The Bay area is a jungle of events and networking opportunities. If you’re new, or visiting, to Silicon Valley and the Bay area, I’ve made a list of my top resources for finding events and where to meet interesting people.
- Startup Digest
Every week they send out a curated list of events for the coming weeks. This is my go-to for planning what events I’ll attend. - Corporate events: Orrick has high-quality events, usually free, and with speakers from top companies. Other good resources are AWS Pop-up Lofts and The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center If you’re interested in a specific company, make sure you sign up for newsletters and follow them in social media.
- Office spaces, incubators and accelerators such as WeWork , RocketSpace and Runway
- National hubs and accelerators, such as Nordic Innovation House and German Accelerator . Lots of countries have their own hubs.
- Networks: VLAB , Girls in tech , Bootstrap Labs , Founders Network (membership based) , StartupSocials , CoInvent
- Be active in online communities: Quibb , ProductHunt
This should give you a kickstart, and you’ll find it easy to continue building your network and find great events when you get started. New to networking, or an introvert? Check out my tips on how to network as an introvert. Let me know if you have anything to add to this list!
The photo is from a networking event at Nordic Innovation House in Palo Alto, fall 2014.
