Thanks to everyone who attended the nPost event on Tuesday. We had over 200 people attend, representing more than 85 local startups. It was a great event made even more so by the five companies that demoed! The five companies were RescueTime, Alerts.com, SurveyAnalytics, Athleon and TalentSpring. The companies were spaced around the room and from what I have been able to find out received quite a bit of traffic and interest from the attendees!
This was a new addition for us, as our events are generally focused on pure networking. Adding the demo companies was a great idea that was suggested by Marcelo Calbucci and a few others. We will definitely incorporating the demos into future events. If you would like to apply to demo at a future nPost event you can do so here. It was a great way to feature new and innovative Seattle startups, while also providing yet another catalyst for conversation and networking. We will change a few things (thanks to Brian Dorsey, Marcel Calbucci, Tony Wright, Anders Conbere for their feedback) and change up the setting for the event. We will spread out the companies a bit more and maybe even provide for 360 degrees of room around them. Additional ideas are always welcome.
A number of people have mentioned that they felt that the event had a wonderful vibe. Now, it is very difficult to quantify a vibe, but it can be summed up in the following ways. The simplest of course is whether or not people are having fun, then it gets into how much interaction is happening, nudging then into how many people are meeting new people, and then how many people learn something new and interesting about someone else that could lead to further conversations. One of the most important factors of course, is how comfortable people are introducing themselves to people they don’t know…
To top it all off, Seattle is not known for “networking.” That is where the moderator / host comes in and is crucial to setting the vibe. Their role, while ensuring the event goes off without a hitch is to create an atmosphere where people are encouraged to meet one another and the expectation is set that it will happen. Oftentimes at nPost events, my only real role is to introduce different people to one another. It takes some gentle prodding for some and sometimes you simply have to point out to one another for the networking to begin.
Without a good level of interaction, new people to an event feel as if they are outsiders and even unwelcome, which is unfortunate. I have received quite a bit of feedback about our events that we do a fairly good job of mitigating this! We obviously don’t eliminate it as an issue, but we certainly do everything we can to address it. That being said, I am always open to feedback and ideas.
It takes a lot of work and energy to pull it off, but it is something that I really enjoy doing. That may sound silly, but I have a lot of fun connecting people. Whether for fun, business opportunities, investment, etc. We need more connections in the Northwest and there are a lot of other groups who are doing an amazing job as well; SeattleTechStartups, Lunch 2.0, Poker 2.0, Saturday House, SixHourStartup and many others!
As a side note, did anyone take photos of the event (even before or after)? I always forget to take photos but did take a few as the event was winding down… I really need to work on that!
As an additional side note, we are hosting a pub crawl in Pioneer Square on Monday. Hope you can make it.
Wanted to also thank the event sponsors, who made the entire evening possible:
