This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alena Beliauskaya, a 37-year-old product director based in San Francisco. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Here in San Francisco, it seems like everyone is a startup founder.
I’m the director of product management at Wolf Games, an AI narrative games company, where I work part-time. On the side, I run 12 Scrappy Founders, a founders community in the Bay Area with paid memberships and sponsored events.
When I first moved here for my job in March 2025, I wanted to make friends, so I started going to founder events, but the interactions were so transactional. The first question everyone asks you is, ‘What’s your goal at this event?’ So, I started hosting my own events.
I’m an outdoorsy person and love extreme sports, so I’d plan a weekend hike, a backpacking trip, or dirt biking in Tahoe and invite other founders to join me. Now, I make over $10,000 in revenue each month and take home $2,000 to $3,000 in profit.
I’ve worked in startups for about 15 years and am a founder
It was natural to build my network around other founders. These are the people whose lives and problems I understand best. Finding like-minded people who understand startups and also want to spend Saturday riding dirt bikes in Tahoe is worth more to me than another 100 LinkedIn connections.
At our events, there’s no formal networking, and nobody pitches. People got to know each other by spending eight hours on a trail or learning to ride a motorcycle together.
I started my community group charging $0 and now earn $10,000 in monthly revenue
I didn’t charge at first because we started with hiking, which doesn’t cost anything. But when we started dirt biking, I usually paid out of my pocket and then asked people to reimburse me.
Kevin Mei
This hobby was starting to take up a lot of my free time, and I thought about monetizing it, but I debated at first because I thought that if I turned it into a business, I might stop enjoying myself.
I started thinking about monetization around spring this year, after so many members told me I needed to because they were getting so much value. I started rolling out memberships at the beginning of this summer.
We have over 600 founders in our community
To join, the person’s startup needs to be at the seed, Series A, or Series B stage. Most members have AI startups, because that’s what is happening right now. You also have to be based in the Bay Area, since events are in person.
We’re all connected on Slack, and there are about 20 paid members. There are two tiers right now. General membership is $99 a month, which includes free members-only events, priority access, personalized introductions to founders and investors, and access to the private member platform and Slack community. Our core membership, which is full, costs $3,000 a year, and core members get to work with me on where the community goes next.
We also monetize working with brands that sponsor many of our events. Recently, we partnered with Red Bull. I run paid experiences like hard hikes, overnight camps, dirt-biking, go-karting, pickleball, poker nights, and roundtables.
I’m not planning to make my side hustle a full-time job
I just want to figure out how to grow and nurture this community well and have something joyful in my free time.
I invest much of my free time in this side hustle. Almost every Saturday, I spend the full day outdoors with the founders. Besides that, I spend about three to four hours a day organizing.
My advice to those wanting to start a side hustle is to find something you love. You already spend the whole day at your full-time job, and often don’t have much energy left. Your side hustle should bring you joy, which will motivate you to keep going.
Do you have an interesting side hustle to share with Business Insider? Email editor Manseen Logan at mlogan@businessinsider.com.
