Hey! Christine and I (monty) run deeptechcircle.co. I’ve been building communities over the past 5 years, and in the past year set up a health tech founder community with 350+ Series A onwards founders and investors. More context on me: I founded pearltalent.com and used to invest into deep tech companies as part of julian.capital, where I launched Seed Checks, deepchecks.vc, and an 600+ person LP GP conference called Carveout. I

I’d love to partner on creating more curated experiences for founders and investors, where people feel seen as people rather than objects to get an ask out of. My principles for hosting:

• No one wants another 350 person happy hour. We’re all tired of events where you have multiple 10 minute conversations where all you ask is: “so what do you do?”, and you notice the person in front of you is already looking behind your back to maximise their networking. Sponsors are a logo on the screen no one cares about and attendees feel drained.
  • I prefer to host smaller events where people feel seen for who they are, and you’re not scrambling to maximise meeting a ton of people. I want people to feel that “success” is having one, deep hour long conversation with one or a few folks that gets them to know someone more deeply.
• Startup events are like newsletters: you read two shitty ones in a row, you churn. When you go to two events in a row where you have either 1) networky conversations that feel like you’re trying to take something or 2) you meet people who are in completely different stages so there’s not much in common to speak about
  • I curate the room so that if I’m bringing in GPs at firms, everyone else is a GP or principal as well. If we’re doing Series A founders, I’m not bringing in a ton of pre-raise folks in who won’t have much to talk to their about. For business focused events: founders and investors like to hang out with other people at the same stage as them for them to feel like there’s good curation AND so there’s less pitching going on because everyone knows that they’re on the same level.
• Depth compounds. We’re so over-stimulated with the number of events going on and the number of shallow conversations we have. People don’t care enough about seeing a sponsors name on a banner or screen once.
  • I like to build events with a rotating crew of people and sponsors I then put into a community centred around a practice, in this case, deep tech (even though it is a broad category, people in it at least have more in common than a robotics founder and a CPG founder would). I’ve found a recurring events series with a partner, where they have folks from their team come in and get to know the group well, results in far higher conversion for sponsors than one-off massive events where no one cares about the sponsors.
• No pitching. The worst dinners I’ve been to are the ones where everyone wants something from the other people, and as a result everyones puts on a mask and talks about how well they’re doing. My favourite dinners have been the ones where it’s laughs all around and people end up connecting afterwards because they want to hang out with the other people there as people first.
  • I’m pretty clear when inviting people that I’m not hosting a demo day. I’m hosting a dinner or experience for people to build longer term relationships and I try to curate questions for folks to answer at the start to set the tone (e.g. what’s a childhood dish you loved that you don’t get enough of?)
• You need movement in events. I’ve enjoyed 2 types of events less: 1) ones where the room is SO packed you can’t have a good convo with anyone because net new people keep coming in and 2) ones where you’re stuck at a dinner table the whole night.
  • When I host dinners: it’s always in a private room. We start off with folks mingling and walking around and then getting dinner, then hanging out again.
  • When I host experiences: they’re always experiences where it’s not too hard (e.g. pottery requires too much concentration) and has down time in between to give people space to chat (e.g. in between paintball games)

Some of the Events I’ve Hosted

🎯 Paintball for Robotics Founders

We went out to Coney Island and brought robotics founders together for the afternoon across capture the flag and a ton of other games. We had space on the car ride over to get to know each other, in between games, and right after while eating pizza.

🎨 Founders Painting Night

This was a slower creative evening where we gave everyone canvases and had paint and sip. It was an easy way for founders to approach new people by commenting on their paintings and leave with something to hang on their walls.

🥩 All-You-Can-Eat A5 Wagyu Dinner

I hosted this at NikuX. We got a private room and had AYCE lobster and a5 wagyu with chefs cooking in front of us.

🍽️ Filipino Kamayan Dinner

I got a group together for a traditional feast served on banana leaves. We eat with our hands which is phenomenal way to remove pretense. You can’t be uppity about your startup while stuffing your face with rice.

My Events Wishlist

Some of the experiences I’m thinking about that I’d love to co-create with you! I’m game for crazy suggestions too. This is of course outside of the private dinners I host every other month for the community similar to the NikuX wagyu dinner.

NYC Events

• [ ] Founders Poker or Mahjong Night — partner with Green Tile to teach people how to play mahjong