Taking A Community Virtual
Observations from the Club M25 Summit 4.5
For many venture capital firms in the Midwest, March’s Club M25 Summit 4.0 was the last large public gathering before the pandemic hit. Six months later, we reflect on what “community” means to a venture firm and how we’ve tried to foster community on these new terms.
Twice a year, M25 brings together its portfolio companies, investors, and guest speakers for our flagship event — the Club M25 Summit. A high point of the year for the M25 team, the Summit typically boast networking events and over 500 meetings between investors and our portfolio. After the pandemic escalated, the team got to work figuring out how to bring the Midwest’s largest in-person VC event to a virtual setting.
Getting Back to the Basics
We took a long, hard look at the way the Summit’s been structured in the past and knew we had to make some decisions to simplify the schedule. Zoom fatigue, child care, and the desire to not be networking over a computer until 9 pm were all real concerns. We gutted most of our networking activities and socials and settled for a single happy hour.
In its essence, the Summit’s biggest value-add is the 500+ double opt-in meetings we arrange between our portfolio companies and investors. With that in mind, we made this component the main focus and eliminated many of the secondary activities: dinners (an obvious geographic challenge anyway), guest speakers, and other networking meetings. The end result was a seamless transition of those meetings to a virtualized schedule.
Time zones were another factor we took into consideration. For in-person events in Chicago, everyone’s on the same time, but for a virtual summit with portfolio companies stretching across the Midwest and investors calling in from everywhere, it was…as Jimmy Buffet would say…5 o’clock somewhere. We prioritized ending all of our activities for both days by 5:30 in the Eastern time zone to ensure no one was working too late. That may have meant a much earlier day for our friends in other time zones, but the end result was that no one ended up feeling like they were putting in late nights just for the sake of it.
Exploring Our Options
Like any other organizations planning a large scale event in the early months of the pandemic, we dedicated a lot of time to researching various event platforms. The summer months brought new event management platforms to the fore and encouraged existing platforms like Zoom to level up their feature game…fast.
We used the summer as an opportunity to delve deeper into platforms, attending networking events, conferences, and socials with emphasis on any that were being held on a platform that was new to us. It’s important to keep in mind that context matters for what type of event platform to use for your event. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this event series — we’ll break down what we found in our research and what platforms might suit your next event.
For the Club M25 Summit 4.5, we used different event platforms depending on which one served us best for each part of the conference. Switching between them allowed us to optimize the experience for the team and for our guests. What’s more, we were able to maintain the spirit of the event: over 500 one-on-one meetings, a happy hour, and a founder roundtable were still able to happen in a virtualized setting.
Continuously Learning
One of the most exciting lessons learned in our quest to bring the Club M25 Summit to a virtual space is that companies are innovating quickly, and they’re rising to the occasion with our current in-person limitations. As we look to 2021, more players will emerge in this space, and I look forward to giving new platforms a test-run along the way.
While it’s true that research and quick demos can get you pretty far, we found it beneficial to attend events using the platforms we were interested in trying out. Demo environments can be set up to work perfectly, and trying them in a real setting gives you a sense of actual usability. Sometimes a platform might look good in a demo environment while being a user experience challenge in a live setting.
We’re still learning more all the time. As we continue to plan for the future, our events will continue to evolve.
Are you planning a virtual event in VC? Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, which will cover platforms we’ve tried and loved.
