534 Meetings and a Cactus on Every Desk
During the Autumn 2024 cohort at Techstars Berlin, I was brought in as interim program manager, with full ownership of the centrepiece event: an EMEA-wide Investor Day that expanded well beyond a single programme’s graduation.
72 startups, 83 investors, 534 curated meetings. In practice, it meant running hundreds of back-to-back 1:1s simultaneously in a physical venue, with a live online layer on top, and last-minute no-shows to absorb in real time.
Six other Techstars programmes had joined: London, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Web3, ABN AMRO. But for the 12 Berlin startups graduating that day, it was the most important day of the programme.
Two things I personally learned running this that I’d take into any programme manager role again:
- Walk the venue as every person who will enter it. Do a full dry run in character, e.g., the sleep-deprived founder, the investor running late, the online attendee nobody checked on. You catch more in twenty minutes of that exercise than in any planning document.
- A memorable moment doesn’t have to be expensive. It has to be specific. Something I relearned reading Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality: the value of a gift isn’t what went into giving it, it’s how the person receiving it feels.
I was responsible for making Investor Day the last big moment for these 12 startups. It had to be productive, yes; but it also had to feel like a proper send-off after three intense months living and building together. On day one of the programme, each team found a small cactus on their desk with their company name on it, to water as they grew through the programme. Our managing director wrote and performed a song for the graduating teams. We took everyone indoor skydiving as an unannounced offsite surprise. None of this was on the globally distributed Techstars agenda.
