GTM for International Founders — SF Happy Hour
If you're building from outside the US, you already know: the product is the easy part. The hard part is getting your first US customers — figuring out outbound, finding your champion, and turning cold lists into real pipeline.
This is a small, no-fluff happy hour for international founders who are actively cracking go-to-market in the US. No pitches, no sponsors talking at you — just founders who are in it, sharing what's actually working (and what isn't).
We'll kick off with a quick 10-minute talk — "3 GTM mistakes international founders make in the US (and how to avoid them)" — then it's drinks, snacks, and real conversations.
You should come if you're:
An international founder building for the US market
Pre-PMF to early revenue, actively working on sales / outbound
Tired of generic "growth advice" and want straight talk from peers
Schedule
5:45 PM : Doors open
6:00 – 6:30 PM : Arrivals & introductions
6:30 – 7:10 PM : Panel — From cold list to real revenue: cracking US enterprise GTM Kyum Kim (Blind) · Nick Abram (MiniMax) · Yousuf Imran (Mangosteen Studio)
7:10 – 7:15 PM : Lightning pitches — 1 minute each
7:15 – 8:00 PM : Open discussion, networking & live product demos
What you'll get:
Honest GTM conversations with founders facing the same wall
A few introductions worth having
A low-key evening with people who get it
Who's in the room:
A mix of international founders deep in US GTM — plus a few people who've been through it. Among those dropping by:
Kyum Kim, co-founder of Blind, the anonymous app that first blew up among Amazon employees in 2015 and went on to reach employees at most US tech companies you've ever heard of. He now helps startups crack go-to-market across both B2C and B2B, including companies backed by General Catalyst and a16z Speedrun.
Nick Abram, enterprise partnerships at MiniMax, a foundation model AI company building frontier language, voice, and video generation products, where he's built outbound infrastructure from scratch and landed enterprise partnerships from cold outreach. Before that he sold AI avatars and video generation at DeepBrain AI (now AIStudios.com), and built a green tech startup of his own. He's spent the last few years figuring out how to get AI products in front of US enterprise buyers, which is exactly the problem this room is here to work on.
Yousuf Imran, founder & CEO of Mangosteen Studio, an AI studio building tools for sellers and go-to-market teams. He spent 20 years in US enterprise sales — six years at Google and nearly four at Salesforce — building and closing enterprise pipeline, the exact problem most founders in this room are working on. He now leads an remote engineering team from the Bay Area and builds the products himself. His edge is the reverse of most international founders here: he's already cracked US enterprise GTM at the highest level and is now applying that playbook as a founder — outbound, champion-building, and turning cold lists into real revenue.
Space is limited — registration is reviewed to keep the room founder-heavy and relevant. Grab a spot below. 🍻