Ben

Husband and I tried Miami for 1 year after living in SF and NYC tech scenes. Very top heavy - mostly successful founders and VCs who go to live in their nice houses and aren’t out there being part of the community Tons of larping founders - I got invited to some “female founder dinners” and every single woman showed up dressed for a kardashian wedding and had obviously spent all their time in the salon, not building a startup The grifting is real - we won Miami Hack Week in 2023. The $10k prize money did not exist and it took 6 months to even get a hold of the organizer. He never paid. When the next Miami hack week came around, I tried telling 3 people in the community. Organizer told them I was a liar and that I had been paid. This bullshit would never happen in SF or NYC. Miami hack week seems to have a new organizer now so I’m hopeful it’s being better managed.

We raised a $1.6M pre-seed round! At @getriver_io we're building an events platform for global brands to let members from their community host on their behalf. We're thrilled to partner with @bwcvc, @blockwall_vc, @BFC_VC, @LAUNCH, @veryearlyxyz, and @SolanaFndn for our pre-seed round. 15 months ago I had an insight while building community for The All-In Podcast. I couldn’t find an event platform that would let fans host their own events without data sharing issues and tons of work for me as the organizer. So @Jason suggested we build one. He invested an angle check along with @balajis . We’re super proud of how much we built this past year with just $150k. Our MVP has powered community events for @theallinpod , @myfirstmilpod, @tferriss, @bryan_johnson, @daveasprey, @superteam, @SolanaFndn, @DeGodsNFT, and more. We’ve already had over 2,000 events, produced by 3,000 crowd-sourced hosts with 55k attendees. These community events have happened in over 150 cities around the world. All with a *tiny fraction* of the planning effort of other event platforms because River lets the COMMUNITY produce the events. We’re so excited to build IRL community at a massive scale in a way that’s never been done before and we’d love to have you follow along. Could River help your community? → @tferriss used River to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his podcast by bringing 4k fans together in 150+ cities on a single day → @superteam uses River to host 100+ IRL watch parties during their live stream of the Solana Ecosystem Call *every month* → @twistartups uses River to host Founder Fridays jam sessions each month around the world (founders only!) → @theallinpod had 20+ unofficial side events around All-In Summit in LA and hosts worldwide meetups to celebrate episode milestones. More use cases around paid events and paid membership subscriptions coming soon! BACK TO BUILDING 🚀

River will be a free speech and freedom of assembly platform. I'd love to see all political parties host fundraisers on River. Our distributed community event platform would be perfect for hosting small fundraisers at a massive scale. Can't afford a $10k gala dinner but want more social connection that donating online doesn't give? Enter supporter-hosted fundraisers powered by River. How it works: - Campaigns create a community on River - We spin up hundreds of "save the date" events around the country - Campaign promotes the community link to their followers. - Events are geo located so users always see nearest event to them first - Supporters apply to host and get vetted on River - Events only happen if a supporter steps up to host - Once approved, volunteer hosts take over limited edit access of the event (location, time, capacity) - Events are hosted in a home or local restaurant - All proceeds of paid events go to the campaign (River takes a small cut) - All data is owned and controlled by the campaign Raise money and connect like-minded folks in the community. Face to face is where it's at.