Mention the topic. "Hey, I'm interested in your experiences adjusting to this startup environment after being at Microsoft. Coffee?" "Hey, I noticed you worked a lot with the devops folks at (place) and I want to learn about that. Coffee?" "Hey, I saw this project you did up on github and I was wondering if you tried neural nets like you mentioned you would. Coffee?"

These signal that you know something about the person besides their gender, and indicate you might actually be interesting to talk to.