Back in 2023, Matias Gandulfo and Lucas Tepman set out to build the first club in San Francisco devoted to padel, a racket sport that combines elements of tennis and squash. It originated in Mexico and is popular in their native Argentina, attracting millions of players. But potential California landlords for the club thought they were nuts: No way would padel take off in America, too. The two eventually found a space to conduct their experiment: a former airplane hangar on Treasure Island.

“Nobody believed in the idea, of course,” said Gandulfo.

As it turns out, Gandulfo and Tepman were entirely correct about padel’s appeal. Today their Bay Padel now has clubs in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood and in Sunnyvale, with those venues turning into networking and socializing hot spots for founders, VCs and tech executives. Companies like OpenAI, Meta Platforms, Google and Amazon regularly rent out courts for employee events, and Bay Padel hosts about 30 different events a month. It has even gotten caught up in the AI talent wars. “We recently lost our two club managers to AI companies that hired them as chiefs of staff,” said Tepman.