NYT says San Francisco is dead. What does that mean for new startup founders?
By Sibyl Chen
On my morning commute through San Francisco two weeks ago, I happened to be listening to the NYT’s The Daily podcast, and the episode “The Most Empty Downtown in America.” The episode’s focus was on San Francisco. After three years of COVID, SF is lagging behind all other U.S. cities in terms of workers returning to the office.
If you live in the Bay Area, you know exactly what I am talking about. Walking down the streets of SF, the once palpable heartbeat of the city still feels greatly diminished. If you’re a new startup founder in the Bay Area, you are most likely flying solo or have a few cofounders and are working remotely from home. What are you supposed to do so you don’t miss out on all the important networking that used to take place?
Here are 5 simple ways you can stay ahead of the game if your startup is based in an area still coming back to life:
1. Consider joining an accelerator or incubator
As a founder, even if you have deep expertise in one thing, chances are you are probably missing expertise in other essential skills important for running a successful business. At most accelerators, you can access tons of programming and workshops run by industry experts. You can join networking events designed to maximize the number of people that can be helpful to you, and you can take advantage of free resources like workspaces or other discounts or credits, such as for the software you’re likely to use.
If you’re based in the Bay Area or even outside of the Bay Area, you should consider joining one of the many great accelerators including Berkeley SkyDeck, Y Combinator, 500 Global, Techstars, Alchemist, etc. If you have a product that can benefit from very specific programming geared toward your specific industry, you might look at smaller incubators or accelerators that have advisors and investors very focused on that one industry.
When deciding between accelerators, try to figure out what type of programming they offer, how often they host networking events, who is in their advisor network, whether they offer office space, and what type of help you can expect to receive when it comes to fundraising.
2. Quickly bring on key advisers to help
If you are looking to connect with someone for a word of advice and anecdotes from their own journey, you now have to find them through very intentional means of connecting. Cold email outreach is a popular choice, but you can spend countless hours trying to connect with hundreds of people on LinkedIn or sending emails with no response. For this reason, a warm intro from a mutual connection is far more valuable.
Advisers are like a living neural network, each one acting as a node of connection. When you have that many nodes, the potential for the broadest reach is exponential. For the advisers, there is no better way for a successful tech executive to keep their finger on the pulse of many industries.
However, the impact of the connection is much greater for founders. If you are a startup founder trying to connect with a product leader from a certain business unit at a Fortune 500 company, your chances of securing a call aren’t great. Compare that with a warm introduction by an adviser who previously worked at that company or has a personal relationship with the person you want to talk to, and your chances of securing that call are much higher. Finding an adviser who really believes in your idea, sees your potential, and is deeply seasoned and knowledgeable in the industry is the most efficient way to open doors.
3. Commit to attending events or organizing them yourself
It is easy to become overly focused on building your product or customer base, but don’t lose sight of something vitally important — building up your network. If you set a goal of meeting with a certain number of people a month and set a regular cadence for yourself, you can build out a powerful network. For example, if someone wants to start working out five times a week, they have to make it a personal goal and create a schedule. Otherwise, a whole month could pass without working out once.
In committing yourself, you have a higher chance of attending productive events. Set a plan that meets your needs and works for you, whether that is two networking events a week or a month. The primary goal of attending multiple events is to find connectors. By nature, I am a connector, and probably make hundreds of introductions a year. If you find a connector that believes in what you’re working on, imagine how many more helpful intros you might be able to get!
If you’re good at organizing events yourself, then create your own opportunities to meet and connect with people. We have seen from our portfolio companies that a lot of the best investor VC intros come from friends who are already in the portfolio of a certain VC firm. If you are starting a new fundraising period, re-engage your network and catch up with people. Pull together happy hours for a couple of months and create your own events. Those in-person moments lead people to want to help you. Or, if they can’t, they are likely to contact their network for someone who can.
4. Form your own little cohort of founders and check in regularly
In the same way having workout buddies keeps you accountable to sticking to a workout routine, a cohort of fellow startup founders can be really helpful in staying motivated. The top thing founders attribute to their sense of community is having a group of people going through similar experiences.
When fundraising in the pre-seed or seed round, the average founder can easily take up to 100 VC meetings or more. It can be extremely demoralizing to hear rejection that frequently, often back-to-back no’s. After a while, it is understandable to feel discouraged, but the single most important thing to staying resilient and positive is having a tight-knit group of startup founder friends. These are people you can look to and lean on for support because everyone is in the same boat.
Having the cohort support each other in the rejection period and celebrate the successes is essential to a founder’s own well-being.
5. Find a coworking space where you will regularly come in contact with other founders
If you’re a founder, it’s a huge bonus to come in regular contact with people. Even if your founding team is 2–3 people, there is a psychological benefit to hanging out in person and getting real face time. If you are working at home you are missing out on these interactions which remind you that you are not alone. Any amount of time sitting next to someone who is working equally hard to make their own dream come true can help mitigate the loneliness and isolation that founders can feel.
Over the past few weeks, SkyDeck alumni have reached out to me in the hopes they could return and work in SkyDeck’s office, even though they have graduated and moved on. The majority of these alums now run their startups on a distributed workforce model, where team members work remotely. Because SkyDeck believes its crucial for founders to have easy access to network, founders from our accelerator program are welcome to continue using our space even after they graduate.
The Imperative of Community
The most important thing founders can do, with or without an accelerator, is be very intentional about building a community of advisers and friendly founders who can help them as they take their startup to the next level.
On the heels of nearly three years of COVID, with so many people working remotely, we have to be even more intentional about finding ways to invest in building a network — doing so can pay long-term dividends and contribute to the overall success of your startup.
Sibyl Chen is General Manager and Head of Program at Berkeley SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s premier tech accelerator. Learn more at skydeck.berkeley.edu
*Note: If you are a startup founder looking for community and camaraderie, consider applying to SkyDeck’s Batch 16 program before February 24, 2023. skydeck.berkeley.edu/apply
