What curating thousands of event pages taught Michelle about hosting

Michelle has seen over 7,500 event pages over the past three years curating San Francisco's tech ecosystem. She also leads Stripe's startup program and hosts events for builders, including Build Days, a full-day coworking series for startup founders. I spoke with her about what works in tech events from both sides of the table.

Zelda: You've been curating SF tech events for three years and seen something like 7,500 event pages along the way. What got you started, and how has it evolved as the ecosystem has grown?

Michelle: I started curating events at the end of 2022. At the time, there were maybe 30 events in a given week. I’m only one person, so many of them were sitting in my inbox and I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it to. Sharing the list felt like a natural way to pass them on to people who could.

San Francisco is a transient city. People come in, people come out. There's almost always a reason to be here, whether you're fundraising or hiring or trying to connect with the tech ecosystem. Being a dependable resource for someone who just landed in town, or for someone who's been here a while but hasn't felt connected, is how I see my role. A lot of what built credibility around the curation is consistency. I've posted every single week for three years, and I’ve learned it matters more than I realize.

The ecosystem itself has changed a lot. There are now between 50 and 80 events in any given week. The challenge is no longer access. It's signal versus noise, and it's genuinely hard to tell what's worth your time. So I started a new article series alongside the weekly thread. Every week, I distill those 50 to 80 events down to five or six. For a busy founder, operator, investor, or developer, the question isn't “what’s happening this week?” It’s “what should I actually go to?” The breadth still matters for discoverability, but I'm leaning more into depth and curation.

From your curator's seat, what makes an event page actually work?

There are two things: how intentional the event itself looks, and how well you're getting it in front of the right people.

On the page itself, be specific about who it's for. There's a big difference between saying “builders” and saying “series A founders” or “consumer AI founders.”

Sometimes it's as simple as putting who exactly it's for and being more specific about that.

Be clear on the purpose, too. Why are you hosting this? Is it to discuss a topic? To bring people together? To breathe some fresh air into a community that hasn't gathered in a while? You don't need a black-and-white who-what-where-when, but directionally, someone should know why they should come and what they're going to get out of it.

A missed opportunity I see a lot is that people don't use the custom RSVP questions on Luma. You can learn so much more and help yourself in the process if you ask something like, “What are you hoping to get out of this event?” It sounds a little cheesy, but we get really great answers, and it helps us connect the right founders to the right people on the day of the event. It also helps you attract the right audience, because the people who answer that question well are the ones who have a real reason to come.

On AI-generated descriptions: I think AI is an okay starting point, but it adds a lot of fluff. You see the same adjectives over and over: exclusive, exciting, exhilarating. Those words are saturated and don't actually help an attendee understand what to expect. Use AI to get a baseline, but have a human in the loop to make sure it actually makes sense in context. Being clear is better than sounding impressive. Event pages can also just be short and concise. You don't need to feel obligated to fill it with all the words.

The same logic applies for event titles. I see some titles that are creative for the sake of being creative, that I can't actually tell what the event is. There's a balance between conveying the feeling you want and being legible. Tailor it to your audience. Know when to play with a creative title and when a business or technical-focused one is more appropriate for your audience.

On marketing: we use the Luma calendar feature a lot. We have our own calendar for all Stripe Startups events, and for city-specific calendars, we'll submit events there to get broader reach. The other thing I'd recommend is leaning on local community builders. If I'm hosting in San Francisco, I have a sense of who to share with. But if I were hosting in a city I'd never been to, I'd lean on local peers to tell me where to share and who to invite. Luma is great for overall visibility, and you can go deeper from there.

Tell us about the tech events you're hosting professionally. How do you think about Build Days, your signature event series at Stripe?

Build Days came from wanting to flip the traditional tech event upside down. Most happy hours have the same agenda no matter where you go: drinks, networking, leave. We wanted something different.

A Build Day is a full day of coworking, learning, and community. We invite founders into Stripe offices around the globe. The day kicks off with a guest speaker to set the tone, then runs new product demos throughout. Founders can sign up for one-on-one consultations with Stripe experts to troubleshoot or ideate on their businesses. They can also just cowork with other founders in the room. It's a choose-your-own-adventure format, so we're not holding anyone hostage to a seat.

Planning it takes a village. We pull in product managers, engineers, solutions architects, customer success managers, former founders on the Stripe team, even a developer lead who DJs lo-fi beats. It's a way for founders to actually experience the culture at Stripe, not just receive a pitch.

The format works because it matches our goals and what our audience actually wants. At Stripe, our goal with the startup program is to help founders feel supported, unblock them on challenges, and help them build faster. A happy hour can't do that. You might solve a payment problem by chatting over drinks without your laptop, but that’s not always guaranteed so the format has to be hands-on. We also saw it organically, founders kept asking to co-work in our offices, because that's what they wanted.

I think this is true for any event: it comes down to your goal, your purpose, and what feels native to your audience. Build what they would actually find compelling.

You mentioned that you think about events as a customer journey. What does that mean in practice?

It means thinking about how someone feels from the very first touchpoint all the way through to after the event ends. When they sign up, what do they perceive the event to be? When they get their confirmation and instructions, how are you preparing them to arrive in the best way possible? When they walk in the door, do they feel welcomed?

At Build Days, I always make sure there are six to ten team members standing at the doors and elevators, ready to greet every single attendee. Right when guests arrive, we take Polaroid photos and let them contribute to an attendee photo wall to feel a part of something larger. So you walk in, get your photo taken, and immediately see this beautiful wall building up with everyone who's there. People are smiling, they're excited, they get to see who else is in the room.

You also have to factor in buffer time. Every event host knows this: people will arrive late no matter what you tell them. Tell them 30 minutes of buffer, but plan for 45 to 50.

Throughout a Build Day, we plan surprise and delight moments to keep the energy up. We'll have lunch, but then we'll also throw in sweet treats and desserts a little after. We do a Stripe Press book giveaway later in the day, which is always a fan favorite.

And then there's the ending. I think this is the part hosts underestimate the most.

You never want it to fade out with low energy and people drifting away early. We always have a surprise at the end. We call it the “goodbye kiss,” kind of like how Disney always ends the day with fireworks. It's a way to reward people for staying the whole time, and it's how they remember the event.

After the event, follow up quickly. Share the photos, encourage people to post about it. Hosting is operational work, but the human element is what makes someone's experience great. So I'd encourage any host to think about the event as a customer journey from start to finish. How do you want everyone to feel? How do you power through the moments that might get less engagement? You want people leaving thinking, “I'm so glad I came”. In a city like San Francisco where everyone has fifty other priorities, that's a high bar.

What's one thing you'd want a first-time event host to know?

Hosting an event is stressful. You're creating something from nothing, you're thinking about other people's experiences constantly, and you have a hundred logistical tasks running at once. So my reminder is: give yourself grace.

Most things that don't go the way you wanted will never get noticed by an attendee. They don't see the catering order that was slightly switched, or the moment you were public speaking and thought was awkward. What they see is that someone created a space for them to connect with other people, and they're grateful for that itself.