Networking

Networking in the US works differently than in Europe. It's a little bit like speed dating. You meet random people, talk to them for 2 minutes, exchange business cards and then talk to the next person. The next day you have a lot of these business cards and don't remember all the matching faces... So you log into LinkedIn and investigate their background and add them to your network.

I went to a Young Professional Networking event shortly after I arrived in San Francisco. The hosts could not really tell us why they were hosting this event and what kind of clients they were looking for. Also, I kind of had the feeling that most of the guys were here for two non-professional reasons: drinks and girls.


A week later I went to the launch party of a German research institute. The location was really beautiful and people enjoyed food and drinks. And then a power point marathon started that gave fun insights into consumers' psyches but was rather tiring for the mainly American audience. I happened to meet a girl from Berlin who I immediately liked cause she had this refreshingly straightforward humor.

Yesterday I went to another event in Stanford. The host was a new Stanford professor who invited his friends for wine and cheese and gave out magical African berries that affect your taste buds and make everything taste sweet. The first person I met was from my hometown, Münster. His fiancée is writing her phd on my master's thesis' topic. People were mostly teccies. When I told one of the guys who was working for a VC that I am living in the Tenderloin, he told me that he got beaten up one night at a bar in the TL and had to get four stitches...