Hi Walnut friends,
I bet most of you have gotten advice from your university’s career development center, or had a mentor walk you through how to do a coffee chat.
For me, coffee chats turned out to be much more than career advice. When I look back, almost every turning point in my career started the same way: two people, two cups of coffee, and an hour of honest conversation.
When I switched majors in my sophomore year, the first thing I did was to ask a senior from my new program for coffee. She had finished her Data Science degree 2 years earlier. In one conversation, she mapped out which courses to take, what research to get into, and how to land internships. It saved me a year of guessing.
I graduated in spring 2023, into a rough job market for tech industry, and as an international student it felt even rougher. So I kept doing coffee chats, this time with people about 2-3 years into their careers. They told me what interviews really looked like, flagged roles worth applying for, and referred me in.
Later in 2023, I moved from LA to the Bay Area without knowing anyone, so I did 60 coffee chats with a social media post. Those people became my first circle of friends here.
In 2025, I was leaving my job and torn between joining a VC firm or staying on the startup path. Once again, I talked it through with founders and investors across the ecosystem until the answer became clear. I stayed on the startup path and co-founded Walnut AI with David, someone I had first met over one of those coffee chats back in 2023.
See? True connections are built before you need them. When the moment comes, they’re already there, picking up your call. That’s something a last-minute LinkedIn post, sent out to whoever happens to see it, can never give you.
What Agents Meet taught us
We built Agents Meet to help you find people really worth meeting at crowded events, so you could save the time and don’t need to randomly talk with people to see if you have synergy.
It works. But we kept seeing the same thing happen after the match. You find the right person, then lose them in the crowd. Or you get 5 to 10 minutes to make an introduction and swap contacts. It’s not enough to actually get to know someone.
Although our original design was to introduce you two and let you find time to chat and connect properly, I know that’s hard to make happen with such an intense event schedule.
So we want to try something slower and further.
How Walnut Coffee Chat works
Sign up for a session at one of our partnered Joe & The Juice stores in SF or Palo Alto, stating what kind of people you want to meet and what help you could provide to others.
Walnut AI agents put you in a group of 4, matched with people worth knowing for you, and they will also get something out of meeting you.
Come at your group’s time slot. Your drink is covered with your ticket.
No agenda, no pitch. Just 4 people at one table, with icebreaker cards to help get the conversation going.
Why four, not two? One-on-one chats are often lopsided. One side wants the meeting more than the other, and the other side possibly keeps pushing it back for something more urgent, or rushes through it when it finally happens. With 4 people matched together, there is at least one person at the table you want to meet, and at least one who wants to meet you. So the conversation can keep moving, and it will be meaningful and beneficial to everyone.
Besides, these chats are ticketed on purpose. A free Luma invite is easy to accept and just as easy to forget, while purchasing a ticket could make people think seriously, and much more possibly show up.
Of course, your ticket includes one drink of your choice from Joe & The Juice’s coffee & tea menu. So if you sign up at the early-bird price, it’s close to buying yourself a cup of coffee or tea. The first sessions run at one San Francisco store and one Palo Alto store, with groups arriving in time slots across the day.
Early-bird pricing ends this Sunday, November 15 Midnight!
Where this goes
If the feedback is good, we’ll make this a regular thing. We also want to grow it to more cafes and more cities. More people in the pool means better matches for everyone at the table.
Imagine one afternoon a month where you sit down with 3 new people who is highly related with what your focus now over coffee for two hours. By the end of the year, that means 30+ people you’ve had a real deep conversation with.
That’s worth far more than 300 new LinkedIn connections whose names you can’t remember.
So who should come? If you have something urgent on your plate, like getting advice from founders who’ve been there, or looking for a new job, just come. If you simply want to invest in your future network, the way I did when I first landed in the Bay Area knowing no one, come even more. The magic usually happens when nothing is planned.
Coffee chats changed the course of my career more than once. I’d love for them to do the same for you.
See you at the table ❤️
Nicole
Cofounder at Walnut AI