Skip to main content
Business

Treasure Island is the new hot destination for founders to pitch their startups

There's a new scenic hotspot for tech networking — the padel court.

A person plays on a lit blue padel court at night. In the background, a brightly illuminated bridge spans across a body of water.
A racket sport long popular in Latin America and Europe is all the rage among local founders and funders. | Source: Noah Berger for The Standard
Business

Treasure Island is the new hot destination for founders to pitch their startups

There's a new scenic hotspot for tech networking — the padel court.

San Francisco techies’ favorite new hangout spot got its start the way any ambitious venture does: with a drunken 3 a.m. phone call.

Lukas Tepman rang up his friend Matias Gandulfo one morning during the pandemic and asked, “Remember that idea?” 

The two Argentinian transplants had been talking for a few years about opening a padel facility in San Francisco. The sport — not to be confused with pickleball — is a hybrid of tennis and squash, played in an enclosed court. It’s popular in Latin America and Europe.

“Let me sleep!” Gandulfo, a mechanical engineer, replied, hanging up. But a week later, the friends, who grew up playing padel, met to crunch the numbers and scope out possible locations. 

Two men in sportswear lie on a blue padel court, smiling and holding rackets. Yellow balls are scattered around, and a net divides the court.
Bay Padel co-founder Matias Gandulfo, left, and head of growth Pedro Zorraquin. | Source: Noah Berger for The Standard

“It’s pretty evident for any Latino or European who comes to the U.S. that there’s a big sport missing,” said Tepman, who was working in strategy and finance at the time. “As good Argentinians, we had to bring it to the Bay Area.” 

In 2023, the duo unveiled Bay Padel inside a historic airplane hangar on man-made Treasure Island. While the location is unconventional, the bet is paying off, the partners say. The hangar, which was used as a sound stage for “The Matrix” and other big movies, has a nearly 80-foot ceiling, so high that even pros cannot hit it with their lobs. 

A little more than a year later, their flagship facility is becoming a favorite spot for Silicon Valley engineers, founders, and investors. The club offers monthly memberships ranging from $70 to $350 and also houses a coworking space. Members break up work calls and coding sessions with matches — it’s “work from padel” rather than “work from home.”

Bay Padel has gained such prominence in San Francisco’s tech ecosystem that members of Shack15 — an exclusive social club and coworking space — regularly carpool from the Ferry Building to Treasure Island for games.

“It’s a really good place to find capital and network,” Gandulfo said, adding that since padel is played in doubles, it’s inherently social. 

Major tech companies have caught on. Google, OpenAI, and Gusto have rented the club for team offsites. Y Combinator books Bay Padel’s smaller second location in the Dogpatch for weekly founder events.

Antonio Sierra, a former YC founder and executive at Gigwell, a booking management platform, plays two to three times a week at Treasure Island. 

“I thought I already exhausted my network in San Francisco of techie people. But then you come here, and that’s not true,” Sierra said. His company hosted a YC alumni padel event with 70 founders last year at the Dogpatch location.

“It’s like the new golf and the new tennis,” Sierra said. “This is like the baby of both sports.” 

Source: Noah Berger for The Standard

For young professionals who aren’t interested in ambushing investors with elevator pitches on the court, padel has become a way to sweat and socialize.

“You have to play with four people, so you have to talk to people and build community,” said Ana Vaca, who works in digital marketing at a tech company. “Making friends as an adult is hard, and this makes it easier.” 

Gandulfo and Tepman hope padel becomes an activity that is engrained in Bay Area life, as opposed to a fad. 

“A lot of sports are just a fashion that people obsess about for six months, and then they throw their Peloton into the street,” Tepman said. But the two are convinced that their timing is right. 

Padel is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world and has its sights on the Olympics. The game has a cult-like following in Miami; in New York, it can cost up to $200 an hour to book a court. Among the celebrity fans are David Beckham, Serena Williams, and Lionel Messi. 

The image shows multiple people playing indoor pickleball on green courts with nets. It's a large sports facility with seating and a staircase visible nearby.
Bay Padel's founders are planning a Bay Area-wide expansion, with their immediate sights set on the South Bay and East Bay. | Source: Noah Berger for The Standard

Gandulfo and Tepman have raised nearly $3 million from investors, with plans to raise more money and expand their Treasure Island facility to take up the entire hangar. (The other half serves as storage for giant sculptures showcased during the world’s fair.) They’re adding more courts to their Dogpatch location, opening a new site in April next to Google’s campus in Sunnyvale and have their eyes on an East Bay location later this year. 

“In Argentina, it’s been going for the past five decades, and it’s still going strong. Same in Europe,” said Tepman, adding that they aim to encourage more Bay Area women, who account for 35% of their customers, to take up the sport. 

“We think it’s a sport that’s here to stay, like soccer and tennis.”