Ask HN: Any large companies/startups built by people met at meetups?

This thought just hit my head. I know a lot of people participate in meet-ups to share, teach, and learn from others, in addition to networking, of course, but I've questioned whether the effort to make it out there has ever been fruitful for a pair or team of founding members of a large company/startup?

There are a lot of tech meet-ups in the SF Bay Area, but are they really worthwhile endeavors? I also wonder how many of the founding members of coveted startups/companies have ever participated in them BEFORE they were successful.

I find myself struggling to balance the networking/learning and the time it takes to get out to these things as opposed to diving into the material I'm already entrenched in.