Networking in San Diego

Networking in San Diego Feels Different

When I moved from the Bay Area to San Diego, one of the things I noticed pretty quickly was how different networking felt.

I had spent a lot of time going to events in the Bay Area, both for work and for myself. When I moved to San Diego, I started doing the same thing. I went to startup events, hardware meetups and other local gatherings because I wanted to meet people and understand what was happening here.

The events weren’t necessarily that different. You still had founders, engineers, investors and people working around startups in the same room.

But the conversations felt different.

My experience in the Bay Area

In the Bay Area, I often felt like people wanted to understand what you were working on pretty quickly.

What do you do? What company are you with? What are you building? Who are your customers? Are you raising?

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Actually, I learned a lot from being in that environment. People are ambitious, there are a lot of interesting companies and you can meet someone working on almost anything.

It also means conversations can move very quickly. Sometimes within the first few minutes, you both have a pretty good idea of whether there is a professional reason to keep talking.

Of course, this wasn’t every person or every event I went to. But it was something I noticed often enough that moving to San Diego made the difference more obvious to me.

San Diego felt more casual

When I started going to events in San Diego, I noticed that conversations tended to take a little more time before getting to business.

You might talk about what brought you to San Diego, where you lived before, what you like doing outside of work or how you ended up at the event. Eventually you get to what everyone does professionally, but it doesn’t always have to be the first question.

I like that.

I’ve had conversations here that started around startups or hardware and ended up being about surfing, traveling, food or something completely unrelated. Then I would see the same person at another event a few weeks later and continue the conversation.

Over time, some of those people became more than just people I knew from networking events.

They became friends.

Work and life seem to mix a little more here

This is probably the biggest difference I’ve personally felt between the two places.

In San Diego, I find that professional relationships can move outside of the professional setting pretty naturally. You can meet someone at a startup event and then see them again at another meetup, grab coffee, go surfing or just hang out.

That changes the relationship.

You’re not only learning about what someone does for work. You’re getting to know how they think, what they’re interested in and whether you actually enjoy spending time with them.

And I think that matters when you eventually decide to help each other or work on something together.

It also connects to something I’ve been thinking about since I started hosting events myself: maybe not every professional relationship needs to start with a professional objective.

Sometimes it’s okay to just meet someone interesting and see where it goes.

What this changed about the events I host

I didn’t start the San Diego Startup Mixer with some big theory about community building.

When I moved here, I felt like I was missing a community. I wanted to meet more people, so I started going to events. Eventually, I thought: why not host one myself?

The low-pressure format came pretty naturally from there. I didn’t want people to have to pitch, sit through presentations or feel like they needed a specific reason to talk to someone.

Just come, meet people and have conversations.

As I’ve hosted more of these events, I’ve realized that this is probably the part I want to protect the most. People have told me they like that the mixer doesn’t feel too structured and that they can just talk to whoever they want.

At the same time, I’m still figuring out how to make those events more useful without losing that feeling.

Maybe that means making better introductions between people. Maybe it means creating other types of smaller events. Maybe it’s simply giving people enough opportunities to see each other again.

I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet.

Two different experiences, not necessarily a better one

I don’t think one way of networking is necessarily better than the other.

There are things I really liked about the Bay Area. The energy can push you to think bigger, people tend to get to the point quickly, and being surrounded by so many people building companies can be motivating.

San Diego has felt different for me. It’s smaller, more relaxed and, at least from my experience so far, relationships seem to have more room to develop before there needs to be a business reason behind them.

Maybe part of that is the city. Maybe part of it is the events I’ve happened to attend or the people I’ve met. And maybe part of it is simply that I’m at a different point in my life than when I first moved to the Bay Area.

But the difference has definitely influenced the way I think about community.

One last thought

When I first moved to San Diego, I thought I needed to find my community.

A year later, I think about it a little differently.

Going to events helped. Hosting them helped even more. But what really made San Diego start feeling like home was seeing the same people again and again and slowly building relationships outside of whatever reason originally put us in the same room.

Some of those relationships may eventually turn into projects or business opportunities. Others probably won’t.

I’m okay with both.

For me, that’s probably the biggest thing San Diego has changed about the way I think about networking: not every relationship needs to have an objective from the beginning.

Sometimes you just meet someone interesting and see where it goes.