Welcome to the 27 new members of the TOC community!
I hope all 9656 of you had a great week
In a post from two weeks ago I said this:
So why not host my own events? To keep it simple, I've challenged myself to put together an IRL social for NYC crypto folks by the end of March.
I'll hold myself accountable by sharing a picture before my first April post. I'm not exactly sure about my execution, but I'll figure it out - time constraints will solve everything.
And I did it...this is the last post before April!
First Terminally IRL event ✅
This past Wednesday, around 50 people showed up in midtown to meet other founders, investors, researchers, etc. Yes, the majority of people were crypto but I was surprised by the number of "AI people" that came as well.
The best feedback I got (from multiple friends) was that the quality of people that attended was really high which resulted in a ton of interesting conversations for folks.
Oh...and of course that the Samosa + Diet coke combo hit the spot 😂
~50 people showed up, had some Indian food, and enjoyed the @yapsterxyz office
also made a TG channel (read only) where I’ll be curating any crypto & AI NYC events, just comment below if you want to join
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With that being said, what are my thoughts from hosting this event? And what's next?
I feel like the main takeaway for me was how surprisingly high the value / time metric was.
In all honestly, it didn't feel like I had to do much to set up the event.
Post tweet, gauge interest
Ask Salvino if I can use the Yapster office
Create Luma event, share to people who commented
Share Luma on newsletter
Order food and instacart drinks
Of course, it's worth noting that my distribution on X and this newsletter helped a ton...after posting I just had to copy pasta the Luma event to everyone and that itself led to 100+ signups.
Anyways, my point is that just by doing the steps above, I met a ton of new people I wouldn't have normally come across, had interesting conversations not related to my day to day work, and got invited to a bunch of other events. And the cherry on top is that I've received multiple texts from investors and founders that they'd be happy to use their office and sponsor future Terminally IRL events!
Hosting an event is somewhat like having 50 1:1 coffee chats in parallel. Sure, you probably miss out on some depth but it's way more efficient than doing them independently.
And you can always filter down folks who you want to talk to more in detail in the weeks after the event.
If there was one thing I'd give myself feedback on, it would be to get better at actively listening and not forcing conversation.
Maybe I was a bit nervous about being a host but I noticed myself feeling slightly robotic with my conversations. "What are you working on full time?" "How did you hear about this?" "What's most exciting to you in the space rn?" You get the point. To give myself some credit, I did feel above average pressure to say hi and talk to everyone there which probably led to this. And it's not that my conversations were bad or anything like that, but there's always room for improvement.
I think one thing to keep in mind as I go to more IRL events is aiming to ask at least one question to each person that can't be "copy pasted" in another conversation. It kills two birds with one stone: forces me to be present in the conversation and gives assurance to the person I'm talking to that I'm genuinely curious.
Terminally IRL (NYC events) TG Channel
Okay so what's next? I'll definitely be hosting more events...thinking a monthly cadence is good enough for right now. The second Terminally IRL event will be around Farcon (last week of April).
But, I want to take it one step further. Why not use this opportunity to get started on being an NYC tech event aggregator / curator?
I can start simple - just crypto & AI events. To me, it's clear there's a need for someone to intentionally merge both communities together.
This first event resulted in 100+ e-mails that signed up on the Luma. So yesterday, I sent an e-mail blast out letting people know about my TG channel (read only, so no spam) where I'd curate crypto and AI events going on in the city. And if anyone else wanted to share their own events, I'd be happy to blast it out for them.
If you want to join, feel free to do so here: Terminally IRL Telegram Channel.
In less than 12 hours, the channel already has 140 subscribers and I've gotten one request for an event blast!
I'll keep you all posted on how Terminally IRL is going the next couple of months - my mindset with this is to keep it casual, fun, and see what opportunities come out of it. *insert increase your luck surface area something something quote*
What's top of mind for me?
I know we didn't cover DeAI stuff today but trust me I had a lot of great epiphanies regarding this vertical the past few days and I'm excited to sit on them a bit and share more next week!
Truly, I do believe that these next few months is basically an arbitrage opportunity to get in and dissect the DeAI space before it becomes consensus to do so.
I got a chance to talk to Alexander Long (Pluralis), Vincent Weisser (Prime Intellect), and David Sneider (Lit Protocol) earlier this week - the conversations were super helpful in guiding me on what to focus on next.
In parallel, I'm also applying to give a talk at Farcon and have been figuring out the structure of an 8 minute lightning talk on DeAI. If anyone has ideas for what they think would make for an interesting presentation, please reply to this e-mail...will gladly give you a shoutout if I'm selected!
At a high level, my goal is basically this:
rn I get the appeal at a high level, but the "why AI needs crypto" pitch still isn't hitting for me
I want to craft a story for DeAI that clicks immediately
I've also been spending a ton of time pouring through Dwarkesh's new Scaling book - basically a cheat code to get up to speed on the last 5 years of AI in one place.
best part of the book are all the footnotes. i've been tagging new material as either concepts or papers as I'm asking clarification questions
then at the end of each section, it'll generate a quiz and grade me
That's all for today's post, I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!
See you all next week 🤝
- YB
Collect this post as an NFT.
