A little more than a year ago I remember talking to the team about an idea. After a whole bunch of people contributed to make it real we ended up with something pretty special. Now that we are on the cusp of the second Monetery event I thought it was worth sharing a bit about why we are doing this.
Monetery is certainly a product of the community. It’s a group of other people’s ideas brought in to help our community grow. Monetery is propped up by community participants and speakers with one goal, to help the community grow.
Brad Feld wrote this wonderful book called Startup Communities. For many people, it’s a blueprint for building a successful startup community. I feel like if Brad had a voice in this he’d also say it’s a book about what worked in Boulder and not a promise of what will work for you.
Taking that with a grain of salt there are some elements of this book we’ve flat out taken. The book discusses core contributions from various parties and Monetery is built around intentionally bringing together people who represent all areas of the Eco-System.
Entrepreneurs are one that I think is worth calling out because I don’t see that as a founder thing. In the no-coast market where unemployment is low, everyone is taking a greater risk by building a company. So I generically think of this bucket as comprised of people who are taking on risk building companies.
The Monetery thesis is really simple.
Bring together representatives from each part of the community with the intent to expose them to world class leaders in semi-structured conversations and interesting things will happen.
That’s it. Being comfortable with the fact that we don’t know what will happen and not worrying about engineering that is my favorite part about this. All we do is provide an environment and watch it happen.
The real world interaction between these groups looks a lot more messy. The side to side view is nice for display purposes but as each group gets more successful as it learns to interact with each other group.
To make matters more complex some individuals wear multiple hats. It’s not uncommon for a professor to help build companies, for large companies to become customers of businesses that are being built, for executives of big businesses to leave and launch new companies, or for leaders to invest in new innovations. This is almost impossible to appreciate through a medium like LinkedIn. A physical space can bridge the gap.
Ensuring overlap in the circles exist is a way of driving inclusiveness and awareness of one another and the ideas in any social group. A community belongs to everyone and its stronger when everyone participates.
Monetery is a tool for bringing together participation. When everyone is in the same room it creates opportunity. Monetery is our way of putting the right ingredients in the right place at the right time so people can have new experiences and conversations together.
Local corporations and economic development groups have laid the groundwork for its existence and global corporations have subsidized the costs further to level the playing field so everyone can attend.
We think this gathering can make a difference because it’s comprised of people who want to experience change and participate directly in it. I’m pleased to be in that group and excited to contribute.