I came back from San Francisco this week with my head a little dizzy. The race to build more and faster seems to keep accelerating, and spending a few days around that energy was both exhausting and super inspiring. It also made me want to bring some of that ambition home.
I was there with Mesh Collective, which brought together more than 120 founders and investors from the Nordics and the US. I had already experienced their recipe in Lofoten earlier this year: put interesting people somewhere beautiful, give them things to do together and let the conversations develop. In San Francisco, that recipe came with access to some of the best-known local names in tech.
Over three days, the programme took us from Creandum to Accel, a16z and General Catalyst, with tech sessions at Google and AWS. There were bike rides, surfing, a hike in Sausalito, sauna and cold plunges, dinners and a great party the last night to kick off SF Tech Week - it also gave us a last chance to use our final bits of energy with a great Nordic vibe. Some participants apparently managed more than 65 kilometres of running. I am happy to leave that particular achievement to them!
What stayed with me was the feeling that the whole city was urging everyone to move faster. From a distance, you can follow the announcements and read about the latest AI companies. Being there, surrounded by people building and investing, makes that pace feel much more immediate. It is exciting, but it can also leave you wondering whether you are already behind.
As General Catalyst’s Managing Director Yuri Sagalov put it, great engineers used to outperform the average by 10x. Now, AI enables the average engineer to do 10x the work, while the exceptional ones are reaching 100x. Those are the builders General Catalyst wants to find. For startups 10x growth is no longer expected in the first few years, but first few months.
For those of us coming from small countries, there is something useful in being around people who are comfortable with enormous ambitions. We are good at building things and getting on with the work. We could sometimes be better at explaining just how big those things could become. I would love to see more Estonian founders carry that confidence into their conversations with customers and investors. Like Liina Laas put it – when you are already tired then go even faster and uphill!
And then there were the people. Old friends, new friends, cool conversations and enough time together for a discussion to continue beyond the usual introduction. This is where Mesh gets something very right. A bike ride or a dinner gives you room to discover who someone is, what interests them and whether you enjoy their company.
Our Estonian group included Anna-Liisa Palatu (Woola), Kristel Kruustuk (Testlio), Liina Laas (Knowzilla), Ergo Sooru (Dr House) and Gabriel Ferraz (Creem). It was such a pleasure to experience the trip with this bunch, while also spending time with founders and investors from across the region. We talk a lot about connecting our ecosystems. Trips like this give those connections names, faces and shared memories. From this distance Estonia is absolutely at the same corner of the world like all the Nordics and we are really eager to do our fair share of lifting the region higher (and faster)!
Anders Mjåset, Aya Mans Fabricius and Rosalie Klein deserve a huge thank-you for creating that opportunity, and Jørn Lyseggen for hosting us at Ferry Building’s SHACK15. Bringing this crowd together takes care and effort, and you could feel both.
I would love to look back in a few years and see what came out of these days. Which conversation led to an investment? Which introduction helped a founder enter a new market? Who ended up building something together? From last year’s event I have heard many bits and pieces about new customers, term sheets and even new startups founded with cofounders found from SF hills and waves.
For now, I came home inspired, a little overwhelmed by the speed of everything, and very happy about the real connections made along the way. I hope there will be plenty of domino and butterfly effects coming out from these shared stories.
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