Field Report from Silicon Valley: Networking and how to [maybe] do it

I needed to get my wits about me.?

P.D.Q.?

And more importantly, I needed to deal with a nagging overarching thought – one of those you have when you zoom back into your consciousness right in the middle of a chaotic social event – of how this Thursday’s “cougar” night at the Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel was not going as planned.??

The five-star hotel at the Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel in Menlo Park maintains a darkly lit bar and sun-soaked terrace that overlooks the Jasper Ridge putting the valley feel in Silicon Valley.??It is a rare piece of faux-Southern France class in an otherwise corridor of functionally designed office space. My Kia rental did its sportive best at rubbing shoulders with the Porches and other displays of wealth at the valet entrance as we screeched in too-fast-but-confident over the polished brick floor that signifies the main entrance. The polite and about to be well-tipped staff inevitably would park Kia well away from the front entrance which was taken up by only the very best cars. I tossed them the keys Hollywood style to psyche myself up for the role ahead. Those that have found gold in Silicon Valley and LA sometimes drive lower end cars on purpose to filter out that other type of gold-digger and I wanted to give off that vibe this evening as I entered this particular den of excess.?

The familiar North Californian fog that often sits between the coast and the valley ridge stops short of intruding on the glamour and warmth of the terrace. Vanity Fair once described the hotel as part of Silicon Valley’s “peculiar mating algorithm”. Thursday nights are known as cougar night due to a professional matchmaking company having organised provocative events, leading to the reputation as a place for singles to meet. And where better. Sand Hill Road is where any venture capital firm worth its salt is based creating a strong cocktail of flash money and those seeking it.??

Cougars were present, but so were every other type of creature you would expect to meet in high-end hotel bars the world over. Fakers, hookers, losers, chancers, blingers and those with real money who just wanted to flaunt it. And me of course. I had gone for the VC look with one of two approved outfits of the serious risk-on investor: blazer, crisp white shirt, pocket scarf and chinos finished off with designer branded trainers. The other acknowledged outfit - Patagonia body warmer over checked shirt – was abhorrent to a Northern European like me who likes to subconsciously communicate that I can handle the cold anywhere.

Networking in a packed room when you don’t know anyone is daunting. And the Rosewood was packed. However, the application of a simple process gets you into the swing of things and is applicable to room networking globally.?

First off, go and chat to the people not talking to anyone else. They are either at the bar on their own or floating around the room, maybe looking at their phone pretending to be waiting for someone. Go with the bar flies and just throw out a line that anyone can reply to. This is though, a double-edged sword. These people are easy to talk to because they are not talking to anyone else and there is usually a very good reason for that. Being painfully boring in my experience, as you will find out immediately. Still it’s a start, and it gets your confidence up and your mind in fine fettle for the task ahead.

North America provides a unique exception. They?always?have seats at the bar, and it’s almost a Federal crime to not speak to your neighbours when fully perched on one. Often these are very interesting solo travellers, with the gall to go to a bar on their own, or full-blown alcoholics on the final trajectory of a long downward spiral you’re about to hear about. If you’ve misread the bar from the outside that is.?

Days earlier I had met what I discovered to be a distinguished governmental relations advisor to start-ups, based in D.C., at the bar of the Palo Alto Sheraton. North American bars?always?have TVs with an assortment of sports on which can be used to break the ice. Bemoaning the quality of the?Girls’ College Softball?that ESPN were desperately broadcasting had made it easy to strike up rapport with my new Sheraton pal.

If you don’t go for the solos, next consider approaching two men together. Two men generally stand at more open angles and you can easily walk into the middle and introduce yourself. Two women talking to each other tend to stand more closed, facing each other directly, appearing to be deeper into a serious conversation. The exception to this is if one or both of them have their eyes darting around the room as they talk – and they normally do – desperately hoping someone will save them from the conversation that has lost its legs or, in a hypergamous fashion common to both the sexes, hoping someone more interesting will come along. That’s you.

There are then a few methods to jettison the bores that you normally encounter early on at a networking event. You either ask them to join you as you go to introduce yourself to other people. They may say yes. If they do and follow you, you can then leave them to the mercy of the new people you meet as you?spin?off onto the next target. You can also ask them if they want a drink at the bar. They will always say no. If they do on a very rare chance join you, it’s easy enough to bin them at the bar as you excuse yourself to go and make that fake phone call. It’s all about?spinning?from one person to the next.?

Business cards must be easy to pull out quickly. Out one pocket and in another. Use a business card case to keep your cards clean but ditch it before you walk into a room, putting a few in an easy to reach pocket. You will look organised. Generally, you want to spend five minutes with someone, quickly build rapport by asking a lot of questions about the person you are talking to and repeating their name often, and then grab a card before moving on. If its someone interesting, you can chat to them later in the night or follow up privately. It’s a tough call for the uninitiated to decide whether to hang on with the interesting person you think you have been lucky enough to meet or throw the dice again and try and meet someone new but potentially dull.

I needed to make that tough call right now. I had been hogging the corner of the bar which had been designated the one length of its rectangular shape that you could order from and had over invested my time with a wealthy couple; the stench of investor bucks was oppressive. As was the fact that I was being used by the flirty-but-bored Persian wife to make the wealthy-but-dismissive Belgique husband jealous. He was asserting his shifty presence more and more aggressively. It was too early in the night for a Wild West style bar scrap.

A new player entered the game. Similar baddie XP level to me perhaps; we read each other in just under a second as guys tend to do. He dexterously somehow got the attention of the Persian (easy) and an order in with the overworked barman in the same movement (impressive). Probably tipped big earlier in the night I thought. Smart.

I knew not to miss my moment. I acknowledged him,?spun?off his left shoulder and off into the crowd and back to the safe haven of a set of chic rattan woven outdoor furniture and heaters that I had identified on my initial reconnaissance of the bar as the area where the smokers were going to conjugate.?

Smokers are a key networking demographic not to be overlooked by non-smokers. It’s easy to bum a cigarette off someone – it’s a smoker’s code to never say no – and only take one or two drags. Usually they are the types that like to pretend they were forced to come to an event, so that’s your ice breaker. Having spent a large portion of their lives in designated smoking zones, its second nature to them to engage in small talk with strangers.?

I rested for a bit, unharmed from the initial opening salvos. I breathed a deep breath of nicotine soaked air, and observed the room: a couple of small-town American girls looked out of place and overdressed; an Asian contingent were hyping up the South Korean Gangnam I don’t give a fu*k look; geeks on dates peppered the scene in the quieter areas of the bar.?

You can’t lament on the comfort of sticking with people you know well when at networking events though. After twenty minutes of non-small-talk friendly smoker talk, it was time to face the fear, leave the comfort zone and dive back into the crowd. Perfectly formed small groups of people were congregating just off the bar so it was there that I returned, this time with the aggressive Belgique and flirty Persian long gone.

The energy in the room was really escalating and I quickly bagged a business card. Crowbarred out of a more Aztecian than Mayan lady, who had made the common breath destroying error of thoughtlessly saying yes to every standard coffee offer during too many meetings during the day. It was easy to strike up a conversation as she struggled to assert herself at the bar.

“If you get served first order me one of these and if I get served first what are you drinking” I instructed.

My usual line in this scenario which has never failed to break the ice for me anywhere in the world and works in most foreign tongues. Except in Icelandic. In Iceland the girls do the ordering and you do as you’re told.?

It’s a universal rule that with a big wad of Beverly Hills Cop walking-around-money openly on display, a bigger smile, and an intense look that says ‘this guy is going to order very quickly’ you will get served ahead of less disciplined types anywhere in the world. Especially if you pick your spot at the bar right. All is fair in love and war it is said, and when ordering in a packed bar I personally add. There is no room for gentlemanly conduct. Tip big early on also and the barman or gal will usually get the message. Works better with male bar staff, generally.

It wasn’t a tough decision to ditch the Aztec. The dynamic of the Rosewood bar evolved as the night drew on to this point, around 9pm, with it losing its light business and hotel guest feel earlier in the night to more of a crowd focussed on that algorithmic mating. It certainly deserves to be called cougar night. I chatted to a few more people as the alcohol-soaked nature of the bar was having its effect on the punters. As networking events draw on, those enjoying the positive effects of that legal drug of social choice have lowered their social drawbridges. They never notice that you’re not drinking and are instead maintaining focus on a networking objective. And you shouldn’t be drinking when you are playing 5D chess.

My long suffering global-BS-o-meter was overheating. It was hard to tell whether some people were fakers or whether it was genuine people enjoying a rare ability to display a level of glamour in an otherwise dull part of the world. And Palo Alto is certainly dull on the surface. We can all guess where the real action is. The Rosewood lets you display your wealth (real or not) in a controlled, safe and approved of environment. The only way to find out is by diving in. At this juncture though, I beat a steady retreat to downtown Palo Alto to further test the networking down there.?

Even if you have never visited America, the names Palo Alto, Cupertino, Mountain View and Menlo Park seem familiar. They are normally etched onto something you carry every day or are a factory setting you can return to. What is not known from Shanghai to Sao Paulo is Antony’s Nut House in old Palo Alto. The underworld of Silicon Valley congregates here along with a smattering of new-in-town engineer types, hence my visit. The floor is literally covered in nut shells and it has all the fluorescent lights from advertising signs and sports TVs of the stereotypical roadside American dive bar. And the clientele matched. I spied a tucked away revolver in the belt of one patron.?

After a few slightly charged non-friendly exchanges of banter with the barman over my order of a non-alcoholic beer, I decided the universe was warning me tonight after my earlier exchanges with the Belgique at the Rosewood, and it was time to hit the final area of the night being Downtown Palo Alto proper.?

East Palo Alto was at one point the murder capital of America. The infamous Elizabeth Holmes was nearly hit by a flying bullet when based there. Downtown Palo Alto though, which begins at the end of the Stanford campus, couldn’t be more spit and polished. It’s a hive of activity in the early part of the evening before dying a quick death around 8pm. Nevertheless, there are enough areas to sustains one’s evening for a while, mainly populated by the younger members of the Silicon Valley world more out for the evening to meet people who don’t carry business cards. I relaxed my faux-VC act of the night and just enjoyed the atmosphere.

“Oh hello it’s you again” said the short Aztecan that I had left politely at the bar in Rosewood earlier as she strolled into the over the top Mexicana bar that was a beacon of Thursday night life on the strip. Going with the flow tonight was not working, or rather the flow was telling me to pull the rip cord on this night out.?

And so concluded a short nights networking in Silicon Valley. A few probably worthless business cards obtained, a bar fight and a gun battle avoided and not a single investor dollar raised. Even if you don’t meet anyone you want to when out networking, it always still feels good to have met new people and pushed yourself past your own mental fears of rejection by getting out of the comfort zone and introducing yourself to others. Your productivity the next day is always subconsciously increased by this?galiant?effort. And in the very worst case, you will have a feeling of relief as you go to sleep that night that the whole damn thing is finally over with.??