Welcome to Building AI Boston. Our guest today is Rose Johnson. She's a marketing partner at Andreessen Horowitz and today we will be discussing the upcoming Boston Tech Week. Rose, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. So Rose, I understand that Boston Tech Week, there's a process, there's a rationale behind what you're doing. Can you just take us to the origins of why you're doing this and what it means to you from your perspective? Yeah, absolutely. Happy to give you the full scoop on the origin story of how Tech Week began because that will get us into Boston Tech Week, which we're very excited about expanding to. So Tech Week first began in 2022. It was started by my colleagues Katya Mary and Andre Chen who are here at the firm at A66 Newsy. And it started as a way to meet more people IRL after COVID. And so it was sort of the back end of the pandemic. As a firm, we were hoping to meet more founders outside of Silicon Valley. And so there was a lot of buzz and excitement around LA and that became the first city that we launched in. And it was really an experiment. So it started, I think the calendar launch with about 50 events. We ended up running the week with a couple of hundred events and really didn't know what to expect. But it ended up being a real success. And I think it sort of proves the model that people like this decentralized conference format. And so we leaned in on it and we brought it back the following year. We expanded to three cities rather than just LA. So we've been doing New York and SF as well as LA for the past couple of years. And we thought, where best to expand to next than the fourth or third biggest city in terms of VC funding, depending on how you cut the data. And that's obviously Boston. And so we're really excited to launch the first new city for quite a few years now. And the response has been amazing so far. Yeah, Boston lost its mind when we found out about it. I can tell you that. That's one way of putting it. Yeah, the buzz was so incredible. People were so excited. I can't even tell you. And you probably know that now because you see how many events we've got planned. I mean, but it's great. And we're so happy to have you coming to Boston. Yeah, it's been, you know, we've talked about this a little bit. We set an internal goal. Can we crack 500 events? And we really, we really didn't know because we don't have a huge network that at least the tech week team hadn't had a huge network there. But we went out, we did a few trips, we met some amazing people. And I think because of the strength of the network of Boston, kind of word spread really, really quickly. And then we've obviously seen a great response based on that. So by my estimate, this is me purely from afar, I think there's something like over 600. So you've not only cracked 500, you've we've we're overachievers in this part of the wiz. And I think the thing that's great about it is it's gone beyond just this sort of hallmark industries of Boston. So it's not just biotech, although there are some amazing biotech events, it's also deep tech, there are hackathons all the way into the weekend, it truly is spanning the entire, well, it's a short week, because we're doing on Memorial Day week, but it's spanning the entire week. And there really is so much variety of large, small events and everything in between. Yeah, it's great. And people are getting super creative. I don't know if you've seen but some people are even creating like tools to help navigate the week, like in Claude, which is so amazing. Have you seen that? Well, the funnest thing I saw is our friend Karen Kelly, who's been a former babe guest, we say babe, we've got you babe, it's not a not a thumb tech necessarily, but a lot of our former guests are spectacular women in AI. But I saw Karen Kelly actually has a way to de-stress through Boston Tech Week. So you can drop by, she vibe codes, she runs a particular business called Launch My Lunch. And I both envy you. And then also I get tired just looking at the format. But Cara experiences this in Boston all the time. You can literally go to an AI event every day of the week. Is that true Cara? Yes, multiple probably. And it's really interesting. So, Rose, I'm curious. So you probably had, I mean, did you know Boston that well? You said you guys didn't really know Boston too well, right? Like you didn't have any connections? Yeah, and you may have noticed that I'm not from Boston, nor the country. So, no, it didn't have a huge amount of familiarity, except through, you know, some of the work we've done. But it was great to sort of learn the nuances of the city. And we're seeing that play out on the calendar. Yeah. And were you a little surprised? So I'm not a native Bostonian myself. Like I've been here 20 some years, but I'm not from here originally either. And I think one of the things we like to talk about in the show is maybe there are misconceptions about how we do things in Boston. And so when, you know, maybe we are a little more open-armed than people might think or collaborative than people might think. So were you all surprised that it kind of took fire as much as it did here? I think we just weren't sure. We weren't sure what to expect. But I think certainly the speed at which people adopted it, you know, I think people got it. They very quickly said, okay, let's embrace this. It seems like a big opportunity. So, and it's something to show up for. Somebody said to me, this feels like Boston's audition to do tech week year after year. And I think that's a nice way of putting it. You know, we're very hopeful that we'll come back and do it again. But yeah, definitely the city is putting on a show. That's wonderful. I am excited and hope to get there myself. Let's talk a little bit about some of these events and what people can expect from either one of you. I'm interested. What can people know going in and if you choose to fly in to just navigate this? How do people navigate it? First of all, you have an incredible website. Let's talk about the calendar. Yeah, so go to tech tech dash week dot com slash calendar. And you'll see we should a little shout out that New York Tech Week is straight after Boston Tech Week. And so you'll see both calendars back to back. And maybe I can talk a little bit about that as well. So we are hoping there's a little bit of connectivity between the two cities where Bostonians go down to New York. New Yorkers come up to Boston, see what that has to offer. And so that's why we ran the two East Coast cities back to back. And so if you go to the calendar, you can browse both the New York and Boston calendar. On the Boston calendar, you'll be able to browse by topics. So if you're a marketer interested in everything around marketing, branding, maybe a little bit of sales as well, you'll be able to browse around that. We've also got some highlighted event tracks where we've sort of curated what we think are some of the top events within those themes. And there is a calendar builder tool as well. So you can build your own calendar and highlight up to 50 events, which will get populated onto a link that you can go and share on social and on email and that sort of thing. Lots of ways to navigate it. I would say have the mindset of abundance. Obviously, time is precious. But if you, if this, there's one week to get out there and go to events, this is definitely it. Yeah. And that's, you know, just because like I'm posting about the events all the time, and I try to show up to as many things as I can, just in general, in Boston, like I get a lot of people asking me like, what should I, where should I go? How do I jump in? And it can be a little intimidating, right? For if you're new to the AI scene or you want to get involved in the AI scene, you don't know where to start. So this is, this is a really great place. So anyone, you know, who could get here, it's a great way to meet sort of people in the community and also people from other places that are coming in. So there's a track, if you want to call it that, you know, for like women in AI, like our events that like directly relate to that, like so you can really find your space there. But like, if you're in marketing like me, you can find that too, or, you know, finance, although I will have to give New York a little love. I did live in New York before I came up here. There's, there is a little bit of rivalry between Boston and New York, which I'm sure you know. I mean, I, I haven't, it's never come up. Something to do, something to do with sports here and there. But so I admit, I played the role of like a jealous Bostonian and looked up how many tech events were related to legal tech, which is my space in Boston versus New York. And New York is totally kicking our butt. Like they have, I think we only have one legal tech event. So Boston, come on guys, we got to, you should submit something. I know, right? What am I thinking? Right? I will tell you this, Rose, when you get there, you're going to find that Cara is not unique, but she is very special in that ecosystem. So we could talk all day long about why Boston is special. There is no fear of missing out for what's happening in New York. Honestly, it's a different caliber. It's a different flavor. Do you want to speak to that Cara? Well, I just, I would just say, Rose, like I think your point and having these backed back like that is, is fantastic because it shouldn't be competitive. It should be collaborative, right? And that's the same with the West Coast, right? Because right in this age of AI and the things that are happening, like there's so many opportunities for collaborative approaches. And, and, you know, we don't have to have this whole who's doing it better, who's doing it's different. It's like, let's, let's think about doing it together. Because regions don't even mean anything anymore, right? Like, I mean, we're all just living in this seamless world. So I think it's great. And I hope everyone from New York comes up and hangs out with us. Yeah. And I think what we've found is because we've run SF and LA back to back for the last three years now. So those run the first two weeks of October. And what we're seeing is sort of, the cities outside of Silicon Valley, outside of the Bay Area become a little bit more, they have their sort of niches, they become more specialized. And while Boston and New York actually are very broad, I think we're seeing this in LA where certain industries are shining through, where you'll actually get the best AI and entertainment events will happen at LA Tech Week and not right in SF, even though SF is kind of the AI of everything. And so having those focuses gives people a reason to come to the other city tech weeks. Defense is another one in LA with, you know, there's a big cluster of defense and American dynamism companies being built out of El Segundo. And so, yeah, each city kind of has its strengths. And we're hoping to see that with New York and Boston as well. Interesting. You just reminded me, I grew up in the Bay Area, but there was a lot of rivalry with SoCal back in the day. And I'm really, I'm appreciating this, I'm getting world's fair vibes from this. And again, applause to you because I don't think there's ever a better moment to stress that we're in a renaissance, not a revolution. You know, 250 years ago, we had some very scrappy Bostonians piping up and voicing, you know, we got to get along to get this thing done, not to bring up the American story, but literally now the world is open to a much more collaborative viewpoint. And AI is just one of those tools. It feels like a renaissance. But again, mad props to you for ushering that spirit in and just sort of kicking down the door of who cares about boundaries at this point. Right. Yeah, I think it's interesting, sort of treating the tech week events as a kind of almost like a window in time because titles of the events reflect the zeitgeist and sort of what, especially in tech, like what's being talked about right now. Of course, AI is the topic for the last, at least since I've been on the team for the past three years, but this year it's definitely changed. And I think the theme that I'm seeing now is we've both got more technical events and more hackathons, buildathons, those sort of things, but they are much more democratized now as well. And so previously you would not have had a hackathon for marketers, it just wouldn't have happened. But now, you know, the accessibility of these tools, the themes are sort of taking a turn a little bit to be more accessible, which I think is a really interesting trend. Yeah, and like who the builders are, and I think I'm a poster child for this, right? Like who the builders are, are different now, or can be different, right? Like the people building in this space, it does open up. And I don't remember who said this, but there was someone who had a great line that a lot of the best ideas are locked up in behind the brains of people or locked up in the brains of people who may not have the right technical abilities to kind of see them come through. So with, you know, with, and I have mixed feelings about vibe coding, which is a separate conversation, but, you know, it can bring out the entrepreneur and many more people than maybe previously could have felt that path. And so that leads me to a question for you, Rose. You're obviously very, very connected to the the entrepreneur environment and are very interested in meeting new people. So we have a lot of really smart, really interesting people here in Boston, obviously, that are building really cool things, many of them coming out of the great universities. So what advice do you have for them in terms of how they can sort of best happen to this week? And of course, everybody would love to have a personal one on one sit down with you, which of course, they is not going to happen. So how can they best connect to your ecosystem in sort of the ways that you're supporting young founder, young, not young in age, but young in stage founders? Like, how can they best connect to your ecosystem at A16? Yeah. Well, I think the first thing is, there's never been a better time to start a company. I think there is just so much resource out there. A16 is the other things that we run. But aside from that, there's just, you know, so much resource available. To connect with kind of our firm as well as other VCs that are present at Tech Week, I would say just leverage the calendar. Everything is on there. You can think of us as a platform. So Tech Week is the platform to connect you with all of those folks. And so A16Z has a bunch of events throughout the week. You can search for those, sign up to meet us there. Yeah. Just go out and go to a mix of things, right? There's social events, some more like really, like you're saying hackathons, some more like lecture style, but the ones where you can kind of mix around and meet people. And that's one thing that's fun about Boston is it thinks it's a big city, but it's not. In some ways, you will see the same people kind of over and over again. So you start to kind of get into the ecosystem, right? And meet the cool people at WOOP and everywhere else. So come to the funds. Yeah, that's right. There's definitely some sort of the beauty of Tech Week is their events big and small throughout the week. There's definitely some marquee events there kind of emerging and the WOOP, there's a big Thursday night event, that's definitely going to be one of them. I would say sort of figure out what are those bigger events because you might have more luck getting into a larger event because there's just so much more capacity. And yeah, that would be my advice. That's right. And is anything, and maybe you wouldn't know of this for all 600 plus events, but are there some things that are being live streamed or that people can join from elsewhere? Or is this really like you have to be here for everything? It's a good question. I think, and just kind of a note on how Tech Week works, is we sort of, again, see ourselves as the platform rather than the organizers. And so we leave the kind of the format of the event fully up to the host. We don't really get involved in that aside from making sure it meets certain safety and quality guidelines. For live streaming, it's completely up to the person hosting. So I don't know off the top of my head who is streaming, but I'd imagine a few of them would be. That said, we always say the magic of Tech Week is being in person. And so as an example, we do accept virtual events as well, but it's probably 1% of events on the calendar because it's really the magic of the serendipity of who is there in the city and who will turn up to your event, who you're bumping into, who you'll potentially fund higher work with in the future, et cetera. Yeah, this is literally the fun of doing the show that I get to pop in. I've gone in real life. There's nothing that compares to being there in real life. But since dipping my toe in the water, having gone to incredible hackathons at MIT, I never would have thought that I could experience that. I hope that people will just get curious and again, take it as bump into someone. Our second guest was a New Yorker, Joanna Penya-Bickley, on Building AI Boston. When I bump into her in Boston, I'm thrilled because she's the creator of Amazon Alexa. And yet we're rubbing elbows with people that are just people, that are just creative innovators that are encouraging everyone. So do not be intimidated. Come on down to go to as many things as you can. And yeah, highlights. What are you going to do? And then what in New York? I would not miss the opportunity to vote. I know. I'm like thinking, I'm like, can I get down? I don't know. I gotta go to some stuff. You should. I know. There's a, there'll be a kickoff event in both cities. So we do treat them, despite it being, you know, 14 days, 30 days, we treat them as two distinct tech weeks. And so there'll be a kickoff event at both. And yeah, New York is a lot of fun. It typically is the first week of summer or feels like the first week, summer at least. And so that it's kind of pent up energy in the city, at least I feel as a former, former New Yorker as well. Yeah. So yeah, how many former New Yorkers, right? We're like, we did that. We did that. No, I think there's a song about that. I like New York in June. How about you? I think you nailed it for timing. Exactly. If I can segue again, it's that what happened as a result of Tech Week? I mean, the first one in New York, I think you, were there any surprising results? Did you see anything in the wake of what you created that that pleased you and surprised you about having a Tech Week there in New York for the first time? I think one thing we have seen there's been surprising and great to see is just the return rate of hosts at each Tech Week. And so we'll see companies will come back again and again, and they'll host the same event each year. So for example, both Anthropic and OpenAI will host a founder event at each Tech Week. And they use the same format they might have expanded at each year, but it's a great way for them to sort of come out in the community in a big way at Tech Week and meet all of the founders who have come into the city for that week. And we see that with a bunch of other hosts as well. So some companies will host a large demo day during New York Tech Week. Axios hosts their AI summit. This is the third year that they've hosted it, and that's kind of a full scale conference within a conference. And so it's up to each host for how they want to leverage Tech Week, but we've been really pleased to see the product market fit and see that the companies are coming back again and again. That's really cool. And it's cool. They're going to different cities, like the same companies will show up in different places. That's pretty nice. And I have to think, so there's a lot of places doing cool things. So do you have any other cities in sites, in your sites? Like, are you expanding elsewhere? And how does the city get your attention out there? They want you to come. It's a great question. Where would you recommend? I'll throw the question back to you. Where would you like to see next? Where would your money be? Well, that's great. Okay, so let's think. So I'm from the Midwest originally, so I do have to give a little love to Chicago. I'm from Wisconsin, but you're not going to do a Madison Tech Week. I don't think sorry, Madison. But Chicago would certainly be something interesting, but I'm also thinking internationally, right? I mean, are you international right now? Are you thinking about that? Tech Week isn't. We've chosen depth within the US and the cities that we're in right now. And as I've talked about, the cities that we're in have expanded so quickly that that's kind of keeping us busy. And we're also seeing this trend of folks flying into these cities. So there's actually a large event in New York, which is, it must be about 10 or so different economic development agencies from across Europe who are hosting this massive event. And maybe we can include a link in the show notes or something like that. But yeah, it's, you know, we're seeing an international presence actually fly into these weeks. Definitely New York and SF are leading the way on that. I don't know how international Boston will be, maybe a little bit. We'll work on that. Yeah, and we can put it on the map that way. But I think while that activity is happening, we've kind of, you know, we've got our fill of international founders coming in. But who knows? Never say never, we might expand globally in the future. That's cool. Well, again, I want to applaud this spirit of openness. I will give you my pet peeve about my city, Las Vegas is that I have known about CES, get the largest computer electronic show here in Vegas forever. And I've never once been allowed to attend until I hosted a tech show. So the first time came in 2025. And I always say, why isn't this public? Why is this so private? And why is it that we're not having this open feeling of, especially for students, why wouldn't you want to showcase the future? And so I applaud you for what you're doing. And again, reaching across the aisle, coast to coast and everywhere in between. I hope that that I hope that breaks open some of this sort of proprietary feel. It's not typical, you know, of VCs investors, it just feels like the spirit of openness is only going to lead to bigger and better things. So yeah, and I think one of the insights, the early insights of TechWeek was conferences, traditional conferences that are in a venue and are ticketed and have booths and all of those, they definitely have their time and they're still popular for certain reasons. But I think in my previous role as a B2B marketing leader, I was spending, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on a 10 by 10 booth. And it just felt very inflexible. And so I think this decentralized conference format sort of gives the power back to the creators and the event organizing the field marketers a little bit more where they can design an event that is more likely to hit their goals, because everybody is KPI on everything now. And so this is a way for you to sort of control the narrative and experience a little bit more. And that in audience as well, like it's more, it's then because there are more events and the barrier to entry is a little bit lower for getting involved in the conference, there are more events and more kind of entry points for anybody who is interested in Tech. Of course, the best events are going to be the hardest to get into and you're going to have to be, you know, if it's an event for engineers and technical founders, then those are the only people that are going to be able to attend those events. If you're a student that's kind of curious and breaking into that world, maybe you won't get approved. But there are, you know, hundreds of other events that you probably can get into. And we hope that over the years, people will sort of start their journeys at Tech Week and be able to, you know, ultimately kind of add to their career and work their way up. There is something for everyone there's truly a lot to see. Kara, do you have your schedule mapped out? Are you going to be on pretty mapped out and maxed out? But there's only a few where I have two things that I want to do at the same time. So I have to figure out how to do that because, you know, what's harmony? I never can pronounce her name right. Remember in the show where she, from Harry Potter, how she had that necklace? Yeah, Hermione. I can never say her name or how she could be like two places at once. So I need to somehow figure out how to do that. So I can do that. You've got to clone yourself. You are, Kara is everywhere and I don't know how you do it, but this is a concentrated effort. So the nice thing is that we'll invite you back Rose as a recap and thank you for your time doing that because I think it'll be very interesting to digest and recap and maybe we'll let you go through New York Week before we actually, you know, switch that because we'll see. And we want your honest feedback too because one of the things we need to do in Boston is be like, yes, we were great, we're, you know, super awesome in all these ways, but you know, we have things we could probably do better, right? And there's things that we could change and there's things that we could do. So we do, we also want your honest feedback. I want your honest feedback like, okay, Boston, you're awesome in these many ways, but you know what, you could work on these things, right? Some constructive, some constructive criticism will be very helpful. Yeah, we'll definitely, we do a big retro after every tech week, both for our attendees, hosts and internally we'll take notes and see what we can improve for next year. But from what I'm seeing, it looks great already and yeah, the quality, the quality of events is really high. We've got a really healthy mix of sort of the Boston brands, so like Hubsports, Clavios, etc. as well as Silicon Valley companies coming in. And so I think that, you know, that, that, that alchemy together is going to make for a really fun week. That's great. That's awesome. Yeah, well we can't wait to have you. I love it and I love the overlap and I love that where two ecosystems and biology overlap, that's the richest band of diversity and what you're suggesting with Silicon Valley and Boston is certainly going to be a joy to unpack with you when it's all finished. And again, we really thank you for your time and coming on and giving this preview. For anyone who would like to check out the links, we'll provide everything. Final words, things you're looking forward to? Anything else ladies? I'm looking forward to just, oh sorry, no you go. Go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, I'm just looking forward to getting out there and seeing all their, you know, amazing events and just getting to see a lot of my friends out there in the world and, you know, probably meeting some really new amazing people, just having some fun. I'm really looking forward to it. And Rose, any final words? I think just the breadth of events happening at Boston is amazing and so we've got Eric Paley, the Secretary of Economic Development from Massachusetts is going to come down and do an event and speak about Titans in Boston and kind of why it's a good time to build. You know, we've even got topics like housing, you know, at least AI is doing an event on housing and that's a very important conversation to everyone and so I think there's a real variety of events happening. There's also obviously parties and kickoff events and that kind of thing as well, huge summer parties. And so I think it's just going to be a really electric week and hopefully, you know, you'll walk around and you won't be able to escape that it is Boston Tech Week happening and so it's really going to put that industry on the map. Well, thank you so much and we appreciate the opportunity to chat with you and look forward to the recap. Best of luck to everyone involved and we'll see you again on the end of this incredible adventure that you've launched. Thank you. Great. And if there are any hosts listening, I just also wanted to say thank you so much for showing up and hosting an event as part of this, you know, we're the platform but it doesn't happen without you so thank you so much. Thank you for being here on Building AI Boston. We'll put the, again, the notes, please like and subscribe if you're out there listening. Please attend virtually or it's not that far fatched to say you could actually attend. I know you'll get so much out of this incredible opportunity. Thank you so much, Rose Ankara. Thank you for joining us on Building AI Boston. Stay tuned for more enlightening episodes that put you at the forefront of the conversations shaping our future.
