Feeling lonely? Tired of going it alone? Looking to make a connection? ….No, I don’t mean a love connection! I’m talking about meeting someone to help you build a startup company! Nothing makes my day like hearing your stories of meeting a cofounder or some other valuable connection at a startup event in Sacramento.
Just last week, I learned that two of the cofounders of Sacramento-based LayerOne, Graham McBain and Kevin Weller, met at a 1 Million Cups event back in November. A couple of months later, they launched LayerOne, a geospatial blockchain technology company and then presented their business idea at 1 Million Cups in March. Just shy of 4 months later, this very early stage startup, was acquired by XYO Network! Now that’s a real Cinderella story and I like to think the organizer team for 1 Million Cups played a bit of a role as Fairy Godmother!
“The weekly format of 1 Million Cups provides us with a regular place to meet with other like-minded entrepreneurs,” said Graham McBain, cofounder of LayerOne. “Programs like this go a long way to foster the startup community here in Sacramento.”
This story isn’t an anomaly in our startup ecosystem (except the being acquired 6 months after launching your idea part). In 2016, Venita Sivamani, CEO and founder of Dermveda, an online platform for skincare education, attended the Demo Night for Startup Weekend Health Edition. There she met David Novicki, a developer working on a team with a complementary idea. David joined Dermveda as their first VP of Engineering, helping them launch their beta site (he recently moved on to a developer position with Amazon).
“After graduating from UC Davis, I was keen to launch Dermveda and spent several months attending local startup events,” said Venita Sivamani. “I was amazed at the level of collaboration in the community and greatly appreciate the resources and mentorship afforded to entrepreneurs. We are happy to call Sacramento home!”
“Startup events can be the start of great innovation and a strong catalyst for teams to form together and pursue their vision,” said David Novicki. “I highly recommend these events for those interested in change who have a desire to join the ever growing Sacramento startup community.”
And yet another Startup Weekend success story — David Howie and Mukesh Kumar launched Tellus Title Company, a blockchain real estate company, at Startup Weekend Rocklin in February. David came up with the idea in 2016 and filed a provisional patent a year later. * He shelved the idea for a while, but then six months before the provisional patent expired, he joined Startup Weekend to see if he could find a team to help move the idea forward. It’s there that he met Blockchain and Crypto enthusiast, Mukesh Kumar, who is also a professional software engineer.
“While my background and expertise excelled in real estate, I needed someone with a solid technical background on the team,” said David Howie. “Mukesh has been that person.”
David was also introduced to Alex Chompff of Chompff Consulting at Startup Weekend. Alex, a huge advocate for Blockchain technology, was serving as a mentor at the event.
“Alex immediately saw the potential in the idea and has been an ongoing pillar of support,” added David Howie.
Tellus Title Company has been moving full steam ahead since Startup Weekend ended 5 months ago and just published their first white paper, The Tellus Blockchain Protocol. They are currently seeking seed capital.
And it’s not just cofounders or developer talent you can meet at a startup event. Dan Casas-Murray, the instructor for Hacker Lab’s Startup Hustle bootcamp, volunteered his time to be a mentor at Startup Weekend Rocklin. There he met a talented college student, Joshua Armonio, who in addition to being on a Startup Weekend team, just for fun was chronicling the 3-day event via video. Dan recognized Josh’s talent and hired him to create a video that captured the Startup Hustle experience during the spring 2018 bootcamp.
Given these standout stories of fortuitous meetings at startup community meetups and events, my hope is that you will consider these examples and make a point to get out and meet new people at least once or twice a month. What are your serendipitous collision stories? We’d love to hear them!
More Information
If you’re not yet getting the Startup Digest, we recommend you subscribe (free). This weekly email is a curated list of the best events for startups in the Sacramento region. Sign up here.
1 Million Cups meets every Wednesday morning from 9 am – 10 am in the Sacramento region. Check out their upcoming event here.
TechStars Startup Weekend happens about periodically in the region. The next one is August 24-26 in Oakland and is in partnership with Grow With Google. And it’s free to attend! Register here.
*It’s unusual to have an idea that already has a provisional patent pitched at a Startup Weekend. Ideas are supposed to be new and not have been worked on yet. In this case, the organizers allowed the idea to move forward since David fully disclosed this to his teammates.
