Founder of @partywithalocal - connecting people for nightlife. Currently participanting in Techstars Connection in NYC.

Apr 4, 2016

USA Party with a Local trip — Highlights

I recently returned from a trip to the US (San Francisco & New York), where I attended Launch Festival, met with investors, mentors and startup founders, learnt a hell of a lot and had a generally awesome time.

I also finally solved my own problem with Party with a Local, 10 years on.

USA Trip Highlights:

PWAL Team in SF — Tendelle & Felipe, the remote members of the Party with a Local team, were with me in SF. It was great to spend time with them, talk product, learn at Launch, be at networking events and have a few drinks together (we are ‘Party with a Local’ after all!)

Launch Festival — highlights: everything on Scale Stage where founders & investors shared experiences with actionable advice, getting our own ‘Party Unicorn’ featured on the Launch big screen and Q&A with Jonathan Triest of Ludlow Ventures — in same measures a smart and wacky dude. Would love to connect in the future as I think our team would be a great cultural fit for him and Ludlow.

Makers Beers @ Monkey Inferno — we thought it would be a good idea to organize a drinks with some of the ‘Makers’ on Product Hunt, so we did, and the folks from Blab kindly hosted us at their amazing office called Monkey Inferno — one of the coolest offices I have ever seen!

Met Great people. I am very grateful for the fact that startup folk in the US were so open and generous with their time, advice and introductions. I met some seriously smart and successful people and have a new focus and energy with moving Party with a Local forward.
We co-hosted a Travel Startup Happy Hour with Hitlist (on a secret boat location), which was great to meet some other people in the travel startup scene and share experiences. We also BBQ’d and toasted marshmallows.

Airbnb HQ Tour — we were lucky enough to get a personal tour of Airbnb HQ via a personal intro. It is a very inspiring space and it’s super impressive they have been able to keep their company culture as they have scaled, whilst remembering their scrappy roots.

Growth Happy Hour @ Uber HQ — with Heads of Growth from Uber, Airbnb, Slack, Pinterest & Growthhackers.com — not a bad line-up for a free event with free drinks and ‘Ubeer’! Key learning if I had to choose 1 (there were a lot)— have 1 ‘North Star Metric’ to work towards, that is key to the value of your product, that everyone in the team is focused on. (Side Note: I didn’t make the initial invite list to the event as over 4000 people had subscribed, but I showed up anyway and was able to hack/talk my way in :-))

Party with a Local San Francisco drinks — We organised a group night out with our users at a great dive bar in the Mission, suggested by Brendan, one of our Super Locals — a great night with great people.

TV Show — Met up with the awesome folks behind Argle Bargle films, the production company who’ve made a trailer for a reality TV show based on our concept, aptly titled ‘Party with a Local’. They’re pretty confident/hopeful it’s going to be turned in to a TV show, exciting!