If you’re running a tech community of any scale, you have to build around a certain reality:

Only a few people, founders or investors, will achieve breakout success.

And the majority of the people who RSVP to anything — no matter how curated you think it is — are aspirational.

Not bad. Not unworthy.

It’s just not mathematically likely to happen for them—it being a huge exit or IPO.

You have to design around this. That doesn’t mean you try to cut out the aspirational folks—you just need to figure out ways to scale appropriate accessibility. Every quarter, nextNYC runs hundreds of open office hour meetings with VCs where any founder who has a real startup and doesn’t seem like a problematic nut can get a 20 minute intro to a VC.

We also run a twice a year conference, our Pre-Series A Offsite where hundreds of startups apply to be one of between 50-60 high potential companies likely to raise a Series A. Many of those companies started out with our office hours but only a handful make it to this much more curated event. The Offsite has had companies like Spring Health and Hugging Face in attendance well before their Series A.

I’d never try to tell a sponsor that the companies at Office Hours are the same quality as the companies at the Offsite. That would feel like trying to sell this with a straight face:

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This was taken from the Slush Conference’s website.




            
I’ve never been and I’m sure it’s a well produced conference that is a lot of fun—but the “best” 13,000 people in the tech community is just… not very “best”. 






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I’ve been visualizing the ecosystem as a triangle.

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The Tech Community Reality Pyramid

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It’s the only honest way to explain who actually shows up, who sponsors really want to meet, and how you build something that doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own ambition.

Tier 1 – APEX FOUNDERS & VCs

The red herring — and the necessary illusion

This is the tip of the pyramid. The serial winners. The GPs with names people drop into conversations like Easter eggs. The operators who’ve done it enough times that they can smell chaos the second they walk in the room.

Sponsors see these people and immediately start salivating.

“Can we get Melanie Perkins to switch her banker if we meet her at your dinner?”

No. Absolutely not.
Melanie Perkins already has a banker.
And a tax person.
And a lawyer.
And a person who handles the other person who handles her family office.

She is not switching because you sat next to him over a passed appetizer.

But Apex Founders & VCs are still incredibly valuable — not because they convert, but because they attract the people who do.

A Josh Kopelman sighting brings out all the future Josh Kopelmans…

The rocket ship Associates, the “Little P” Partners, the up-and-coming operators who aren’t famous yet but will be.

Tier 1 is the signal.

Tier 2 is the ROI.

And you don’t get Tier 2 without Tier 1.

Tier 2 – FUTURE STARS

The group sponsors should actually want when they say “top tier”.

This is your CoS, Director, VP crowd — people who’ve actually seen the inside of a fast-growing startup. They know what “good” looks like, even if they weren’t the ones making the final calls. They have taste. They have instincts. They have relationships. They are warm to VCs and, more importantly, VCs are warm to them.

This tier is where sponsorship math suddenly starts working.

Future Stars convert because they’re early enough in their trajectory that they haven’t locked in all of their trusted relationships yet. They’re still choosing their go-to lawyer. Their fractional CFO. Their banking partner. Their payroll system. Their GTM consultants.

They’re the people who — with the right support — become the founders that sponsors will brag about being “early” on five years from now.

But they don’t show up for “big.”
They show up for quality.
High-signal rooms.
High-trust curation.
Events with a point of view.

You earn Tier 2 by earning Tier 1.

That’s the whole game.

Tier 3 – SMART, REAL PROFESSIONALS

This tier is full of people who are sharp, credentialed, and ambitious — they’re just ear