Today was the last day of Next Gen Summit and was arguably the best day so far. We woke up bright and early to go to the last day of the conference, took the subway, ate a couple $1 pizzas, and went to the Convene. Unlike the other days, the conference ended early on this day — about 4:30 PM. There were sessions every hour up until the closing session which ranged from topics such as frontier tech, venture capital, branding, press, and politics.
The venture capital session that we went to was run by Danielle and Michael from 1517 fund, and during their presentation, they spoke about how early-stage venture capital works (early-stage meaning a small number of employee/low market cap valuations). We did some live streams of the sessions which you can check out here (Ani) and here (Ethan).
Another interesting moment from today was seeing the finals of a pitch competition that happened at NGS. Certain attendees applied to pitch to investors and were selected to do so — three finalists pitched in the finals to the entire audience. There were no specific guidelines that we knew of in terms of how the competition went — each pitch asked for a different amount of money and had different terms. The friend that we had voted for won, and we think that he now is given the opportunity to pitch to the investors for the real money.
The highlight of the day was meeting Jeff Hoffman who was the co-founder of priceline.com (a company now called Booking Holdings which is a public company with a market cap of $100B).
Undeniably, the highlight of the day was Jeff Hoffman who was the co-founder of priceline.com (a company now called Booking Holdings which is a public company with a market cap of $100B). He gave a talk that mixed in his own story with advice to entrepreneurs, and he knows how to deliver a strong talk that resonates with people, which is exactly what you need at a conference of budding changemakers. After his talk, we went up to him and got pictures with him.
Overall, Next Gen Summit was awesome. We had an opportunity to learn, connect, and build new friendships with young people that we could relate to. Excited to come back sometime in the future. Stay tuned for the final wrap-up blog post.
Thanks for reading.
PLP
