Cultivating Community: Highlights from Our 2024 Founders Summit
At JetBlue Ventures, we understand the importance of fostering a strong community among founders. That’s why we organize our annual Founders Summit — an immersive, day-long event tailored for individuals within our portfolio. This summit reflects our commitment to fostering a supportive environment for founders to connect with each other and with our team.
Being a founder comes with unique challenges and can often feel isolating. The Founders Summit is designed to counter this by offering a space where founders can not only gain insights into the venture capital landscape and industry updates but also forge meaningful connections with like-minded peers. Our goal for this event is to make it enjoyable, educational, and conducive to building relationships among our team and founders.
With the 2024 Founders Summit under our belt, we wanted to share our experience and key takeaways from planning and executing this year’s event.
Getting Ready
Organizing a successful Founders Summit, or any event, requires a carefully planned foundation. This involves securing key details such as the date, location, and venue. These initial elements are crucial in creating an event that stands out and delivers value to participants.
Choosing an ideal date ensures maximum attendance and minimizes scheduling conflicts. For this year’s summit, we strategically opted for Q2 timing — before the summer — to maximize participation. Once the date was finalized, we promptly sent out Save the Date communications, engaging founders and generating excitement early on.
Staying true to tradition, we selected San Francisco as the event location. It made logistical sense since our team is based in San Francisco and many of our founders are local. While we briefly considered alternative locations like New York, we decided to stick with San Francisco for now, with the potential to explore other venues in the future.
With the location set, we turned our attention to selecting a venue. Our new SF office, which we moved into last spring, stood out as a good choice. Hosting the event in our office offered several advantages, including familiarity with the space, cost-effectiveness, and convenient access to AV equipment and office amenities. By utilizing our own space, we created an environment that felt both welcoming and professional.
Driving Engagement
Once the logistical planning was complete, we focused on planning the content for the day. After all, engaging content is what makes an event worth attending. We based this year’s agenda on sessions we’ve run in the past while also incorporating feedback from previous events. By leveraging post-event and pre-event surveys, we ensured that the sessions were relevant and addressed the specific needs of our community.
The agenda included a range of educational sessions such as panels on the state of the VC landscape, a panel with JetBlue leaders, and fireside chats with founders and industry professionals. We also prioritized networking with fellow founders by incorporating dedicated time throughout the day. This included several networking breaks and interactive roundtable sessions designed to spark collaboration and meaningful conversation.
To wrap up the day, we hosted a happy hour at a nearby bar, allowing attendees to unwind, enjoy a change of scenery, and continue to foster connections created during the summit.
Looking Ahead
We had a great time at this year’s Founders Summit! It was a successful day, filled with valuable insights, opportunities for learning, and meaningful connections. As we start to look ahead to next year’s event, these are a few takeaways that will guide our planning:
- Plan in Advance: Securing dates, locations, and venues early on helps ensure a smooth planning process and maximizes attendance. By staying one step ahead, we can continue to provide an enjoyable experience for all participants.
- Utilize Attendee Feedback: Incorporating feedback from previous events can significantly improve the experience and relevance of sessions. By closely listening to our community, we can adapt and refine the content to meet their evolving needs, ensuring the summit remains a helpful resource.
- Be Intentional with the Agenda: Combining educational content with ample networking opportunities creates an event that attendees find informative and enriching. Prioritizing breaks and incorporating different session formats keeps participants engaged and energized throughout the day.
We are excited to build on this year’s success and make the next Founders Summit even more impactful. Thank you to everyone who participated and contributed to making this event a success!
