Rattibha

Sam Parr

10 Tweets 18 reads May 25, 2023

At The Hustle we hosted dozens of events each year.
Some made millions, other single digit thousands.
Here's a glimpse on how we planned the budget. This was maybe year 2 in the company. But mostly stayed the same.

My strategy was:
- Early on in biz (year 1+before The Hustle launched) events made the profit to start the media co.
- Then when The Hustle launched, events were marketing that didn't lose money (for advertisers and readers)
- Tickets should cover costs, sponsors made profit

Early, when it was just me, conferences made lots of profit. Hundreds of thousands a year.
As a reminder, I started the biz with conferences then after a year or so, launched The Hustle.
As we grew headcount, they made much less. Sometimes broke even.
(me+volunteers)

We made lots of mistakes.
1. Trade show-style events, like where valuable networking and transactions happen, make real $. A marketplace with clear ROI. Ours was more content based, like TED, which was less valuable.
(see our set up? content was #1 focus)

2. Industry-specific or job title specific events are better than general business stuff (like entrepreneurship). General can work. But less valuable mostly.
3. I thought conferences couldn't be big businesses. They can. I know many that are worth hundreds of millions or more.

4. The NPS of events, generally, aren't always THAT high compared to other products. So if our NPS was 60-65, I was pissed (The Hustle was higher). But after talking to others, events are tough to be 10/10, but that's OK. Can still be worth it for most attendees.

Ok, that's it for now.

Some more screenshots