In January of 2017, StartupSac launched one of our signature programs in the Sacramento startup community. It’s a happy hour event with a twist — StartupSac Happy Hour. StartupSac Happy Hour is an informal monthly mentoring and community-building event for founders, entrepreneurs and innovators where entrepreneurs can get their startup questions answered by a veteran entrepreneur. We meet at a local bar, restaurant, or brewery where, after some initial socializing and networking, a startup veteran answers questions from other entrepreneurs. I think of it as a hybrid Happy Hour meets Office Hours.
The goal of the event is to provide an opportunity for early-stage entrepreneurs to gain insight and get feedback from more experienced entrepreneurs, as well as to provide a supportive forum of encouragement and collaboration in the startup community.
In 2018, not only did we continue the event, but we dialed it up a notch. We organized 11 StartupSac Happy Hour events in 2018. Thanks to the generosity of local businesses and entrepreneurs stepping up to sponsor food (and sometime drinks) at the events, we were able to draw higher numbers to the events. Over 400 people attended StartupSac Happy Hour this year. That’s over 400 people that made one or more important connections or learned some piece of advice from an experienced and successful entrepreneur. We feel that’s a positive impact on our startup ecosystem.
There’s a lot of great advice offered by our visiting founders with topics ranging broadly. Here’s a short sampling of just a few things that were touched on by the veteran founders.
- How to split equity with co-founders
- How to scale the business
- Tools used for customer service
- How to prototype and test releases before they go live
- Top two or three things that every startup founder should know
- Navigating the idea maze
- Investment from corporate VCs
- Making mistakes
- Trying to own intellectual property
- Culture and diversity issues of founding and running a startup
- Finding investors
- Landing the first customer
- Setting yourself apart from the competition
- Four things to look for when evaluating a market for your startup
If you missed some of these events but you’re still craving a fix of entrepreneurial wisdom, we captured many of the AMA session on an audio recorder or captured notes so you can listen to many as a podcast episode or read summaries of the event. The gallery below has links to either a specific podcast episode or article with a summary of the event.
Based on the success of StartupSac Happy Hour in 2018 we have every intention of continuing these events in 2019. Stay tuned for details about the upcoming January 2019 event.
