If you’re trying to meet the right people, a poor strategy is to start where the most people are. It has a low likelihood of meeting the kind of people you would like. A better strategy is to aim for where you will have higher percentages of encountering someone you want to find.
When you meet someone at a “socializing” event there’s presumably nothing in common except the event, the fact that you want to “meet people” and grow a network.
This is why “networking” events suck. Anyone who’s any good would make their friends and then leave the group and leave behind the really strange folk. The same with Sapien, when it’s hyper-focused, being on the fringes is the best. They also had serious scaling issues Tribes don’t scale.
When I was dating in Austin, I used to joke to friends, “My future wife isn’t on 6th street. She’s inside reading a book right now.” It was mostly a way to decline invites, but there was good sense to it. Had I met someone there, we would probably have fights later over how we spent our time. Someone who loves to party would find me horribly boring as I prefer engagement in my bookish hobbies.
Relationships will always take work, and you can never know who and how you might meet. If you have certain needs in mind for the kind of relationships you value, increase your chances of good encounters by being in the kinds of places where people you like will be.