It’s 2019 so… PHX Startup Week is around the corner!

Oh my, how the time flies! And the next thing you know it’s a brand new year.

I’m really excited for 2019 for a whole host of reasons. But one of the most exciting is coming on March 4–9. Yup, you guessed it: PHX Startup Week!

In the months since my last big update about PHX SUW, there’s been some tremendous work done behind the scenes. And I’m stoked to get everyone caught up.

The Team

First and foremost, Kate Rogers and I interviewed 80+ candidates to join the Organizing Team. And the result: 43 amazing, rockstar volunteers from the PHX community who are leading the charge on planning and executing this years’ event.

This is by far the largest Organizing Team in PHX SUW history, and we couldn’t be more excited about the diversity of ideas, connections, and outcomes that this team is producing.

Personally, I’m thrilled that every one of these incredible people is on our team. And it’s been amazing watching them come together to put this event on. Major kudos to every one of these people:

Anthony Argenziano

Melissa Balkon

Greg Baynham

Brieanna Bonnstetter

Ron Brien

Ryan Burch

Jack Dorney

Rachel Durkot

Pearl Filani

Adam Gonzales

Kerstin Hadzik

Lloyd Hopkins

Katie Hurst

Savannah Ivanitski

Surya Iyer

Ben Johnson

Ambra Jordan

Alayna Joseph

Hillary Kuenn

Melissa Lautzenheiser

Alex Leiphart

Reid Markel

Austin Martin

Anita Oas

Debra Palacios

Amber Pechin

Alex Quinn

Ryan Quinn

Brian Rensing

Ronald Roberts

Steven Rose

Ryan Sanford

Zachary Schuessler

Forbes Shannon

Reid Simpson

Brian Sowards

Tari Thomas

Alayna Thredgold

Tim Tiller

Rick Tran

Nai Wang

Lauryn Wingate

The Theme

Second on the list was creating a theme to bring our Empowered Diversity vision to life. This year’s theme for PHX Startup Week is:

ThrivePHX

What does this mean?

PHX Startup Week brings together the whole PHX entrepreneurship community for six days of education, connection and support. This community-organized and community-run event is focused on bringing diverse voices to the table and cultivating a community, positioning PHX to thrive.

PHX Startup Week 2019, ThrivePHX, is supported by thousands of entrepreneurs, businesses and service providers in the entrepreneurial ecosystem from across the State, empowering the entrepreneurial spirit.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that ‘a rising tide raises all ships’ from so many in our entrepreneurial community in the last year. I heartily agree. And that’s the same spirit that we want to cultivate during PHX Startup Week by bringing everyone together so we can thrive together.

You’ll see this new theme everywhere this year — the website, signage, shirts, social media, etc. So if you see a new graphic with ThrivePHX emblazoned on it, you can rest assured that it’s one and the same as PHX Startup Week.

Dates & Venues

And we’ve also secured dates and venues for the event. Here they are in all their fabulous glory:

• Monday, March 4th and Tuesday, March 5th will be at Mesa Arts Center in downtown Mesa.
• Wednesday, March 6th and Thursday, March 7th will be at Skaled Sandbox in uptown Phoenix. (Skaled Sandbox is a new venture providing a tech makerspace for software and technical startups in the Phoenix area. We’re stoked to have them as our hosts as they launch their new space in Phoenix.)
• Friday, March 8th and Saturday, March 9th will be at Park University in downtown Gilbert.

Wait — six days?!

Yes, you read correctly: we’re expanding this year’s event to SIX days to include a Saturday in the mix. We are hopeful this allows for even greater diversity of attendees — including those who in years past may have found it difficult to take time off during a work day to attend PHX Startup Week.

I could not be more excited about these venues, each of whom brings a unique perspective to our cities’ startups both through their city locations as well as their own industry focuses.

New Content Verticals

Speaking of industries…

We’ve expanded the industry-specific content verticals to more than 13 this year! As you’ll see from the list, this includes stand-bys from previous years (like Blockchain and SaaS) as well as new categories (like Finance and Real Estate). Our vision is to see a wider diversity of content, geared for many different verticals — both tech- and non-tech-centric — to better serve the wide diversity of startups and entrepreneurs that call PHX home.

Here’s the full list* of vertical tracks:

• Blockchain
• Education
• Emerging Technologies
• Finance
• Food & Wellness
• International
• Med-Tech
• Product/Manufacturing
• SaaS
• Social Entrepreneurship
• Sports Entrepreneurship
• Real Estate
• Retail/Ecommerce

Back in December, we opened applications for speakers to apply for our available slots at this year’s event. Lo and behold, we had an overwhelming response, with more than 170 video applications! Our programming team has been extra busy assessing each candidate and is currently in process of making final selections and building our detailed agenda for the week. We cannot wait to let you all in on who’s going to speaking this year. There’s going to be some really inspiring and practical content that speaks to our communities’ needs!

(* We’re reserving the right to change these vertical tracks as we finalize speakers and sponsors. But I expect the final list will be very close to these based on our current agenda buildout.)

Sponsors

In the last few months we’ve talked to many organizations about partnering and supporting PHX Startup Week. Many of those talks are still in the works (and we aim to start even more conversations in the coming weeks) but we’re super excited to announce our first round of official sponsors:

• Hool Coury Law
• WeWork
• CHASE for Business
• LISC Phoenix
• LeadMD
• Graymatter Ventures
• Techstars
• StartupAZ Foundation

If you or someone you know is interested in support PHX Startup Week with a cash or in-kind sponsorship, we’d love to chat. Please reach out via our website, here: http://phxstartupweek.com/sponsor/

Ticket Sales

Okay, so here comes the biggest change for the event this year: we’re going to charge for tickets.

I know this could be a challenge for some. Charging could mean making the event less accessible to some people. And so we carefully considered this option and a lot of ways of implementing it before moving forward.

The idea of charging for this event has been in the works for quite some time. It was discussed at length in the planning for the 2018 event and became a much bigger point of discussion afterwards with the Core Organizing team. And we learned over this last year that many Startup Weeks have changed or are considering changing to a paid-ticket model. And the response from communities in those cities that have chosen to charge has been largely positive. As we were planning for the 2019 event, the discussion came up again with the following points in favor of the idea:

1. Charging for tickets creates a more real value on attending the event.
   In past year’s we’ve seen tremendous interest in the event, with last year seeing our highest registration count of 6,100 registrations. However, when it comes time for people to actually show up, the numbers are quite different. We typically see a 50–60% attrition rate. That means that of those 6,100 people who got a free ticket, only about 2,700 actually showed up for some portion of the event.
   For many (including speakers, organizers, sponsors, vendors, and attendees) that’s a bummer. This results in reduced opportunities for our communities to meet, hear from one another, learn, and grow together. And ultimately it means our even less represents all entrepreneurial communities that call PHX home.
   By charging for registration, we’re placing a real value on attending the event. It doesn’t have to be a high dollar amount (and you’ll see we’ve made them ridiculously cheap compared to any other event of this size) but any amount gives this event a different level of value and creates buy-in for everyone.
2. Charging for tickets creates sustainability.
   This is a super practical point and I’ll be brutally honest: starting with zero dollars in the bank the day after the event, year after year, really sucks for organizing the next year’s event.
   Our goal this year is to not use the revenues gained through ticket sales for this year’s event but to save them as a seed fund for the 2020 event. This is very possible since each year all monies needed to put on the event have been fully raised through sponsorships, and our goal (and budget) is the same this year.
   By doing this, we provide a much-needed kickstart for planning and organizing the 2020 event and putting the next organizing team ahead of schedule. I cannot tell you how excited (and a wee bit jealous) I am to have this potential for the next Organizing Team.
   Also in favor of this point on sustainability: by putting a real value on attendance, we gain a more accurate picture as to the number of people who actually attend each year (rather than just say they’ll attend but don’t). This provides more accurate data for planning and executing in each following year. Boom, bonus points.
3. By keeping prices low, we retain accessibility.
   So this isn’t exactly a point for charging in the first place, but as we discussed as a team (and collected data through our survey to the community this last fall) we came the conclusion that the ticket price must be kept low. We really do want to make the event as accessible as possible. And the only way to do that and still charge something for attendance is to keep the prices to a minimum. As you’ll see in the coming days as we announce initial Super Early-Bird prices as well as the full retail prices, we’re keeping them extremely affordable. And I’m not even talking about prices competitive with other events of this caliber and scale — because the point isn’t to drive record revenues from ticket sales but to simply create a better sense of value for attending.
4. By providing scholarship opportunities, we retain accessibility.
   Another way we’re working to retain accessibility to the event is to provide scholarships for attendees who might not otherwise be able to attend. We’re currently working with Co+Hoots Foundation to put together a robust scholarship program. We’ll be announcing more details in the near future as we work further with them to iron them out. So stay tuned (and get signed up for email updates)!
5. By providing tiered pricing for earlier purchases, as well as per-venue packages, we retain accessibility.
   We know from past years’ attendance data that not everyone can (or wants) to attend the entire week. And we also know that many are ready now to get registered and put the event on their calendars. So we’re providing two ways to save some money (even though ticket prices are already insanely low). We hope that both of these provide additional accessibility for as many people as possible:
   Full-week, Super-early Bird pricing: In just a few days we’ll be announcing Super-Early Bird ticket sales. These will be offered at a very steep discount from the full-price tickets. These prices won’t last forever and we’ll have another round of graduated pricing leading up to the event. Stay tuned.
   Venue-specific tickets. You’ll have the option to purchase a full-week pass that gets you access to all venues and events. Or you can snag yourself a venue-specific pass that gets you access to all the content hosted for the two days at that specific venue.

In light of these thoughts — along with the community responses we collected from our October survey — we decided to move forward with paid ticket sales this year. I’m hopeful this will work out to be a win-win-win(-win?) for everyone: a more sustainable, engaging, and valuable event for years to come.

So, we’re not quite ready to announce ticket prices…otherwise I’d just do it here. But I can tell you that no matter what package you choose, you’ll not be paying much — and much less than any comparative event in terms of length, quality of content, and networking.

UPDATE: Tickets are now available! phxstartupweek.com

What’s Next?

There’s still a ton of work to be done to pull together the final details for the event. We’re working right now to solidify the schedule, announce keynote speakers, finalize our MentorConnect mentors, lock down additional sponsors, and plan out daily happy hour events.

And of course, we’ll need tons of community support to help volunteer the week-of and get the word out between now and then!

If you’re interested in volunteering during the week to help with registration, be a room host, or help setup or teardown we’d love to hear from you. Please fill out the volunteer sign-up form.

And — at the risk of repeating myself — if you’re looking for a way to get your organization involved and show your support for innovation and entrepreneurship in our cities, please consider joining us as a sponsor: http://phxstartupweek.com/sponsor/

If you’d like to reach out with questions or comments, please feel free to reach myself and Kate Rogers at hello@phxstartupweek.net

— Mike Jones, co-chair of PHX Startup Week