西雅图最大创业峰会创始人：大厂能力是创业的“反向筛选器”

Ben from acquired said uh if you look at the capital and the number of companies in Seattle compared to Bay Area is like 1%. Yeah. If you are so good at working

1%. Yeah. If you are so good at working at a big tech, you are probably not going to be very good.

>> Right. Right. It's it's almost like it's anti-selective. Right. I hope no one

anti-selective. Right. I hope no one here is on one of these angel investing groups because I'm about to say some mean things.

>> The angel investing groups are typically bad.

>> Hi, welcome. We have a very special guest here. You started one of the

guest here. You started one of the biggest conference in Seattle for AI and for startup. I went to your event last

for startup. I went to your event last year. How many people went to?

year. How many people went to?

>> Uh last year we had um just under 600 people.

>> Yeah. So we had about 900 people sign up and then about 600 people show up.

>> And how much was the ticket?

>> Uh the tickets were I think there were 250. Uh they might have been 300

250. Uh they might have been 300 something like that. Yeah.

>> Yeah. And how many companies >> the attendees that came there were from 467 different companies but I think we had only 50 to 60 uh companies like

exhibit or present or or >> it feels more than that like the entire exhibit hall was was packed.

>> Yeah. There was about 50ish tables in the exhibit hall.

>> Um and then uh the attendees like you know when people sign up when people buy tickets we asked them like you know what company are you from? And so we had 467 different responses there. So that means that most companies only sent like one

person there. It was a big gathering. I

person there. It was a big gathering. I

was really happy to to kind of see it come out.

>> And you have some like prominent uh guests.

>> Yeah. So um last year we had one of the VPs from Amazon. We had an executive director from JP Morgan. Um we've had some SVPs from other these companies JP

Morgan. and then some founders from

Morgan. and then some founders from companies like you know like static uh and uh ingest and GMI and Arise. There

was a lot of different uh companies that were there as well. This year we'll have the CVP of AI from Microsoft um Dan Lewis who was the founder of Convoy which reached like a $3 billion

valuation here in Seattle. I'm not

exactly sure how they got acquired but now he's at Microsoft >> an event like we'll show some videos and so people can get a visualized impression of how big it is and how lively it was.

>> That is actually one of my questions. I

have two main questions.

>> Two main questions.

>> Yeah. The first main question is why did you choose uh this career or this path choose to do events? Okay.

>> Because your background was technical, right? Yeah.

right? Yeah.

>> You were software and then machine learning and then you were doing conference. Yeah. Yeah. That was a very

conference. Yeah. Yeah. That was a very strange uh transition.

>> Yeah.

>> But I'm curious about that and why you choose to do this full-time.

>> Yeah.

>> And then the second question for the audience is like an event like this is big if it's in Silicon Valley but it's not the biggest.

>> No.

>> Here is like there is no second compared to your event like it's like 50 people and your event.

>> My question is people consider Seattle as a tech hub. Like there are a lot of tech talents >> but the capital and the amount of startup is like 1%. Yeah. Compared to

the Bay Area. Yeah.

>> And uh want to get to a vantage point of why that is.

>> Yeah. We'll start with the first one.

>> Why do events? Uh I have been working on AI and computer computer vision for a while like software development. I

started working at IBM when I was 16 >> during college or >> during high school. Um I worked there for a few years. I went to college. I

did research in college on machine learning on um computer vision and big data. I mean like it was cool. It was

data. I mean like it was cool. It was

interesting to see you know I published some papers so I got to speak at conferences. I think I really liked

conferences. I think I really liked going to the conference. I really liked speaking at the conference. I really

liked meeting people who were like doing cool stuff there. I spoke at a conference one of the I conferences big data. I thought it was fun. It was

data. I thought it was fun. It was

interesting. It was cool to meet people.

That was actually how I got my first uh job out of college. I thought IBM was pretty boring to work at. Sorry if you work at IBM. And so I was looking for another job and I was able to get an interview offer from someone who worked at Amazon who came to one of my talks.

So I went to Amazon.

>> Which year was this?

>> 2018.

>> 2018.

>> So people were still hiring like right out of conference. Like if you speak at a conference, they'll just give you an offer.

>> I don't know if they just gave me an offer, but it was a very short interview process. Actually, this was like one of

process. Actually, this was like one of the things that was like really interesting for me when I was at Amazon is because everyone who's a software engineer at Amazon talks about how the interview process is so like annoying.

is so grueling. I was like I had one 45minute interview with this guy who was just like yeah okay whatever man and I was like okay >> probably because of the conference probably because of the conference but I think they still hire like research

scientists and people like that out of the conferences anyway so I I went to Amazon I worked on their AutoML program it's a way to keep machine learning models accurate over time during the pandemic I was kind of bored and I was like you know it would be interesting to

work in startups um but during the pandemic it was really bad because there was no events happening at all so I helped do some online events >> we were working AutoML. You were working on the engineering side of AutoML.

>> Yeah. Building the infrastructure, >> but you were not working the conferences so far.

>> Oh, so I did participate in events in Amazon. So, Amazon has what are they

Amazon. So, Amazon has what are they called? Affinity groups. That's what

called? Affinity groups. That's what

>> affinity groups. I did some some events.

I put some things together like >> internal >> internally, right? And then I started uh going to other events externally here that I could find. I went on meetup. I

found like a bunch of events, stuff like that mainly as a way to go like find friends.

>> Mh. And then uh the pandemic happened.

Pretty much all the professional events died down. They were all online. Um and

died down. They were all online. Um and

it was just kind of boring. But uh I wrote a bunch of tutorials. One of the questions that I got a lot when I was at Amazon and even after I left Amazon was just like, "How do I start a career as a

software developer?" And I was really

software developer?" And I was really bad at answering this question because I had like a weird career. I just a very different unique career path. M

>> but one of the things I would tell people to do all the time is like do projects, do hackathons, do these things, put them online. And then people would ask me, well, where can I do hackathons >> and what what projects should I do? But

there weren't any hackathons in Seattle.

Um, and there's not a lot of tech events in Seattle. And so, uh, I was like,

in Seattle. And so, uh, I was like, well, I like these things. People keep

asking me about these things. Maybe I

should start some. So, I started doing some just for fun, like a couple in 2022. And then I joined AI camp to help

2022. And then I joined AI camp to help them run some of their tech events. And

then I was hired to do Devril at a company called Zillis, which is a vector database company. So this was like super

database company. So this was like super popular in like 2022, 2023.

>> Mhm.

>> Uh they were like, "Oh, we need someone who can grow our mind share among developers." I helped them build the

developers." I helped them build the developer community from zero to about like 5,000 people. Your credential of doing this is just like you were just doing engineering job and then you did

some internal affinity events at Amaz >> and you start get interested. How do you learn how to do >> I wrote a bunch of content around how to build projects? Well, I was writing

build projects? Well, I was writing mostly around natural language processing. So even though I did my

processing. So even though I did my research in computer vision, I have more much more interest in like natural language processing. I think part of

language processing. I think part of that is just due to the fact that like language is like really a weird thing to me is the sense that when I was young, I learned Chinese. I spoke Chinese and

learned Chinese. I spoke Chinese and then as I grew older I learned English and now I can't really speak Chinese so language is like a weird thing and so I was like oh this is kind of cool. So I

did research into that. I built some projects around it and then I shared my projects. I built a lot of projects. I

projects. I built a lot of projects. I

put them online. They were really popular. At one point I think my website

popular. At one point I think my website was getting like a couple hundred thousand views a month at one point.

>> Well uh and then I I shut it down because I had work and other things to do. But uh they found me through my

do. But uh they found me through my website and then they were like well we need someone who does this exact thing.

This is fun. I like doing this stuff. So

I started doing that and then I did more and more events and less and less tutorials. I was doing events that were

tutorials. I was doing events that were quite big. Even in SF there were like uh

quite big. Even in SF there were like uh commonly like 150 people. We packed out the room. We got in trouble with the

the room. We got in trouble with the venue because they said there was too many people and we got in trouble with the attendees because there were people waiting outside and they were like the venue is not letting us in. But anyway,

they were very popular. Eventually I had enough companies contact me that were like we want you to help us do events.

And then I was like okay well maybe I'll just do an events business. And so I started that in 2024. We did a year of events. The first year was like slightly

events. The first year was like slightly under 7,000 people. We did a lot of online events. We did maybe 23 inerson

online events. We did maybe 23 inerson events. And then last year we did maybe

events. And then last year we did maybe like 30. So more than two a month. This

like 30. So more than two a month. This

year we're doing less. I'm shifting the focus. So we did a lot of these events.

focus. So we did a lot of these events.

And then what I found is that like actually the highest value events are like more curated events. So, not just like events where you kind of like open it up to the public, but events where

you are more selective about who goes, these events become very high values because for the people who go, like let's say you're like a senior engineer or you're like a staff engineer, like a

director of engineering, you're going to find much more value out of going to an event where everyone else is around that level >> than you will to go to an open event where you'll have a ton of like people

who are inexperienced in their careers and things like that.

>> Yeah. But I started noticing that last year. Uh we did a few mini conferences

year. Uh we did a few mini conferences to test it out and these mini conferences even were getting actually more signups than our open events. So we

were getting to the point where our mini conferences were getting like 600 700 signups.

>> So by being selective, you actually got more interest.

>> Yeah, it was really weird. It was really interesting for me to see this. And so

then I started to do that. So this year, you know, our focus is mainly like finding like the people who are like pretty experienced and learning to implement AI in their companies. And

then we focus on AI builders.

>> There you go.

>> And then we focus on getting companies uh that are building innovative technology like very early stage startups, you know, seed stage, preede uh as well as like the growth stage companies that have been doing this for

a while. Um and even like, you know,

a while. Um and even like, you know, bigger companies like data bricks or AWS or whatever. Mhm.

or whatever. Mhm.

>> Um, and we focus on having these companies come. That That's the long

companies come. That That's the long answer. The short answer is it was an

answer. The short answer is it was an accident. I just liked doing it and I

accident. I just liked doing it and I just kept doing it.

>> What do you like particular about >> doing events first? Like uh is it a viable business?

>> It's okay. Like it's not scalable, but it's viable. Like you can be a small

it's viable. Like you can be a small business owner. You can live a

business owner. You can live a comfortable life. You won't make

comfortable life. You won't make millions and millions of dollars doing it. But it's nice. It's fun. That's so

it. But it's nice. It's fun. That's so

you can make like a couple million from this.

>> If you do the big conferences really well, you can make a good amount of money, right? So like the Linux

money, right? So like the Linux Foundation, for example, well, they make their money off donations, but they also make a lot of money off conferences. I

mean, that's different. They charge like $1,500, $2,000 a ticket. I charge like $500 a ticket, right? Because I'm not as big as a Linux Foundation. Um, but like if you get to that point, sure, like their revenue this year, last year was

like $190 million. I think if you do it well, you can make a couple million. I

also run a Reddit community. I have a paid community. We help people do PR,

paid community. We help people do PR, help people with career development, all this kind of stuff. Uh I think overall this year we'll do like maybe 1.5, maybe two. I don't think we'll get up to two.

two. I don't think we'll get up to two.

We might. It's like okay as a business.

The the events themselves, if you get really good sponsors and you do enough events, you can do like 500,000. Yeah.

>> Not bad moneywise.

>> Not bad.

>> Yeah. And uh then what what do you like particularly? The reason I ask is I went

particularly? The reason I ask is I went to a lot of offline events and I do feel like they're special. I cannot

articulate precisely why what I failed, but I do feel >> Yeah. So, here's what I think. Online

>> Yeah. So, here's what I think. Online

events work for very specific things.

Online hackathons work if you give people like something to build for and something to build with >> and like a reason to do it. and but

they're not like quite the same as like an inerson event because in person um you just have more energy for me. It's

more like it feels nice to be there because you get to be >> around people who at least have a few shared interests and >> have a similar mindset because who's

going to go to these events? It's people

who like read the title. Yeah. It's

people who read the title, they read the description, they're just like you.

They're like, "Oh, I want to go hear about somebody talk about AI for an hour a day, whatever." So, it's like you find people like that and then you get to be around those people.

>> Yeah. Reminds me of uh like someone wrote about a conference or a seminar like the point for him to go to this event is to see himself in a parallel uh

life. He named like 10 different people

life. He named like 10 different people that he remembered their career path.

Yeah. And it was almost like him living different life and he got to experience that.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. And actually the I also think the experience is quite uh valuable. Maybe

tech people do not think about that that way. We talk about the live cohort

way. We talk about the live cohort versus self-paced version of of course right and I had the like a lot of trouble explaining why there's a price difference. Sure

difference. Sure >> because it's the same content >> until I find this analogy. It's like

selling record versus selling a concert.

>> Oh yes. The concert experience is just more immersive. Yes.

more immersive. Yes.

>> You have higher completion and you just feel better going to a concert.

>> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of it is like a feeling kind of thing which uh for someone who's worked in tech for so long, for like someone who's like works on like computers and stuff like that,

it's so hard to explain. It's good

because it's like a feeling that you get from going there.

>> Yeah.

>> But this like Yeah. Carnival for tech people.

>> It's a carnival for tech people. I love

it. It's a trade show, you know. I don't

know if you went to like the Amazon event offsite where they invited Kitty Perry.

>> Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, that. Yes, I was there during that. Yeah.

>> Yeah. I was there too. But the funny thing is Kitty Perry showed up and people were Yeah. And then Bezos showed up. People were Yeah.

up. People were Yeah.

>> It's like that.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> You got to see a lot of AI experts and like big name in your field and you got to talk with other like people who are share the same interest. It's actually a very good experience. Nice. Thank you

for doing that. Now it's a good transition to the second question. So

people have trouble in Seattle like uh doing startups or like working at a startup. A lot of people are frustrated

startup. A lot of people are frustrated with big tech. They want to start something.

>> Yeah.

>> They want to find capital. They want to get education. They want to know other

get education. They want to know other people, meet other people who like to work in startups. Uh but then there's none. And this is actually from your

none. And this is actually from your event last year. Yeah. uh Ben from acquired said uh if you look at the capital and number of companies in Seattle compared to Bay Area is like 1%.

>> Yeah.

>> Versus like if you look at the total amount of tech employees is probably like one to two or one to three maybe.

>> Yeah.

>> Um okay. So I I've I've given this a lot of thought because I go to the Bay Area all the time. As a total aside, I took a trip around the country in 2021. I ended

up choosing to live in Seattle. And part

of the reason why I ended up choosing to live in Seattle was because I felt like there was more opportunity to make a difference here in Seattle as opposed to in the Bay because there's already so much going on there.

>> That's like Madona's >> I mean yeah Mrona says that and it's true like you know Madrona has delivered great returns for their investors. They

just raised $750 million fund and hopefully that translates into you know more startups more money in Seattle. Now

of course they also invest in the Bay but primarily they do try to invest mostly in the P&W. I think part of it is this. The people who are tech workers in

this. The people who are tech workers in Seattle are most often immigrants. They

are also people who probably have the most experience working at a big tech company.

>> True.

>> Whereas the Bay Area has benefited from this compounding over time of people moving there to do startups. There's a

higher percentage of engineers in the Bay who have this startup experience.

>> You've worked at a big tech company.

You've worked at a startup. you know

that they're very different.

>> It's almost like antifactor like if you are so good at working at a big tech you are probably not going to be very good.

>> Right. Right. It's it's almost like it's anti-selective. Right now of course

anti-selective. Right now of course there are people who are at big tech companies who can do startups and typically we would call these people like entrepreneurs. Right. So these are

like entrepreneurs. Right. So these are like the really strong like technical project manager type people who can be like here's a project here's why we should do it and here's what we're going to need to do it. That's actually what

it takes to start a startup >> is that you have to have an idea of what you want to do. You have to know what problem it solves. You have to know who you're going to sell to and you have to know how to get the resources to do it.

Unless you're one of these people in a big tech company, it's going to be very hard to start a startup. You didn't

mention you need to know how to do it.

>> Yes, you know how to do it.

>> But but actually I think most people know how to do it once they face a problem. Like we are so good at solving

problem. Like we are so good at solving problems. Yes.

>> Like engineer like give a problem. Okay,

I know how to solve it. The entrepreneur

needs to know the things and they can always hire people who knows how to solve a problem.

>> Yeah, I think actually in this age you probably just need to know how to do it.

You can't just hire people who know how to do it. I I don't know. We're in a weird transition timeline because of the whole AI stuff, >> but you need to at least know what problem you're solving. And I think that's like a unique

>> skill that you don't pick up a lot in big tech. Like when I was like working

big tech. Like when I was like working on projects at you know IBM or Amazon it was like mostly like you know my manager was like here we as a team need to build

this here are the different parts >> pick what part you want to build. And so

learning the entrepreneurship skill set learning like the whole startup thing was very different because when I worked in a startup it was much more like here's this goal we need to achieve. We

have no idea what to do. We have no idea what the mechanisms are to achieve this goal. go figure it out. So that gives

goal. go figure it out. So that gives you a much much different perspective.

You have to approach things in a different way. So I think part of it is

different way. So I think part of it is like this mindset is not something that people uh who work in big tech companies get a lot.

>> Now of course there are people who are just creative type people who are able to do this but I think there's a lower proportion of people that are exposed to this mindset and this skill set in the Seattle area. So that's one

Seattle area. So that's one >> talent. I guess

>> talent. I guess >> I wouldn't call it talent. It's just

like whether or not you're exposed to this way of thinking. Yeah,

>> I think the talent is definitely here.

Nobody makes it to like senior engineer, staff engineer, director level without having a lot of skill.

>> Oh yeah. I I think when I say talent is not competence or are you smart, it's uh the composition of talent.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Composition of talent. I

totally agree. Right. So part of it is people just aren't exposed to this. They

don't know if they like it. They don't

know how to do it. And then of course there's the money issue. Building

startups requires a lot of money. And

there's a lot of money in Seattle.

There's the people who are now retired from working at Microsoft. the Amazon

people, the Boeing people, these people all have lots of money, but don't understand investing either. I think I mean part of this is like, you know, at a certain stage in your life, you tend

to want a more stable investments. Uh

depending on how much money you have and what your risk tolerance is and what your family makeup is, blah, a lot of different factors. But most people here

different factors. But most people here like to have stable investments and they put a small amount of money into angel investing. There's bunch of angel

investing. There's bunch of angel investing groups. I hope no one here is

investing groups. I hope no one here is on one of these angel investing groups because I'm about to say some mean things. Um the angel investing groups

things. Um the angel investing groups are typically bad, let's say. So I'll

give you an example. There's like

Caretsu. Ketsu charges you some couple thousand a year to be part of it. Blah

blah blah blah. And then they have not made any good investments. Like this

angel investing community's returns compared to like a VC's returns.

>> Even stock market return.

>> It's just not good. They're they're

they're good at investing like a few things and some things they do have really good returns, but pretty much more than 99% of the time it's worse than if you were to like just write like a check into a VC. I guess part of it is

also it's hard to write checks into VCs because how many VCs are in Seattle?

>> Madrona, which doesn't take any new LPs by the way, they've only taken three new LPs in their last fund. Um, and all of these LPs were LPS to the tune of tens of millions. So unless you have tens of

of millions. So unless you have tens of millions of dollars to throw, you know, you can't do that. And then Fuse. Fuse

actually does take investments from tech people. Um, and then these are pretty

people. Um, and then these are pretty much the two big ones. There's like

Ascend, there's Anthos, there's bl there's a few others, but these are like the two bigger firms here. So I think investment is another side of it. The

Bay Area's investment thesis is also different because they're kind of more familiar with the risk appetite of VCs.

There's a lot of VCs in the Bay that that know that your average loss rate is like 90% of your companies go to zero and then 10% go return everything and so they know this game and so they don't

think too much about whether or not this investment is going to work which is a common thing that people do here in Seattle. Of course you have to think

Seattle. Of course you have to think about it. you can't just like throw

about it. you can't just like throw money at everything, but uh the Bay Area tends to have more experience investing in this and so there's much more people who have money and institutions that

have money to throw at this. This just

isn't as common in Seattle. So, I'm also I'm raising a venture fund so I'm trying to kind of bring this thought style of investing uh into Seattle. Then I think there's just like the risk tolerance

like doing a startup is pretty risky in general. If you, you know, work at a big

general. If you, you know, work at a big tech company, if you work at Microsoft, you work at Amazon, you make $300,000 a year, $400,000 a year. If you work at Microsoft, I've heard that your work

life balance is pretty good.

>> 10 hours per week.

>> Yeah, I've heard it's pretty good. You

make $400,000 a year. Are you really motivated to go do a startup where you're going to work 80 hours a week and maybe make $100,000 with the off chance that 1% chance that you might make 100

million? Unless you're like 22 years

million? Unless you're like 22 years old, it's pretty unlikely you're going to do that. But most of the time, you know, once you hit your 30s and 40s, you're making a good amount of money, don't have to work a lot, why do it? So,

I think that's part of it, too.

>> Yeah, I don't think startup is for everyone. And uh the expected return

everyone. And uh the expected return definitely the big tag is, >> but I think it's also changing. The

balance is changing. So I I think the AI the AI boom is really interesting in this sense because I think what it does is it kind of gives you the ability to take a higher number of risks without

having the same cost.

>> I'll give you an example. I built the Seattle Startup Summit website myself in like a few hours and I suck at frontend code. Like I've never written a single

code. Like I've never written a single line of JavaScript in my life. Okay?

I've written less than 100 lines of JavaScript in my life. I built that by myself. And normally pre-AII coding, I

myself. And normally pre-AII coding, I would have had to find someone to do it, gone back and forth on the designs and blah blah blah. Instead, yeah, it would have taken me a long time. Instead, I

was just like, I've got a weekend. I

have $20. Here you go. I think like the whole AI thing makes it a lot easier to build these MVPs, these prototypes, and you can kind of go and do that. The the

startup stuff is different, but if you want to do like a side hustle, like something like that, it's it's a little bit easier.

>> Yeah. you mentioned about people's risk tolerance in terms of investing or doing startups as a VC you know uh but in San Francisco or Bay Area because there is

so much information and uh the investment thesis and uh your friends you probably know someone who are doing startups who are working at a startup >> the level of the game is much >> more professional I guess.

>> Sure. Sure.

>> Versus here I think a lot of people like at least when I hear someone is doing a startup.

>> Yeah.

>> There are like big tech employees who are not happy with their job. They have

some idea they want to do it but they don't have the basic education or sense.

>> Yeah.

>> You know almost all the famous startups in Seattle now right? So

>> yeah. Yeah.

>> What is the level of average quality?

>> So Seattle's actual um return per dollar is slightly less than the bay right now.

slightly less.

>> Slightly less I think return per dollar in the Bay if you're including companies like OpenAI and Anthropic it gets it's like 7 point something and Seattle's like 5 point something but you know the

Bay benefits from the long tail because it's a numbers game right if you have a thousand startups 900 of them are going to fail but if you those out out of the hundred that succeed some of those are

going to succeed a lot more than others and so if you have the benefit of one or two big successes you really skew that >> whereas Seattle has just less startups are less percentage of the longtails, right? It's just a numbers game in that

right? It's just a numbers game in that sense.

>> There's no like for example Seattle startups, their level of the game.

>> There are some very good startups in Seattle. I mean, Static was a good

Seattle. I mean, Static was a good startup in Seattle, right? And now

they're part of OpenAI, but like Mother Duck, for example, you know, one of their founders in Seattle. They're

great.

>> You can't say Amazon and Microsoft are startups anymore, but they were startups at one point that did start here. there

is like the sense that the Bay Area has just it's more I I honestly think more strings of the ball more whatever shots on goal whatever you want to call it right I think it's a numbers phenomena >> I see >> and of course part of that is like the

amount of investment that goes into it the amount of people that are willing to risk things now of course there is like the sense that some people in Seattle want to start a startup but they don't really understand what that means

>> and so now they have these people who are like spending 15 hours a week after work starting on a you know starting starting to work on their their startup, their side hustle, whatever they want to call it. I think you see you see a lot

call it. I think you see you see a lot more of these that fail.

>> I think part of the reason why you see them fail is because it's harder to do something after you've already worked for, you know, a regular day. You don't

see as much of a return as quickly because you're not working on it as much and it's harder to meet with people, do sales during like the late night hours unless you're very good at organizing

dinners with executives. I think there's like a few of these factors that go into it. But part of it is like I think if

it. But part of it is like I think if you want to go in on something, you have to be willing to accept the risk. Then

you have to be able to accept the risk.

If you have like a family of four, both parents are working, it's harder to go from one parent working on a startup.

>> Yeah.

>> And it's even harder to go from two parents. Now, the other side of that is

parents. Now, the other side of that is like there's a lot of immigrants and people who are working on like the H-1B and if you have an H-1B, you can't work on a startup because you have to

>> Yeah. not promoting like you should quit

>> Yeah. not promoting like you should quit your job and do startups, but just like if you want to do it in Seattle, here's the the reality.

>> I think if you want to do it like period, you don't have to go all in immediately, but you have to like go in enough >> that like so I know you worked on on your thing on the side for a while, but you're you're not doing like a startup startup. You're like doing like a

startup. You're like doing like a business.

>> And I think businesses and startups are different now. Startups are a business,

different now. Startups are a business, but not all businesses are startups.

>> So like what I'm doing is not a startup.

What I'm doing is like a business. And

so these are two completely different things I think.

>> Yeah. I don't take VC money.

>> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Startups are very different. Once you

take VC money, you have to try to hit exponential growth.

>> The last question is for a typical tech employee uh PM uh engineer, data scientist, designer working at a tech

company who wants to suppose experience startups for two years in Seattle like what is our advice? Should they just move to Bay Area or can they still do it in Seattle? there to defend their like

in Seattle? there to defend their like first 10 like >> first 10 customers, first 10 employees, first time believers.

>> Yeah, sure. All of those.

>> Well, right now because there was just a bunch of layoffs, finding employees in Seattle is not as hard. Finding

customers is always hard. I've even

talked to people who are like who have already raised around who have gone through YC or are currently doing through YC or South Park or some accelerator. I've talked to people about

accelerator. I've talked to people about this as well. It's like even these people who have raised tons of money, they need to find a way to get market fit. You never know. It's very easy to

fit. You never know. It's very easy to get give advice early on. find three

customers. If you can find three customers in a week, you have a valid idea. I think if you want to go try

idea. I think if you want to go try something for two years, if you have a timeline of when to go do startups, um I think there's a few valid options in Seattle. One is AI House has an EIR,

Seattle. One is AI House has an EIR, right? An entrepreneur and residence

right? An entrepreneur and residence program. Oh, Madrona doesn't have

program. Oh, Madrona doesn't have Madrona Venture Labs anymore. Get find

ways to get into the startup events.

Talk to the VCs. See if what you're doing is interesting. You may be able to raise some money. It takes time. It

takes time. It's not going to be a first meeting thing. You probably, you know,

meeting thing. You probably, you know, spend like a year think about taking investment that people probably don't think about this too much, but like taking investment money, it's like a way that you build a long-term relationship.

Um, so I've invested into a company recently and the reason why I invested into this company and the reason why they took my investment, it's like a relationship thing. I've seen these

relationship thing. I've seen these founders work on this for two years. I

like what they're doing. I want to be involved and I want to be more involved than I'm currently involved with them.

So sometimes they present at my events, so I've seen them for a while. So part

of it is like the relationship building aspect and then I think like AI house has an EIR program maybe find the people in Madrona uh breakers there's a girl here named Annie she invests very early

stage uh quarter million into companies that um are like unusual basically >> and then foundations is like a co-working space in capill

>> and uh they have a entrepreneur and residence program um and they can help you raise money it's run by a he's a partner at a VC firm based out of Seattle called Founders Co-op. But yeah,

I would say like you don't have to move to the bay.

>> Sounds like a far fewer options than if you were in the bay.

>> There's a lot less options than if you're in the bay. Maybe joining a startup. There are startups that are

startup. There are startups that are hiring. You know, uh ReadAI is hiring.

hiring. You know, uh ReadAI is hiring.

Uh Edge Delta is hiring. These are both series B startups here. Mother Duck is hiring. Series B startup here. If you're

hiring. Series B startup here. If you're

at a big tech company, those are probably like the only ones that are close enough to start. They're all

series B. I'm trying to think if there's any series A companies that are here that are hiring. I don't know. Seed to

series A is where one of the big drop offs is in Seattle. You see a lot more investments in seed. And then because like the series A, series B stuff, it has you have to raise certain amount of money like normally more than $10

million >> and that's where you see a lot of drop off in Seattle. The drop off rate from C to series A is usually about 50%.

>> 50% >> but here in Seattle it's probably a little bit higher. Um and I don't mean like the company drops off. What I mean is the company usually has to go to the bay to raise money.

>> Oh, I see.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> And uh your next event, >> my next event is Seattle Startup Summit.

We are featuring over a thousand tech leaders, over a hundred startups there.

So, if you're looking to get a job at a startup, maybe come check it out. See if

any of these startups might be able to hire. Some of them are from the Bay,

hire. Some of them are from the Bay, some of them are from Seattle, some of them from New York. They're all from really all over the place.

>> This is everyone, right? All the

startups almost all the local VCs and all the big companies supporting startups.

>> Yeah. So, we'll have, you know, someone from Microsoft, we'll have someone from AWS, we'll have someone from Google, all the big companies. I think we'll probably have someone from Oracle, too.

We'll have Madrona, Anthos, Fuse, Ascend, Trilogy. Yeah, basically all of

Ascend, Trilogy. Yeah, basically all of the VCs here. My goal with this conference was really to build something for the Seattle community to be able to get into startups and not only to get

into startups, but really to get into innovation. Startups represent something

innovation. Startups represent something and I think what they represent is like the edge of innovation and enterprises are often trying to learn about what startups are doing just as startups are trying to get into enterprises and I think this is a really good way to get

these people together you know for everyone who attends to get some good value out of the event.

>> This is the opportunity to learn about Seattle startups >> startups in general because there will be startups from all over and also if you're interested in meeting VCs is a really good place to meet them because they will be all over like running things.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. All right. Awesome. Thank you for coming to the channel.

>> Yeah, thank you.