> "If our goal was to be recognized as awesome at a certain time by a certain group of developers, we succeeded. A huge number of connections were made, and a huge number of reputations were bolstered."

ROI if there ever was one in my opinion! We started out with the idea that breaking even would be a great success, financially, but touring as the "rock bank you've never heard of" was among the strongest driving factors in this labor of love.

> "I would suggest that while I'm confident that you can hit Google and find someone happy to say the right things and take money to run your event, this is worse than not doing it at all. YC teaches us to not outsource our core competencies, right?"

I don't know what could make throwing a paid event a core-competency other than throwing paid events, and this is why I suggest finding a team to help with that.

For us, our core competency seems to be getting speakers & curating incredible content. Promoting and selling tickets could have used a boost from the pro's. I'm also very proud of the team for how we've managed to pull this off logistically, but again a team that specializes in this could have done at least as good of a job and freed us up to continue working on our main businesses.

I'd liken it to writing great software and selling great software - they are not the same thing and they required distinctly unique skillsets. I know this event will be awesome, which fell into our core competency, but it did not get the reach we had hoped at least in large part because it was our first time trying to do something at this scale (aka outside of our core competency).

Thanks again for your insights and continued participation in the thread!