In this series, WeWork’s director of digital community selects a WeWork member to get to know better, sharing her fun findings with the rest of the community.
TechDay is the largest event for startups in the U.S., bringing investors, early adopters, and members of the press together. (There’s also a TechDay convention in London.) Created just over five years ago, the TechDay team—led by founder Alec Hartman, a WeWork Madison member—has been helping connect its thousands of participants with exciting opportunities. Read on to learn about successful TechDay participant alumni, what it was like to be a member of the earliest incarnation of WeWork, and more.
How did TechDay begin?
I started TechDay a little over five years ago. I also co-founded another startup at the same time, DigitalOcean, a hosting company that’s grown quite a bit. And ironically, when we started DigitalOcean, we were in GreenDesk—pre-WeWork days! It was fun, so it was a natural choice—when I switched from doing DigitalOcean full-time to working on TechDay full-time—to stay at WeWork.
What are some of your favorite stories that have emerged from TechDay?
One of my favorite stories is Solidoodle, a 3D printing company that launched at the first TechDay. I think they raised around the first or second TechDay, and they’ve been at all our events. They were acquired, I believe, by someone else through TechDay. Their big launch was there, their company gained steam every year by coming to TechDay, and last year when we rang the closing Nasdaq bell, that was the big story we shared. I loved the Solidoodle story because they were literally there at the first event we did.
There are a lot of people who come back to us and say that they met co-founders, met the right investors, and got funding at TechDay events. The entire reason I’ve been doing TechDay is to help startups, and recently, my wife’s cousin Joel Katz went into startups. He didn’t really understand parameters. He came to the last TechDay—where we had Shark Tank with us—and he was able to meet a ton of people that called back for Shark Tank. And he’s been running 100 miles per hour since. So it’s actually hit close to home recently as well.
Uber’s been with us every year. They first came to New York around our first show. They were one of the first startups that were there, and now they’re Uber. The whole point is to be egalitarian: having Ubers next to startups based in garages, giving them all the opportunities to meet all the resources they need to grow.
How can people get involved with the event?
Startups get involved because they are looking for press, investors, talent, or early adopters that can help their company grow and help them succeed. So it’s the base of collective resources they’ll need in order to move the needle forward with their company. You can register to exhibit online at https://techdayhq.com.
And attendees can come for free! The intent is for attendees to have ready access to the startups that are changing the world. The point of the event is to help startups actually grow and get to the next level.
What’s something that you wish more people knew about the startup world?
I wish that more people entering the startup world knew about conventions. Not conventions as in events, but conventions in the startup world. How to determine what your value premise should really be, how to understand the sales pipeline—those basic things about business should be taught in school. And too often I see companies that have such a great idea, but there’s so much executional risk in how they’re approaching things, and they don’t know it. So if I could spread any message, it would be best practices in formation, sales, and efficiency so you can reduce executional risk.