can meet a ton of people if you just get out into a space that's actually of good quality. So that was kind of the main thing.
You bring up a great point in kind of the way that people get networked, you know, one, and you're doing some great content on this, Jonah, of like how to make the most of your time when you're networking with someone. Usually there's a goal. You know, when you meet someone for coffee, potentially it's like, can you help me with blank? And it may be. Can be connected to the ecosystem or who should I meet here? Or it may be I need an intro to. For talent or funding or something as well. And then there's usually like a give and take. And then the other person's like, and can you help me with this? But doing that serially, one for one, like, who should I meet next and who should I meet next as opposed to going to an event and meeting, you know, Maybe. Maybe having five to six, like deep conversations and then maybe 10, just like casual like, saw you next time we'll chat kind of thing. So speeds up so much more in that regard. Which probably leads to a bit of like, Hussein, why you built your own platform. Because it's not just. There actually is some science to just showing up in a room and hoping that you run into the right person there as well too. There's a little bit of one what Jonah's writing about, which is know what, what the point of you being in that room is for and be open to other people, having different reasons to be in the room and meeting, but then also knowing a bit of like, who should I meet? And you know, the matching piece, I'll leave to that. So why did you build your own platform when there's so many event platforms out there already?
Yeah, you know, it's. It's one of these things that hold me along versus, like, you know, usually in a startup you're pushing it uphill. For me, the, the reason I started the mixer, other than I just wanted to meet cool people. And the way I organized it is how do I make it seem as simple as possible. And the vibe of the event is about neighborly connections. Right. So my whole thesis was post Covid. Everybody's tired of zoom. Everybody wants to go meet more people and talk to them in person. But you go to a networking event and it feels very businessy. And so I went for the vibe of no, come meet some people. And oh, by the way, they're. They're all professionals and startup Founders and accomplished and all of that, but. But at the same time too, they're also your neighbor, right? And that was the key that I used to push on is just come be human, be normal, be a good neighbor and meet your neighbors, and then business will come out of it, right? If you're looking for leads or for clients or for whatever. And a lot of these connections end up happening at the, at the mixer. But the way the platform cateran was when it was 10 people at the mixer, you know, and not to, you know, I took that from you where when somebody would walk into the mixer, I would go get him from the door, greet them, and then go introduce them to somebody. So I made a connection for each person individually. And it worked at 10 people, it worked at 20 people. And as it grew, I just couldn't do it manually anymore. And then I started getting people that I didn't know. So I needed people's profiles to even be able to match them up. So I had folks fill up a spreadsheet like a Google sheet before the event with their information, and I would match them manually. Eventually I wrote a algorithm to do the matching on top of the spreadsheet. But then what started happening was you had a ticketing platform, you had a profile on a spreadsheet. And then I had my little algorithm on the side and trying to manage all of this stuff, and it just got out of hand. And so as we started growing, I figured, let me put it all in one platform, which is how Startup beach was born. But the beginning of Startup beach was really just to manage my own mixer. And then people started reaching out, going, well, I'm hosting events. Can I use Startup Beach? Because I want to use the matchmaking? Because that's kind of the key, right? It's this whole matchmaking algorithm. So I opened it up and it's kind of the rest is history from there, right? Like at this point, I think we're close to 2,000 users on startup beach and they're all San Diego community members, right? There's 30 people hosting events. I believe we're about to get close to our 100th event on startup Beach. And then. But the key that I really like the metric that I look at the most is how many connections we've made. And so there's been close to 2000 matches now being done. And it's all within the community, right? And so all of these things together, there just wasn't. There wasn't any platform doing this stuff yet, especially in San Diego.
Wait, wait, how close to a thousand or how or a hundred events? Because I actually have one that I need to click publish on. And if I'm that I'm gonna be 100.
You want to be the hundredth? Yeah, I think. I think we're at 93 or 94. I got a lot. We're very close.
Yeah, I'll have to do a couple anyway.
Sorry.
That's awesome. I love that. You know, it's funny, I do remember the spreadsheet because I used to go through and click through all the people, which was really cool. Cause it's like you'd have, you know, a bunch that, you know, and then you're like, oh, cool. Who's this person? This person I thought was really interesting that that was. I had totally forgotten that that was sort of along the process to get to here.
Yeah, yeah, that was the beginning. Google Docs, man.
And then I feel like me on slack picking you saying, being like, what about this? How do we do this thing at this event? And you like, seemingly an hour later be like, okay, I created a matching algorithm or what are the fields we need to that make the perfect match? Like you one. I just love, like jamming on product ideas around this. So thank you for being a personal product leader for an event platform. Technically, that part just the iteration of realizing, yeah. Prioritizing features versus needs and building this.
Well, that's the fun part of building it for a community, right? So you send me a lot of feedback. Jonah in the beginning used to send me feedback. Ohad from new funds sends me feedback. Bill Byrne, right, sends me feedback. Like a ton of people using the platform, which are now like, we're all friends, we're all neighbors, we all know each other, we're all in this together. Send me feedback. Now my day job is in product and in product development and all that. So there's a lot of curating. What are good ideas, what are bad ideas, what's actually going to make a difference. And where it's becoming challenging now is as it grows, I can't just implement every single feature everybody wants because there might be something you want that somebody else is going to go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like, why are you doing this? But it's fun when you're building it for a community and then the community is engaged in it. Right?
Yeah, I've loved seeing the features pop up. You ping me now being like, hey, I added this thing. I'm like, oh, it's cool that someone else felt that they needed that. And I'll use it. I didn't even think to use Agenda right as a feature. And then I come to be like, wait, how does it not exist that I can't, you know, add two different kinds of tickets or I don't know. It's funny just as an event organizer who's. I'm living between five, probably five different platforms at any given moment. Like if I have a client that specifically is like we're on Luma, I gotta use Luma though. Secret hack. I'm telling people now if you're an event organizer, might be better, might be good to post on multiple platforms because of discovery. So I'm a multiple platform hoster now at this point. Eventbrite, Luma and Startup beach because you never know where you're going to get some inbound and push people to eventually if it's a recurring event, push them to the platform of choice, Startup Beach. But for first event discovery, I'm for trying a few anyway. It's just fun sharing and being on so many different platforms being like, hey, this is how this works and this is how this is working and you're so on it in terms of prioritizing and building. So thank you for that.
Well, I mean clear clearly though, there's like a, there is a need for what you're making. There's clearly a shift in the ecosystem because like you said, you know, before it was, I think it was said he was largely Eventbrite or was it meetup? No, you said meet up right now if you actually start to scroll through some of these pages, people want to own their list. They can't. And so a lot of those events that you're seeing there are here's my event. But if you actually wanted to join it, here's my like startup is your Luma link below that. And so people are actually, you know, trying to pull content out and actually own their lists a little bit more. And I, I think that's, you know, it's got to be an advantage for, for what you're building and you can kind of tell that, that we're not, you know, the, the ecosystem, the event hosting ecosystem is moving which is actually got to be a really cool place to play.
Yeah, yeah. The own. Your list is a big driver too, right. So a lot of people have newsletters on Beehive because you get their email addresses and you can control your, your faith as a content creator. Right. Versus if you are on social and you just don't have access to these people. And so with the, on the Event side, it's very similar. Right. Do you host an event on Startup Beach? And I know Luma does the same too. Right? You have access to all the email addresses of everybody that went there. It's not like it's. I know for Meetup as an example, you can't get access to that kind of information. It's your info. Same thing with when I launched the. The ad network to help hosts monetize a little bit. Like the hosts get the majority of the revenue, not us versus if you host on Eventbrite, they're putting ads on your platform, but you see no. No money out of that. That income. Right. That revenue.
I loved seeing the. The ad part come in and be like, yes, you are testing monetization from your own platform. I love the business model test that you're trying to do because you're trying to build this into a startup. Do you think this is something, I mean, is not just a passion project anymore, it's starting to become something for you?
You know, it is. It's also taking a lot more time than it used to, but it's been fun. Right? Because it's building something that I needed that now the community that I love and I'm part of also wants and needs. So it makes it where, you know, it doesn't feel like work, like it feels like a passion project even though it's turning into a real thing.
What are you tell us a little bit more like customer development wise. Like what are. Besides just people like us writing you, where are you seeing the need for more and take it. Maybe that takes us into like what do you think the ecosystem needs and who's your customer? Do you think that you're. You're solving for here?
Yeah. Yeah. So the big thing right now has been I would say people that are hosting small gatherings, small get togethers, people that have thought about doing it but never did it. Startup beach is a very easy entry point right between the. If you host your event on Startup beach, you automatically add it to our weekly newsletter of here's all the events on the platform. And then 99% of the time I send them over to Jonah too. So they're in the social coyote. So if you're new, you don't even have to worry about distribution anymore because the community is becoming so strong. So between the two of us, we'll help make sure you have people there. Where Startup beach itself is starting to grow is going to bigger organizations that are looking for powerful tools, but that are still simple to use. Right? So the next big thing I would say for Startup beach is multi day conferences with different locations and things like that. Right. So that's a pretty hefty build that I'm working through. But the idea is how do you keep it as simple as what startup each is even though in the back end we have the matching algorithm. You've got all these people, you've got ticketing, pricing, discounts, coupons like it keeps going and allow people to do multi, multi day events using it. Right.
Super interesting. Need to connect you to founder of lend who's built a multiple multitude of event tech products specifically around like festivals and, and, and conferences and even now has hyper focused into just speaker management of conferences for internally for companies. So it's called. That's the name of the product. Anyway, I'll connect you to chat about that. San Diego founder. Yeah, what let's go into a little bit like related to this. What do we think the needs of the ecosystem are from a. And let's we should all make sure we're on the same page of is the North Star the founder of tech companies here and then ecosystem is here to support that and we as event organizers and curators of events are using events as a tactic to help the ecosystem connect and therefore speed up company building. Are you guys, how do you feel even about that? I'm just, I don't want to speak for you guys. Is that, are we on North Star there?
Jonah, do you want to go first?
I think for the most part it is but I'm also seeing like people, I'm seeing people kind of use this and bleed bleeding in maybe the wrong word as some of the leisure time too to say hey, look like I want to, I want to build a network of people that helps me be more connected to people in my city. Actually I was just chatting with someone on the side who was saying something to that effect. He was like I don't think they're. They're founding or building but they're realizing that everything isn't about selling the next client. It's about realizing how many smart people are in the city and the more, you know, kind of the more connected and more, more sort of powerful maybe wrong word you can be in an ecosystem. But I mean to the same point the bigger and the stronger the tech companies that are here build, you know, the more people we're going to be pulling in, the more people are going to employ. So you know I do agree that that's kind of the one of the main North Stars But I think there's a lot of benefits in sort of the, the orbit of having more, more of these events, more of these sort of a founder focus type of connections. But, but I think there's a kind of a variety like you're saying, because you know, your, your event who say does help founders in a different way than an event that maybe is sort of pitch focused or an event that sort of mingles and matches founders with investors, which is maybe a little bit more, you know, you'd have to be a little bit more sharp. Let's just say if you're, you know, you're pitching your fan, you're, you're with, you know, investors, let's just say. So I think, I think it's really important to have kind of a variety of different sort of levels of intensity. Again, not choosing good words today, but sort of like the, the casual. Let me, let me just like tell 15, 20 people what I actually do. What's my one liner? Let me just be atrociously bad at that until the end where I'm actually pretty good at it. And so then you can kind of ramp your way up as you progress to other places where you actually have a little more skin in the game when you actually need to tell the right person what you do. So I kind of see that it's important to have a variety like this. I don't know, was that kind of working towards what you're, you're asking, Neil? I kind of am maybe looking at it from a slightly different angle.
No, no, I actually really value that. I think I almost kind of maybe just made some assumptions and jump ahead that people maybe already assume they know that they need to network. And what you're saying is. No, actually there's some basic principles here that people just don't even necessarily know the powers of meeting other people, but are looking for connection and events can help show them that great. Come out and be comfortable in a safe space and then look what else could happen. But not assume that if you're going to an all founder event, you're going to hopefully meet you like hopefully expect some big outcome like hard in the sand. I actually kind of like the basics approach there and it might as well make sure we're talking about that so that we're on the same page saying here is the value of actually showing up in person. Let's just say that and then let each person be curious. Curious enough to say, but what else? Or, and what else? You know, I'm showing up and what could come from that, or how should I best do it? And so I think it's great to hear that from you.
You touched on a really important point when you said curiosity. Because I think going. You can go to an event or series of events looking for something, or you can go with the mindset of looking to help someone. And I tend to find that if you put a lot more of that out there, of saying, okay, well, you, you, like you just said you should, you know, Hussein, you should meet Chris. It's like doing tons of that actually is really important. And. And having that mindset, I think is really much more helpful than going into an event to say, how quickly can I tell you what I do? Because then it makes this whole thing more tense and it doesn't feel natural and you're not actually building a correct connection. So I don't know. I think that's. That's one of the things I'm trying to kind of help people with, to say, how do we. How do we skip just saying, what do you do? And let me tell you about my startup. And I do see a lot of that, but I think, you know, there's a. There's a lot of other ways to approach it, and I think they might not be as quick, but I think they're far more effective.
Yeah. And I think this is where you. We're talking about the North Star, right? So community builders, we can help with these. Call them like curated connections, right? Like helping people connect and meet and all of that, so that when they go to events, don't worry about starting to pitch very quickly. We will help you figure out who you should meet. And then that way you can build the relationship so that when you do need something from that person or you want to pitch them or whatever, you already built a relationship, right? It's a much easier conversation to have on, you know, even if I take Startup beach as an example, right? Like, if I want to pitch somebody to move from Durb, from Luma, Eventbrite, Meetup, etc to Startup beach and I don't know them, then it feels like a sales pitch. But if I know the person, like Jonah, when he did his first social, I think it was a coyote coffee, right? Like, that wasn't a sales pitch, even though it was right, but it was like, hey, man, I just opened up the door for new. For new hosts. Do you want to be first? Can you launch your first event? Right? So technically, yes, you could say that was a sales pitch, but it wasn't because we are friends. We're helping each other and I. And he was my first non me host on Startup Beach. Right. And so we can help with the curated connections and then you as an attendee and as a guest, you build the relationship and then you can get into sales pitching, but it's not going to feel at the sales pitch anymore.
Those are really good, good points.
It's kind of grounding me, to be honest. Like, I feel like. Because my first embrace into the Santa community was. I think I showed up the first time was during the first Startup Week in person. And there's like 10 events that happened over like 24 hours. And then the next thing I did was be in a physical incubator with 40 other companies. So about 80 people. Like, I was run. I was just thrown into a networking event for like three straight years that didn't stop that Random came in and curated and, and like it sped up the networking process, but also just got me ingrained. Like, this is how, this is how it works. And I, I think we're actually in this big reset post Covid remote work which has slowed that all down. And I think we've actually all, not all, maybe me even have lost, I don't know, a little bit of like the, the urgency to meet others in the same way where it just was handed to you, or we've taken it for granted that it used to happen more in person, both random and curated, and now we have to actually seek it out and be like, should I do this? It's a choice. And it's easy to choose not to when it's a busy world and we are standing here just working in front of our screens. I don't know, I'm just being reflective. Just hearing from you guys.
I think, I think it's a really good point. I mean, I think the thing, the thing that you have to sort of separate is, is this a chore or work? Like you said, Hussein, how do you turn it into like the pleasurable. How do I. How do I tell you about my idea? And you naturally want to say, yeah, let's team up. It's kind of like how do you manufacture being naturally curious about something? And I think if you feel like you're forcing yourself to go to something because you should. It's. It's probably, it's usually ends up being pretty good, but it's probably not the right decision as, oh, you know what my people are, I don't know, indie hackers, for example. You know, I'm gonna go to that thing every Month. And then you start to recognize spaces, you start to understand things that, that, you know, example I've talked about a little bit turns out to be, hey, I use this AI tool to solve this problem and then I am actually better at by applying their solutions. And no one's really selling anything but finding a way to be, you know, naturally curious and getting out there and kind of doing it in, in sort of your own way using those, you know, that lens I think is incredibly helpful because it can be so difficult to just walk into a room and be like, great, like, you know, I just got to go pitch a bunch of people. It's like, no, you should ask a bunch of people a question and see what they're up to. See, see, you know, not necessarily even like walk in and say, how can I help you? Just say, hey, that's pretty cool. Can you tell me more? It's almost like saying less is actually going to get you further, which is really counterintuitive. But yeah, I love that point.
You know, I, before the mixers, I usually get notes from people on LinkedIn and they'll say, how do I get the most out of the mixer? And I usually respond with be normal. Like just go be a human being and remember these are your neighbors and magic will come out of it. Just don't worry about it. Just go be normal and meet people. And like Jonah is saying, ask questions, right? Talk to people. Don't go into pitching mode very quickly.
It's cool to hear that people reach out and ask. I appreciate that they are doing that. We're, I mean, we probably need to wrap up here soon, but we're, we're, where do you see us going? Like how. And should we be speeding up things? Should we be trying to think exponential in kind of growth or linear? And maybe you guys can take this in different way if you want. What's the magic wand? Where are we as an ecosystem in a few years and how do we reverse engineer that?
So from my end, I think we need to double down on these curated connections and then have more in person meetings and things like that. Now this is a little self serving. Obviously everybody should host their own event. But the idea is don't, you know, if you want to build a community, we all need to participate in building the community and growing together. And there's enough people in San Diego looking for different types of events that, you know, we can all help each other grow our little community within the big community. And I think as that grows and as more and more People show up to events in person. We'll grow these connections. And so I'll give an example. I have a friend who launched a, or started an event about sports tech. Right. And same thing. So he hosted it, got a ton of people there and now he's becoming the sports tech guy in San Diego and he's hosting more sports tech events. And so he's meeting everybody that's in the sports sector. It's creating a little ecosystem within the big ecosystem that is San Diego. And so to answer your last questions on reverse engineering it, I think the next big thing that I'd like to focus on is this idea of asks and offers. Right. It's been done before, but I don't know that it's been done within our community yet. Where you're part of the startup beach community, you're part of the San Diego startup community, you're looking for something or you're looking for a co founder or you need something or you need a tester, like whatever it is. How do we help people that have those kinds of needs find people that are looking to fulfill those needs? Right. And, and that, that's like curated connections 2.0, I guess. Yeah.
I mean, to your, to your point too. I mean, if you don't tell people about your needs, like no one's going to know about them or be able to help you. So that's part of the reason to, to kind of go out a bit more. I would say kind of one of the drawbacks I, I think about a lot is one of the drawbacks of the, the social coyotes. It looks like there's a lot going on all the time and there is, but I think what we forget is the city is really big and like neon touched on in the beginning. It's like the North County Founders Mixer is in North County. You know, it's like I drive for an hour sometimes in traffic to get there. Would be so cool to have one in the south. So the point is that it may feel like we have some form of density here and we do and we're getting there and it seems like there's a lot more stuff happening than when, you know, I started doing this almost two years ago, but that doesn't mean that we're anywhere near the point where we actually have enough stuff going on. So I think what I try to recommend to people because, you know, this often comes up, hey, I can't find the CPG meetup or I'm Ms. I'm, I'm missing this group of People, it's like, great. Talk to Saint. Start it, get it going. It's going to take a couple times and then you'll get a, a group of people there. And it doesn't have to be massive. And we're not trying to necessarily. We don't need to have 100 people, but if you can get five people in a group, if you can get under 10, you can get 15 there, there's going to have a lot of impact and you're going to start to meet people. And what we forget is, you know, it's like, Hussein, you might not be the perfect match for me, but guess what? Your cousin knows exactly what, how to solve my problem. And so I think just kind of getting people together, we actually get this really interesting sort of chain lightning style effect where you can kind of navigate through. And now I know that you're looking for more people that want to have kind of an enterprise event on your platform. It's cool. All right, now I know you can do that. I'll actually start to think about that when I run across that, that problem. But it's more like there's so much room for so much more and it doesn't always have to be public and it can be behind the scenes. And you know, we're doing, we're just pulling together just bootstrapper founders who've raised a good amount. We're just going to put an event together like that because we think it's cool and we haven't seen one. And so we're just going to do it. And so I think a lot more people could. Should just do it and, and not. And realize that it doesn't. You don't need to put a lot of effort into getting a bunch of people together. You sure can, and you could, you could go crazy, but it's not required. So just, I think with the more stuff we can get, get organized, really the better for all of us in the city.
You're here. Yeah. I love seeing more people start, you know, an event. I'm always looking for kind of event co founders, if you will, that I can start it and then they can take it and run with. Run with it. A good story of that is actually the 4S tech meetup that started. He was actually a client of mine at my first, my first or second startup way back in the day, Jed. And he's like, hey, I live in 4s. All the events are really far. How do we do an event here? I'm like, how do you do an event here? He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well if you build it, they will come. Just pick a day and say you're going to be here. And I think it's like 18 months or 24 months now and he has officially moved over I think to start a beach as well. So yeah, I love the empowerment you gave there of just like do the thing and listen to your customer. You know in that regard I'm really interested personally. I'm thinking a lot about the scale aspect, like how could we be writing the playbook so that when someone says how do I do it? We say here's some existing event organizers who are doing it well, here are some things that they do consistently that think about scroll through. It doesn't mean you have to do this, but we could be sharing some common learnings through a playbook. So I'd love to collaborate with you guys on that and then also maybe do a little bit of like a, a map of what exists and what doesn't exist, like where are some gaps around events and communities. And so for me personally I'm starting to see a lot of great like general networking or even like curated in networking, you know, geo based and I'm starting to think a little bit more around. I already do a lot of private curated events like 10 people round table for retail tech. Next week I'm starting to think about maybe more around some content that may be missing because I actually see that starting to lack like some thought leadership around what is a startup and how do you find a co founder and how, how do you know if you're ready for venture capital? I actually don't see a lot of that content around an event format at all. Maybe you guys are. So for me I want to do a little bit of like a pulse check of what kind of content's missing and see, not saying I want to do it all, just saying let's see what's missing and where and then maybe do a call for community saying hey we don't see these things happening. Who wants to like raise their hand and do this thing? And in fact someone reached out said hey, I don't see one million cups happening in San Diego. I'd love to do it. But yes, like you noticed that it works in other cities. You notice that we used to have it here and you want to plug in and do one million cups which is a six minute pitch practice event where the community gives you feedback on your six minute pitch. So those are areas that are piquing my interest this year as well as physical gatherings of building alongside each other. So I'm calling them Builder Days. I'm not stuck on a name yet, not even stuck on the point on how and what the day looks like. But we're going to test our first Founder Build day, if you will, and it will morph from there based on your guys's feedback, but on location content or maybe we don't want any content. So anyway, those are some themes and areas that I'm interested in the short.
Term on, working on.
So many thoughts. So many thoughts. I don't want to. We'll save for next time.
Yeah, I think this is going to be an ongoing ecosystem. Builders bestie chat.
You know, I love it. The one thing I would leave anybody who wants to get out and do an event is just be consistent. You have to be consistent so the people know you're there. We saw that with yours, Hussein, where it grew and grew and grew and we're seeing that with a number of others. But I also see a lot where it's once every one, three, four months. And it's just really hard to build a community around that. So if you're going to do something, we'll help you. Just, just try to be, be consistent with that. But yeah, I like what you're saying. We should just.
Again, we should.
We need to do more silent disco more often. That was so fun.
That was a lot of fun.
Tech the halls. Once a year just doesn't feel like it's enough. So if people have ideas of how to do tech the halls, I mean, yeah, it could be a quarterly dance party. I don't know. Give me, give us feedback in the comments if you would like to come out and dance.
So we have a action item because we should leave every podcast in action item. Let's like the three of us, anyone can participate, but let's get a list of things that we think would be cool in the city and then we can see if people want to jump in and host them. I think, I think you could do anything from we need a version of this in the north or the South. I think we need. You could do anything from the events with the speakers and the content you're talking about. But I think if we get, you know, if we start to lay that out, I think we can get a ton more going on and I'm always happy to help.
Awesome. Great rallying call. Great that you both want to jump on and do this again. So we will see anytime you guys, on the next this week in San Diego. Ecosystem builders chat here. Thanks, guys. I will see you all in person very shortly here.
Awesome. Take care, guys.
All right, see you guys.
Startups get the party Startups get the party started, get the party. Startups get the party started.
You want tech in the tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keep accountants counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a craft beer and coffee my coating yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana estee be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach. Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon. Hashtag SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.
Startups get the party, Startups get the party started. Startups get the party, Startups get the party started. Startups get the party, Startups get the party started.
You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it, hey.
Startups get the party, Startups get the party, startup started. Startups get the party, Startups get the party started. Startups get the party, Startups get the party started.
You want tech and tacos, Tacos in tech, you know we got it, hey.
