I'm planning to come out to the valley for the month of August to network with other entrepreneurs and try to find investors for my seed stage startup. Unfortunately I don't know anyone in the startup scene there.<p>Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get started meeting entrepreneurs and investors.<p>Has anyone else been in my situation. How did you go about finding people, investors, a place to stay?<p>How did you get around? rent a car or ...?<p>Right now my plan is to attend the following events, meet people and go from there
- http://newtech.meetup.com/14/
- http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/910056/
- http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/793854/
- http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/867200/<p>Thoughts?
You can meet other entrepreneurs at a Bootstrapper's Breakfasts <a href="http://www.bootstrappersbreakfast.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bootstrappersbreakfast.com/</a> there are three scheduled for August. We get a number of out of town visitors and you would be welcome. The other events you list all look very good, if I had to pick one from those you mentioned to make sure of attending it would be the the New Tech Meetup in Palo Alto. SVASE (<a href="http://www.svase.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.svase.org/</a>) runs a number of events where you can meet VCs: breakfasts, Startup-U, CXO Leadership forum. SDForum (<a href="http://www.sdforum.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sdforum.org/</a>) runs 20+ SIGs, I would check out the Startup and VC Funding SIGs during your visit as well as any related to technologies you are working with.
If you're looking for a place to stay, I love, love, love Dinah's Garden Hotel (although I don't know how close it is to where you want to be). It's actually one of my favorite hotels inside the contiguous: <a href="http://www.dinahshotel.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dinahshotel.com/</a>
I'm thinking of using zipcar -<a href="http://www.zipcar.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.zipcar.com</a> to get around. Has anyone here used it? What do you think?