It’s May of 2025, and I was waiting in a very long line for a launch party in SF. The hosts? The Chainsmokers and a new vibe-coding platform: Bolt.new.

I was tapping my foot, singing along to Chainsmokers songs I enjoyed in high school. With the line wrapping around the block, it seemed like all of SF had decided this was the event to be at tonight.

Suddenly, I saw a tall blond guy in a cap talking to some people. Ethan nudged me and whispered: “Isn’t that Eric Simons? Like, the bolt.new founder?”

I squinted. 

“I heard they went from $0 to $20 million in ARR in two months,” he added.

I need to tell him about Unicorner. Imagine if we could build events like this for Bolt on repeat.

So I walked over to Eric and cold-pitched Bolt’s CEO.

Sometimes the best strategy is just being bold and asking out of nowhere.

Really, the worst they can say is no.

In our case, it turned into one of our strongest partnerships: dinners, firesides, festivals, and afterparties across the country, from SF to NY. 

It gets stronger every year, and it taught us most of what we know about events (spoiler: there’s a lot more going on behind the curtain than the party itself).

All of these lessons deserve to be shared with you.

So we put together the playbook we use with every partner, including the parts that went sideways.

We’ve been writing about startups for six years, and events are how we bring that community into the same room. If you want to do something similar, keep reading. 

Each chapter unveils a secret we have never shared before. 

Let’s dive in.

Multiple people asked us recently about how we build events that not only scale but also manage to attract repeat sponsors consistently.

So rather than answer these questions time and time again, we wanted to share the full playbooks with you. Full transparency, wins and mistakes included.

Welcome to a special edition of Zero to Unicorn.

Arek and Ethan 🦄

It’s easy to get really excited about creating an event. 

You picture everything: the DJ, people having a great time, food, drinks, guests taking photos the moment they walk in because the venue (or the view) is breathtaking. 

All of that is awesome, but what’s the main goal your partner wants to achieve? Who do they want in that room? What have they already tried and liked (or didn’t)? 

Before thinking about the amazing party you want to throw, the most important thing is to align with your partner on the main goal of the event, because, like a domino effect, it shapes everything else. 

To that end, every new partner we onboard at Unicorner is asked the same question.

“What are your goals, and what hasn’t worked with you so far?”

Decide who (and what) you’re building before you book a venue.

Imagine you walked into a founder event, and there were no founders present. No one wants to be in a room they didn’t sign up for.

To create an unforgettable event that achieves your partner’s goals, the right people must be there, so you need to be picky. Not everyone will be at each event, and that’s OK!

One of our most successful dinner series is our Founding GPs investor dinners in collaboration with Mercury (we’ve hosted eight so far, and counting). 

When we host these dinners, we build every guest list by hand, starting with investors in companies we’ve covered, engaged readers, and past attendees. 

Build a longer list than you have seats for, and once you’ve made the final picks, curate the seats to match attendees based on their background.

Pro tip: have a reshuffle plan ready for cancellations. Life happens, and so do last-minute changes. You want a full room, not empty seats, so always keep a backup list.

Networking is great and all, but plenty of events already offer that. What sets yours and your partner’s apart? What makes people truly excited to go?

Our best firesides paired speakers with a history between them, ups and downs included.

Since you’re not just sharing the clean, polished success story, that makes it human and connects with the audience.

The same goes for solo talks. 

When we invited Tyler Denk, CEO and co-founder of beehiiv, it was just him on stage, talking openly about the importance of being transparent, building in public, and sharing the lessons from mistakes he’d already made, so you don’t have to make them too.

And remember: founders get invited to a lot of things all the time. Even something like an omakase dinner isn’t novel anymore. 

Make sure you have a clear theme, a credible anchor guest, or a peer-specific room that makes them want to block time in their calendar for your event.

The venue matters as much as the people you put in it. Keep the goal in mind, the one from lesson 1, and choose the venue carefully. 

This past SF Tech Week, we picked The Melody, a 150-year-old church converted into an event venue, to host us for a whole day of programming. Our sponsors called it the coolest venue they had ever seen. Attendees took photos as soon as they entered. 

Being memorable is so hard nowadays; if you find a way to stand out, don’t miss the chance. Your venue can be a part of that.

In this case, it gave the event a special flavor. It felt different, and it made the economics work for us, since we used one venue for multiple moments.

Win-win.

It’s great to have a well-organized agenda, with sessions with clear start and end times. But your job is far from done, because there’s a secret ingredient: life.

This isn’t an online event and, surprise, people like to talk to other people.

They want to exchange ideas, check out the room, say hi to an old friend they haven’t seen in a while, and see what’s new with that company they’ve been following on LinkedIn. 

Sure, they want to listen to the firesides, but that’s not all. So plan the flow of the event, not just the agenda.

We’ve learned this the hard way after scheduling several days of firesides. Between packed talks, attendees have no time to visit sponsors or talk to each other. Defeats a lot of why the event is happening in the first place!

Have breaks between panels, keep activations away from the stage, and give people something worth lining up for. 

Most recently, the branded merch we made with Deck disappeared fast, because the flow gave people the time (and the reason) to line up for it. Also, it’s probably one of the nicest hats we’ve given out.

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Always prepare for the worst-case scenario. 

The universe isn't against you, but the more often you host complex events with a lot of moving parts, the more likely something will go wrong. It’s just a good rule to mentally prepare when you create in-person events.

At one event, weak Wi-Fi and a long sign-up form that needed... guess what? Wi-Fi. The result? Lines and frustration over loading screens. 

At another, the sponsor’s intro at a larger event couldn’t be heard in the VIP area. You know, the area with all the guests they’d like to talk to…

The lesson here: test everything. 

Do a dry run of the audio, keep forms easy, make sure the Wi-Fi holds up when everyone tries to connect at once, and treat the start time as one of the most strategic decisions you’ll make. 

Always keep a plan B in your pocket for each of these. 

It’s like travel insurance when you go abroad. You pay for it and pray you don’t need it, but if you do, you’ll be glad you had it in the first place.

But hey, not everything is bad!

At The Official Afterparty we organized with a16z for closing Tech Week, a vendor mix-up moved our cotton candy stand to the wrong night, and it became a hit. Sometimes a mistake turns out to be a blessing in disguise.

Truth be told, the event is only the beginning. In fact, it ends weeks after the last guest has walked out the door.

After our SF Tech Week afterparty, a16z and Notion told us the conversations in the room were the highlight. 

Partners book demos from the follow-up. First-time attendees ask when your next event is.

You’ve planted a seed. Now, it’s time to water it so it grows.

That also means photos and videos that capture the vibe, so people remember it, talk about it, and, most importantly, miss it. 

Make sure to record content and put together recaps after the event to share on social media or any other channel you have. Let people see what they need to be at.

That means, include the follow-up when you plan the whole event. 

Big events are where you meet people, so create spaces for the conversations to keep going, even if that means a follow-up event, a more intimate one. Small dinners afterward are where closer relationships form.

The event is over, and the conversations and buzz it generated keep going for weeks. Awesome. 

But the idea here is to turn a one-night thing into a long-lasting relationship. 

That’s what happened to us: Bolt went from one event to a recurring partnership, and dinners with Mercury have become a fan-favorite series. 

You want to create something so remarkable for your partners that they’ll simply want to do it again, and do it with you of all people. 

Plus, building something long-lasting pays off because, when people like your event, they’ll come back and bring more people.

It’s a virtuous cycle. Partners get to iterate, and attendees start recognizing each other every time: “Oh, you were at that Unicorner party too, right?”

And your name? It starts to be associated with unique experiences and good memories.

That’s when you know you’ve really built a community.

Everything you just read is what we bring to every partner, from an intimate founder dinner to a full-scale production. 

It all started with a cold pitch in a party line, and it’s become the way we bring our community together, one room at a time.

We invite you to take this playbook and build your events to the fullest. 

And what do you get when you build an event with Unicorner? 

A curated room of venture-backed founders and investors, hand-picked from our readers and past attendees. 

We take care of the concept, venue, production, invites, and follow-up. You can be as hands-off as you like, or build it with us from the first idea to the last recap.

Who is it for? Companies that sell to founders and want to be in the room with them, not just in their inbox.

If that sounds like you, we’d love to hear what you have in mind. Who knows, maybe your story with us starts the same way ours started with Bolt: with someone just asking.

Want to build an event with us? Reply to this email or visit https://unicorner.news/partnerships