/ About this event
GTM Unlocked: The IRL Economy
The Future of Live Events, Community and Growth
Saturday, October 10 · 2:00–5:00 PM Stanford University
Join us at Stanford for a conversation with Chris Yeh (Blitzscaling author w. Reid Hoffman) on GTM in the AI Era. Pitch your community to the audience, find support, and learn how to make your next event generate 10X the revenue.
Presented by Breakthrough Ventures × Startup Universe × Evion × Stanford Founders
What if your most powerful GTM channel isn’t another ad, email sequence, or viral post, but a room full of the right people?
AI has made it easier than ever to create content, launch campaigns, and send outreach at scale.
But that also means everyone is creating more content, sending more emails, and fighting for the same attention.
Real trust is becoming harder to build online.
This is why live events and communities are becoming such a powerful part of GTM.
But holding an event does not automatically make it successful.
You still need to attract the right speakers, find sponsors, fill the room, build partnerships, manage your team, and create an experience people genuinely want to return to.
This event will cover both sides.
First, why events and community matter so much for GTM today.
Then, how to actually make those events work. ----
Agenda:
**Blitzscaling in the AI Era: The IRL GTM Engine**
A fireside conversation with Chris Yeh, co-author of Blitzscaling with Reid Hoffman and founding General Partner of Blitzscaling Ventures. Chris has founded, advised, or invested in more than 100 technology startups. He has spent decades studying what helps companies grow, build networks, and scale.
**How to Sell Out, Attract Sponsors and Build an Event People Want to Come Back To**
A practical talk with Nabila Elassar, founder of Evion and Startup Universe. Nabila has spent 15 years organizing events and building communities worldwide, from founder gatherings to major conferences at Stanford and the United Nations.
She will share the practical lessons behind events that attract the right people, create real value and do not lose money.
## **For Your Next Event, You’ll Be Ready To:**
- Get top speakers to actually say yes - Find the right sponsors, reach the decision-makers and stop losing money on events - Build partnerships that help promote your event and fill the room - Recruit a team of volunteers who can help you run a great show - Create a guest experience people remember, trust and want to return to - Make networking genuinely useful by helping guests meet the right people - Manage speakers, sponsors, partners, volunteers, guests and vendors with less effort - Turn one event into content, customers, partnerships and long-term community
Schedule 2:00–3:00 PM: Snacks and Networking Meet founders, investors, GTM leaders, event organizers and community builders from across the Bay Area and SF Tech Week.
3:00–3:30 PM: Blitzscaling in the AI Era: The IRL GTM Engine Fireside conversation with Chris Yeh.
3:30–4:00 PM: How to Sell Out, Attract Sponsors and Build an Event People Want to Come Back To Practical talk with Nabila Elassar.
4:00–4:20 PM: Community and Event Lightning Pitches Hosts and community builders in the room will have an opportunity to introduce their communities, share their upcoming events and tell the room what kind of partners, speakers, sponsors or support they need.
4:20–5:00 PM: Networking and Introductions
Continue the conversations and meet people who may be able to support what you are building next.
Who Should Attend?
This event is for: - Founders looking for a more human and effective GTM strategy - Marketing, sales, and GTM leaders - Community builders - Event and conference organizers - Investors and accelerators - Brands looking to reach founders, builders, and technology leaders - Anyone planning a summit, conference, launch, dinner or community gathering - If you are building a company, growing a community or planning an event, we hope you’ll join us.
About the Cohosts
Breakthrough Ventures supports emerging entrepreneurs with capital, mentorship, resources and access to a network of founders and investors.
Startup Universe is a global community of more than 100,000 founders, investors, mentors and technology leaders.
Evion is end-to-end event management software built to make successful events easier to run. Evion helps organizers find and contact speakers and sponsors, manage partners and teams, coordinate guests, improve networking, and bring the work behind an event into one place.
Stanford Founders brings together founders, builders and entrepreneurial leaders from across the Stanford ecosystem.
This event is a part of #SFTechWeek—a week of events hosted by VCs and startups to bring together the tech ecosystem. Learn more at www.tech-week.com.
