Every Wednesday at 9 am, two founders in Kansas City present their company to a room of strangers and then take questions. The format is called 1 Million Cups. It started in 2012 as a Kauffman Foundation initiative, it is free, and it now runs in 107 locations across the United States (Startland News, April 2025). It illustrates how a recurring local format can give founders regular opportunities to meet and exchange ideas.
Ecosystem builders help those relationships develop throughout the year. A large conference can introduce people; recurring local events give them opportunities to meet again. This guide is for the people who run those weeks: startup hubs, economic development agencies, accelerators and university programmes.
Plan a regular series that brings early founders together with experienced operators and investors. Evaluate who takes part, which introductions are useful and whether those relationships continue, alongside attendance.
What is an ecosystem builder?
An ecosystem builder is a person or organisation that works to connect the people and resources a startup community needs. The Kauffman Foundation describes them as coming from many fields: entrepreneurs, mayors, economic developers and academics. Its view is that ecosystems thrive when “people and resources are connected and working together” (Kauffman Foundation, 2017).
The most quoted set of principles comes from Brad Feld’s book Startup Communities (2012), known as the Boulder Thesis. Boulder Startup Week still opened its 2025 edition with a breakfast on it. The thesis has four principles:
- Entrepreneurs should lead the startup community.
- Leaders need a long-term commitment.
- The community should welcome anyone who wants to take part.
- The community needs ongoing activities that involve the whole ecosystem.
The last principle gives event teams a reason to plan regular activities alongside annual gatherings. It also explains why the role often lands with an event team.
For a startup hub or economic development agency, the calendar also needs clear objectives and measures that can be reported to funders.
Why the big conference is not enough
A large conference creates many first contacts in a few days. What it rarely creates is the second and third conversation that turns a contact into a mentor, a hire or an investor. Those conversations happen in the weeks between.
The research also suggests that the number of contacts is not what counts. Endeavor Insight studied the networks behind tech companies in several cities for its report Fostering Productive Entrepreneurship Communities (2018). It found no clear relationship between the quantity of connections in a community and its productivity. What mattered was who the connections led to.
Network quality
Who your founders meet matters more than how many
Endeavor measured mentoring, investment and work experience, not event attendance. For an event planner, the consequence is still direct. A packed meetup where early founders mostly meet other early founders adds contacts but not necessarily the right ones. A small session where five founders who have scaled a company each sit with three early teams can matter more.
Define which relationships each format should help participants build.
The event calendar of a startup ecosystem
If quality of contact matters most, the calendar has to create repeated, low-cost chances for the right people to meet. In practice, most working ecosystems combine four layers, each on its own rhythm.
| Rhythm | Typical format | Example (source) | Job in the ecosystem |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Open founder presentation with Q&A | 1 Million Cups: two founders, every Wednesday 9 am, free (Startland News, 2025) | A fixed place where newcomers find the community |
| Monthly | Fireside chat or pitch night | Startup Grind chapters host monthly events, often fireside chats with a founder (Startup Grind, 2026) | Brings experienced founders on stage and into the room |
| Quarterly | Build weekend or matched founder sessions | Techstars Startup Weekend: teams form and build a first product in 54 hours (Techstars, 2026) | Turns contacts into teams, mentors and first customers |
| Annual | Startup week or the week of a big conference | Boulder Startup Week, opened in 2025 with a breakfast on the Boulder Thesis | Shows the ecosystem to the outside and to funders |
You do not have to run all four yourself. A hub can host the weekly slot, a volunteer chapter can run the monthly evening, and a university can take the build weekend. Your job is to make sure the layers exist and do not clash.
For the monthly layer, our guide on what a pitch event is explains why a low-stakes pitch night suits a regional builder better than a gala competition. For the quarterly layer, the planning steps for a build weekend are in how to host a hackathon.
Four design rules for events between the conferences
The calendar sets the rhythm. The design of each event decides whether the right people actually meet. Four rules come up again and again.
1. Put people who have scaled in the room
The Endeavor finding translates into a guest list. Every recurring format should have a reserved place for founders and operators who have built a company beyond the early stage. Give them a defined role: the Q&A after the weekly presentations, the fireside chair, or a block of short office hours. A defined role is easier to say yes to than “come along sometime”.
If you run office hours, cap the slots per mentor. Our guide to mentor office hours without overbooking your best mentors shows how to spread demand so the same three mentors do not burn out by spring.
2. Keep the slot fixed
1 Million Cups runs on the same weekday at the same hour. A predictable slot makes the event easier to remember and plan around. Founders build it into their week, and newcomers can be told “come on Wednesday” without a link.
Keep the slot consistent and communicate any exceptions clearly.
3. Open door, curated table
The Boulder Thesis asks you to welcome anyone who wants to take part. The Endeavor data asks you to curate who meets whom. Both are right, and good series do both at once. The open part of the evening (talk, Q&A, drinks) stays free and open. A smaller part is matched: for example, eight 20-minute meetings between early founders and experienced operators, booked in advance against stated needs.
For the matched part, Converve lets you set time slots and rules for who can meet whom, such as founders in a given sector with mentors who have scaled in that sector, and limit how many requests each mentor receives. The open evening stays open, and the scarce time of experienced people goes where it is most useful. See how this works for startup and investor events.
4. Let founders lead, and host the infrastructure
The first Boulder principle is that entrepreneurs should lead. Kansas City’s 1 Million Cups is run by local volunteers called Caffeinators (Startland News, 2025). For an agency or a hub, that suggests a clear division of labour. Founders own the content and the invitations to their peers. You provide the room, the coffee, the calendar, the registration and the data.
This division gives founders a role in shaping the series while the host organisation maintains the practical support and reporting.
Year plan
A twelve-month rhythm for a city startup hub
- Month 1 Fix the weekly slot Same day, same hour, same room. Two short founder presentations and open Q&A.
- Months 1 to 2 Recruit experienced founders A pool of operators who have scaled a company, each with a defined role and a time limit.
- Month 3 Add a monthly evening Fireside chat or pitch night, led by a local founder or volunteer chapter.
- Every quarter Run a matched session Pre-booked 1:1 meetings between early teams and experienced founders, based on stated needs.
- Before the annual week Review and report Returning attendees, new faces, matched meetings and follow-ups for the board.
How the series connects to the big conference
The recurring series can also help participants prepare for a larger conference. Founders who have met an investor twice at a local session arrive at the conference with a reason for a real meeting rather than a cold request. The local series also gives you the hosts for the conference week: the volunteer who runs the monthly evening is the natural host for a side event.
If your city hosts or travels to a major conference, plan the overlap on purpose. Our guide to side events at startup conferences covers how to place community events in the conference week without pulling investors out of their meeting slots. A recurring morning format with a different audience, such as a chamber or regional business community, works on similar principles; we describe that format in networking breakfasts that last. The difference is the guest list: an ecosystem series is built around founders and the people who have scaled before them.
How to measure an ecosystem event series
Whatever mix of formats you choose, the board will ask what it achieved, and measurement is the weak spot of the whole field. Kauffman’s playbook says ecosystem builders still lack shared outcomes and calls for “a research agenda to develop evidence-based approaches and metrics of community impact” (Kauffman Foundation, 2019). So you need to define your own metrics, and attendance alone will not convince the board.
Startup Genome offers a useful model. It measures local connectedness by asking founders how many times they met other founders in their ecosystem in the previous two weeks, based on surveys of more than 10,000 founders and executives. It found founder relationships strongly associated with higher performance, without claiming cause and effect (Startup Genome, 2022). You can ask the same question in a short survey twice a year.
Track a small set of numbers per quarter:
- Returning attendees: the share of people who came at least three times. This shows whether the rhythm works.
- New faces: the share of first-time attendees. This shows whether the door is still open.
- Matched meetings: booked and held 1:1 meetings between early founders and experienced founders.
- Follow-ups: how many matched pairs met again within eight weeks, asked in a two-question survey.
- Role changes: founders who started as guests and now present, mentor or host.
Together, these measures show the series’ reach, the relationships it supports and whether participants stay involved.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an ecosystem builder?
An ecosystem builder is a person or organisation that connects the people and resources a startup community needs. The Kauffman Foundation lists entrepreneurs, mayors, economic developers and academics among them (2017). Startup hubs, accelerators and economic development agencies often take on the role and run the community’s recurring events.
What events do ecosystem builders run?
Most combine four layers: a weekly open format such as a founder presentation with Q&A, a monthly fireside chat or pitch night, a quarterly build weekend or matched founder session, and an annual startup week. 1 Million Cups, for example, runs every Wednesday at 9 am in 107 locations (Startland News, 2025).
How often should a startup community event run?
Run at least one format on a fixed weekly or monthly slot, so founders can plan around it without checking. Add quarterly formats for deeper work, such as a 54-hour Startup Weekend (Techstars, 2026) or a session of pre-booked 1:1 meetings with experienced founders.
How do you measure the success of startup ecosystem events?
Track relationships alongside attendance: the share of returning attendees, the share of new faces, matched meetings between early and experienced founders, follow-up meetings and attendees who later present or mentor. Endeavor Insight (2018) found that the quantity of connections in a community did not explain its productivity, while links to founders who had scaled a company did.
What tools help manage recurring tech meetups?
Most series use two kinds of tools. A shared calendar with registration handles the open events and gives you attendance data. A matchmaking tool handles the smaller, pre-booked part: 1:1 meetings between founders and mentors or investors, with time slots and rules for who can meet whom.
Give the community regular opportunities to meet
The big conference will keep its place in your calendar. The ecosystem grows in the weeks between, through a fixed rhythm of small formats that bring early founders together with people who have scaled before. Keep the slot fixed, keep the door open, curate the table and measure who met whom.
If you want to add matched 1:1 sessions to your community series, get in touch with Converve.
