Curation | Guest Mix | Member Matching | Intimate Room Design | Network Building | Retention by Design
A network is just a list until someone curates it. I design rooms where 25 people who do not know each other walk out feeling like they just joined something, then build the system that keeps them coming back. By closing the door deliberately, you create the room.
Tech Stack
Launching an invite-only founder gathering in a city saturated with networking events.
The standard formula (drinks plus a stage plus a stranger) does not retain anyone, least of all founders who value their time above nearly everything else.
The room had to feel like a temporary alternative world, a bounded space with its own rules and energy, not a transaction.
On top of that, A/V and catering can fail in the moment, and one bad night does not just hurt the evening, it kills the entire program because the trust contract you signed with each guest just broke.
Conducted 50+ one-on-one member interviews before major gatherings to map each room's chemistry, identify gaps in the community, and design the guest mix and pacing accordingly.
Sourced boutique venues and negotiated contracts with spaces that avoided corporate stiffness, then directed sensory and aesthetic choices (lighting, seating, dietary curation) to set the mood before anyone walked in.
Built AI-assisted experience design so members sat next to each other with intentional interaction rather than leaving connection to chance.
Hosted with generous authority: protecting members from the small frictions, equalizing the room across status and tenure, and connecting guest to guest until host-to-guest ties were the minority.
Engineered live A/V and catering contingency plans so when something failed (and something always did), the guests never felt it.
85% retention across the program. Members who came once now show up monthly.
Seed investment doubled, but the real return is harder to quantify: members who have visit many rooms in New York keep saying yes to this one room.
The room itself became a piece of recurring infrastructure, the kind of asset most communities take years to build.
Investment secured for the 2027 season on the strength of the experience, not the marketing.