Why is it so hard to find founders to bounce off ideas in city you are visiting?
8 nickevante 28 5/11/2025, 6:14:49 PM
I’m beyond frustrated, and I know I’m not alone. Every time I visit a new city—whether it’s for work, a conference, or just to explore—I try to connect with local founders to bounce ideas off, get feedback, or just nerd out about startups. But it’s like trying to crack a secret code. Unless you’re already in the “inside circle,” it feels impossible to get face time with anyone who’s actually building something cool.
Why is this so damn hard? I get that founders are busy—trust me, I am too. But it’s not just about time. It’s about access. In every city, there’s this invisible wall around the startup scene. If you’re not already part of the clique, good luck getting in. It’s like you need a VIP pass just to have a casual coffee chat. I’ve tried cold emails, LinkedIn messages, even showing up at random coworking spaces, but it’s always the same: crickets unless you’ve got a mutual connection or some magic key I clearly don’t have.
Why do you have to be in the inside circle and how to get in?
“Bouncing off ideas” or “coffee chat” may sound not like a waste of time only if your work is very relevant to other founder’s work (like you are a head of competing product, or a professional with unique skillset they are looking for).
People are busy building things.
Perhaps I should have clarified I meant bouncing off ideas about execution and coffee chat on sharing inspiration on how they landed them against all odds.
People are busy struggling with their own execution challenges including myself. My point is they may not have to struggle alone by 1)learning from each other and 2)paying it forward.
Both are fine, but its not clear from your post which you are chasing. And clearly it kinda matters to the people you are contacting.
If you have a specific set of challenges and you're looking for advice, then say so. If you have been successful and are looking to advise others then pitch that instead.
Given that my specific industry context is different from yours, given that your experience is likely in a different country (or city) to me, I'm not really sure what you're looking for, other than being away from home and looking for people to socialize with.
Perhaps it would be helpful if you articulate your goals better.
You are assuming that the founder seeking to connect is less experienced and more desperate than the founder who is busy working on their idea and does not find the need to share anything.
Google shared the Attention paper with the world. What did OpenAI bring to the table? Tesla open sourced all their EV patents. What did BYD, KIA or Ford bring to the table?
These companies are stronger because they compete on their confidence to execute and because they make the entire ecosystem better.
In doing so they improved each other and the industry as whole. Hope this makes sense. It's not a zero sum game! :)
Since I've never met you, if you reached out to me using the post above, I politely decline since I don't see what I'd learn from you. I expect you're not Bill Gates or Steve Jobs etc (if you were you wouldn't be hitting me up).
Now it's possible you could learn from me, but (shrug) probably not. There's a million places you can go online to read much better things than I could say. (I most certainly am not Steve Jobs.)
I think you're suggesting we meet as "peers" - but you're giving me nothing to suggest er are peers. Since my default position is "nothing to see here", I'm just moving along.
I think if you want to make contacts you need to narrow down your search a bit.
I believe it might be selection bias. Founders who are building things are not joining networking events. I tend to avoid co-working spaces too ever since I realized it's full of the people I block on Facebook.
There's people who bounce ideas, and then there's some form of idea tire kicking. They talk about how vibe code is the future and going to change how we live and work, but they have never downloaded an AI IDE. These people are there to kick ideas around all day and they'll pay for a co-working space so they can kick their ideas at strangers and ignore all feedback. It's exhausting and it's possible that you might be viewed as one of those people.
The one's building amazing things are far and few in between due to lack of mentors in the community and hyper focus on "what's in it for me" mindset.
But so far the sales events have had a higher hit rate. There's very talented people joining whatever new thing AWS is launching, or the hackathons.
If anything, founders are good at building things. Hackathons are an excuse to experiment with a new tool for some, a sport for others. I think a lot of friendships today are forged in the heat of the hackathons. I met this guy who wanted to build an "AI assistant" with Gemini, which I dismissed as a dumb idea because Google has been building AI assistants for years. But his idea went much deeper than that and he won the hackathon car.
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I know of only 2 places for this : SF, and Canggu. I've lived in Paris, London, Cambridge(UK), NYC : there are obviously also founders there, but they're too spread out.
I'm not building anything, but I'm happy to "nerd out" about startups. Will you meet me?
Then I reflected on that and thought about the many times I rarely responded to any LinkedIn messages sent by someone who I have not met or had no common connection what-so-ever. I realized everyone is busy and also may not want to spend any time or energy on someone who they have no connection - or want to protect themselves from potential spammers.
What is in it for them? - That's the hard truth that rarely anyone wants to spend any time or energy on someone who they have connection. It doesn't matter if you are from the same school, city or an entrepreneur like them.
Good luck.