Big stages, smaller impact.

"For years, the tech industry equated success with scale. Bigger stages, larger crowds, more logos, more panels, more noise. Five thousand people became ten thousand. Ten thousand became the goal. Somewhere along the way, that stopped making sense. Founders and executives didn't announce a boycott. They simply stopped showing up. What we see today is not a rejection of events, but a correction in how people who actually run companies choose to spend their time. The shift is subtle, but consistent."

"Big tech events struggle because they optimize for visibility, not usefulness. A founder does not need three days of generic content, dozens of panels with no real interaction, or networking sessions where relevance is left to chance. At scale, everything becomes superficial by default. Conversations shorten. Access disappears. The signal is drowned by the format itself. What founders look for instead is simple. Context. Trust. Direct access. Conversations without performance. The kind of environment where people can speak honestly, not publicly."

"Even when larger conferences still make sense, there is a clear psychological ceiling. Around one thousand participants, in exceptional cases. Beyond that point, quality becomes impossible to control. The event stops being a place where decisions are made and turns into a product designed for mass consumption. And tech, especially at the founder and executive level, no longer behaves like a mass industry. It behaves like a precision one."

The tech industry once equated success with scale, chasing ever-larger conferences. Founders and executives gradually stopped attending large events. Large events optimize for visibility rather than usefulness, producing superficial interactions and limited access. At around one thousand participants, event quality becomes uncontrollable and shifts toward mass consumption. Founders instead seek context, trust, direct access, and candid conversations without performance. Small, curated gatherings—closed rooms, dinners, tables of twelve—enable faster trust formation, natural access, and decision-making. Niche conferences with relevant participants create more value than large, unfocused conferences.

Read at TNW | Insider