FR#1 : SF alumni meetup

Time to join in with many of my fellow alumni from the SF 11/11 bootcamp and write up a little field report.

We went out Thursday night to this club in SF, a big group of bootcamp bros and other ABC alumnis. A mix of old and new faces.

We had a table in one end of the club which was of the kind that either you had a table to be at or you would have to be packed in with the crowd of the place.

When venturing out in the crowd, deciding whether to go this way or that way I suddenly found myself standing face to face with A so I just sayed “Hi!” I asked what she was celebrating and we concluded that we were celebrating the holidays and hi-fived. CT#1 passed! We continued to chit chat a bit and sort of dancing at the same time. I managed to get her hand and spun her around a couple of times. CT#2 passed.

She asked where I was from so we got into why I moved to California and what I do. I asked what she was doing and learned that she was in the the startup race. I suggested we go to our table so we could talk better. (Although I guess I only had two CTs passed..)

When we got to the table I managed to spill parts of my drink on her. Not optimal but she didn’t seem to angry with it. :-)

We talked some more and she showed me some videos of what her startups do. For a tech geek like me they were doing some seriously cool stuff! I didn’t manage to get into any real DHV stories before we decided to hit the dance floor. I tried to get her to take my hand and do the elephant walk but she let it go immediately and just followed me. CT failed!

At the dance floor we ran into her three (one girl, two guys) friends. She didn’t introduce me to them immediately but over the next minutes I was introduced one by one. She was also now texting a little bit with someone else. I didn’t manage to escalate and also started to lose a bit of interest.

Then I lost them in the crowd but ran into A again a little later when I was on my way back to the table. We talked a bit about how crowded it was. She said she was probably leaving soon to go to some place where a friend of hers was DJ:ing for the night. She wanted us to exchange numbers so we could get in touch later. We exchanged numbers and then went back to the table where her coat was. We talked for a short while about music and that we had kind of similar tastes in dance music. Then we gave a goodbye hug and she left.

Good: I managed to keep the interaction going for quite some time. Got her to pass CTs in the beginning. Got a number close.

Bad: I should have been more focused at the table and led the interaction into stories. I kind of lost the lead in the interaction after a while.

I also need to figure out better how to handle the situation when I’m not quite sure if I’m interested or not.

I'm getting the vibe that you were too nice to her.

I like the CT's in the beginning, but you should've focused more on Phase B on the dancefloor.
Then when you get her to the table, she'd be more than happy and you could transition to C.