[iamelgringo]

I just got home from the Hackers and Founders Meetup 20 minutes ago. And, I started the group because I wanted the exact same thing: To hang out and talk with people who are serious about founding startups.

We get together in the Bay Area every two weeks to hang out, have a tasty beverage and talk about startups, the web, stuff we read on Hacker News, etc...

We've had between 20-30 attendee's the past few meetups, and people really seem to enjoy it.

Our next get-together is going to be a little different. The founders of Heysan and Snipd have agreed to give a presentation. So, there will be a 1-1/2 hour presentation and we'll be adjourning to the hotel bar after that for socializing.

Anyway, the address for the meetup is http://www.hackersandfounders.com

If you're interested, stop by or drop me a line. I'll buy you a drink.

[jacobscott]

Does anyone have a good writeup somewhere of all such (public) groups? I trust HN pointers/analysis over just searching meetup. I'm relatively new to the valley, it would be nice to figure out what part of the technology social network I fit best with.

[iamelgringo]

A lot of it depends on what you're interested in. There are Meetup groups for most technologies out there: Rails, MySQL, LAMP. And, then there are Web 2.0 groups, "New Tech" meetups, general entrepreneur groups and business groups. Each one tends to have a focus and a slant. Some are sponsored, some aren't.

The Hackers and Founders group I host tends have about 1/3 to 1/2 of members read Hacker News on a regular basis. I'm also running it to simply build community. I'm not getting any financial return on the deal. I'm really just doing it to get to know other Hackers and Founders.

There are also non-Meetup.com groups like super happy dev house: http://superhappydevhouse.org/ and various and sundry Tech Crunch get-togethers, Digg parties, etc...

My advice would be to try a couple out. Worst case scenario, you're out a couple hours of your time.

[rtf]

When I got my game gig it was through demonstrating work at a Meetup group(San Francisco Game Developers), so I know this is a good place to start. I'm planning to show for as many of these events as I can.