Brewing Community: Discovering Nashville Tech through 50 Coffees
It’s been a while since my last post, but a few things have happened: I moved to Nashville, had my second kid (Julie), and decided to part ways with Peloton.
There are a lot of moving pieces in what’s next for me. Importantly, I’ve realized that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking into a tiny Zoom window. Which means in-person work. Which means meeting some new people (gulp).
Since I’m not the only one moving cities or trying to build my network, I wanted to share my approach — maybe it’ll be helpful for you in a new venture.
The SMART Goal: 50 Coffees
After many conversations with my husband trying to figure out why I didn’t know anybody, I decided to make myself a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) for local networking.
I called it the “50 Coffees” challenge. The idea was simple but powerful: have 50 coffee meetings with locals in the tech industry. The rules were:
- “Coffee” is more of a guideline, but the interaction needed to be intentional, focused, and more than 30 minutes.
- Everybody I met needed to be local, and ideally connected to the tech industry somehow.
- I approached the conversations in a similar way: leading with curiosity about the person, explaining my background briefly, and asking for their impressions about the Nashville tech community and whether there’s anyone else I should meet.
- I wanted to do it all by the end of the year.
It helped me to have a structured goal for something that is normally very human and nebulous. I finished my 50 coffees about a week ago. It wasn’t perfect, but I do recommend it — here’s what I learned.
1. I met incredible people
Approaching the challenge with genuine curiosity and an open mind led me to some incredible folks. It turns out that awesome people know awesome people, so just mentioning this project led to lots of fantastic intros. Many people were so generous and open-minded, and every coffee chat was an opportunity to learn about the rich tapestry of Nashville.
It also helped me transition from feeling like a total newbie to seeing a few friendly faces at the farmers’ market, and being able to make a few intros that I hope were helpful. That’s a huge shift in my feelings of inclusion and belonging.
2. The goal helped me build and maintain momentum
Having a tangible goal kept me on track. It’s easy for me to postpone networking or think it’s supposed to happen organically. Connections can happen organically, but only once you know some people.
The 50 Coffees challenge provided a roadmap, ensuring I consistently invested time and effort into expanding my local network.
3. I was able to develop an intuition for the tech community
Rather than relying on formal events or online research, I learned about the local tech scene organically. I asked a lot of questions during my casual meetings: about where people worked, where their friends worked, and their impressions of various companies, groups, events, and more. Observing the content of the discussions and how they unfolded gave me a mental map of the challenges, opportunities, and the overall vibe of Nashville’s tech ecosystem.
Cheeky example: New Yorkers start conversations with 5–7 minutes of small talk. But Nashvilleians like to ease in with 10+ minutes of connection building. It was a small N experiment but helpful for me to remember to slow down and smell the (very well-tended) roses.
4. I got a chance to practice my pitch.
When you take a new direction in your career, you need a compelling way to explain the how, what, and why. Meeting a lot of people outside of an interview context turned out to be a great way to practice this “pitch” — I was able to see what resonated and watch lots of people react in real time.
The way I explained my transition got better with each conversation, without the stress of doing it “wrong” in an interview.
5. Not everyone is going to click.
This challenge was effective in broadening my network by casting a broad net. The wide range helped me find some folks with whom I hope to develop deeper long-term relationships. And there are others who I’ll probably see again (Nashville is small after all!) but we might not seek each other out on purpose. That’s ok — I’m incredibly grateful to have met and learned about every single one of these people.
Corollary: This is a bad way to land a job. If you are interested in a specific position, you need to be much more targeted about who you reach out to and how you present yourself. 50 coffees is about seeding a friendly network that might help you get a warm intro to a hiring manager in the future… but there are no guarantees.
Any other ideas?
TLDR; Nashville has been incredibly friendly and welcoming, and the 50 Coffees challenge helped me step up and initiate a lot of lovely conversations.
I’m curious about other approaches to being in a new city. Did you move recently, and if so, what worked for you, and what didn’t?
The header image and first rough draft of this post were generated using GPT-4. Try it — it’s like brainstorming with a somewhat silly robot.
