1-1 virtual coffees with top tech talent sourced from Twitter

A Show HN can't be a landing page with a wait list. Please see the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html.

I’m skeptical about the sourced from twitter part.

I used to be very impressed by industry celebrities. The kind of people with a zillion SO or HN karma, blogs, books, podcasts, conferences speaking spots—-real name recognition at least in some corner of the tech universe.

But then over time I’ve found myself in workplaces with some of these folks and it turns out that if you do all of that, well that’s what you do. Building your own personal brand is a job and it doesn’t leave much time to build either software or engineering organizations.

Personally I’m not much interested in building a personal brand (different strokes though) and so I don’t think it would be all that exciting to talk to a bunch of people that are experts in doing so.

Who is this for? I can't imagine "top tech talent" is going to want to subject themselves to endlessly being pitched to by VC's who thinks that writing their entire app for them means you get just 5% of the company. And I can't imagine without coders, it would be useful to VC's trying to recruit...

I totally fail to see the appeal of this from the angle of anyone involved besides maybe recruiters and whoever is trying to charge for it.

I love how it has to mention their creep prevention system in the first couple of lines as if that has been a big problem for them.

Also almost all of the positive comments in this thread are either the CEO or someone with less than 20 karma (new accounts created to pump this)

I think a lot of people in the tech community would be open to a few 1:1 conversations with people out of their normal network now and then. This approach chimes with how (I think) community can be sustainably built and expanded in tech, both parties benefiting from possible out-of-band experiences. There’s no guarantee of that, of course, but that’s a risk people can assess when spending their time. People love talking about what they do, both for personal brand and personal enjoyment (Meet-ups and less corporate conferences are clear examples of this).

Wish the expectations of these conversations were more outlined, though. “Get on the waitlist” is a bit of a black box.

Also, maybe this is personal bias, but allowing for non-Twitter handles (I think my HN handle better resonates with my technical leanings than my Twitter, which is mostly just me posting more or less random thoughts). Looks like they’re using Twitter authentication, though, as well the “We met up” tweets have some virality, so I understand that design choice at the current moment.

After seeing a former teacher of mine ask about people who’d be willing to talk with his high school students, I think there’s also an extension of this platform to help match speakers with educators trying to help students understand what it means to work in technology (Or other fields). When I was an undergraduate we’d run part of a summer program teaching high school students how to differentiate stem cells into beating heart cells, hard to say that example wouldn’t be formative for students trying to figure out what to pursue in the future.

Hi, early cuppa user. I've had some very interesting conversations with a VC scout, several makers from EU, US and India. Only one meeting was a bit weird. But that happens in real life as well. I enjoyed the serendipity a lot especially during corona lockdown and it made me understand the value of twitter more as well.

I've been using Cuppa since June and I've met really interesting people on it. That list includes therapists, no-code makers, entrepreneurs.

No agenda and no hard selling on anything. I've personally had a better experience on it than Lunchclub, which I felt like a substitute for a sales channel.

I was building an app and I received a lot of good feedback and encouragement on it. In a time, when I was completely socially isolated, these conversations really helped.

Ways to reduce abuse of this platform is to restrict the number of coffee chats you can have in a week.

Wow, this looks great! I've seen different takes on this but I love the approach you're taking with marketing, starting the community off slowly, and using a calendly and x.ai style calendar. Hoping this takes off.

I have a suggestion that I wonder whether it has been tried - how about having a checkbox of whether someone will be having coffee or tea. That really helps create the atmosphere. It can still be pretty inclusive. On Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee someone has herbal tea.

I started using Cuppa in July and have met around 30 people from various backgrounds. I love that you don't know who you are going to meet till you select their table. Cuppa has been a major value-add to me. The "no sales pitches" rule is awesome and has resulted in meetings where both of us have walked away with something useful from the call.

Totally love using Cuppa cos its more consistent than a random encounter IRL (built amounts twitter) and very close to the rich, life-changing encounters you have at an awesome conference (everyone there is probably interested in what you do). Would love to see this used for meetups and topical convos on a rolling basis.

I discovered Cuppa few months ago. I started using it frequently. It's a great opportunity meet people with different expertises from around the world. I have learned a lot and connected with many experienced people on Twitter.

Also, We have got first customer for our startup thorough Cuppa (totally unexpected).

So basically just influencer marketing?

I've had around virtual 10 cuppas and all were pretty great! Super enjoyed the ability to introduce myself and talk about what I'm working on. That's a muscle I haven't had to use often while in Covid.

I had quite a few cuppas during lockdown. Not so much since then but I need to get back to it.

Made some awesome connections and had a ton of interesting chats around many different topics. Big up to KP and Michael for building Cupa

Cuppa is an amazing experience. The double opt-in and the cache of the community makes for an actual valuable USP. So much better than lunchclub or any other competitors. Most importantly, it gives you a reason to come back.

Seven comments from accounts that are either new, or have never commented before except in praise of this product (complete with replies from the poster) - this all seems rather shady, like a voting ring.

I found cuppa around march / April & enjoying it since then. I learned a lot from makers & founders even i learn a lot in automation afyrr joining cuppa.

I am glad to be in early usrrs.

Gurvinder

Love this!! Takes all the hassle of the whole “Twitter Dm” -> “Let’s Zoom sometime” -> “Scheduling a time” routine.

Wondering who "top tech talent" is.... probably just start-up founders, not like elon musk.