Is it possible for a networking event to jump the shark? If so, meetups may be very close.
In Adrianne Jeffries’ feature this week on start-up fever affliciting New Yorkers with a bad case of wantrepreneurship, we listed what we thought was already a high number of networking spinoffs from the original New York Tech Meetup. Dumbo Tech Breakfast, UWS Startup Meetup, and the New York Technology Bathhouse Meetup come to mind. But none of the options on that growing list meets the particular specifications of ff Venture Capital’s david teten. He and venture partner Mike Yavonditte from Hashable are launching “a periodic Meetup for people who work in the innovation community and who are parents of pre-teen children.” Sorry, Fred Wilson, your kids are too grown.
On Business Insider, Mr. Teten writes, “We envision organizing activities that our kids, partners, and we will all jointly enjoy.”
Ironically, Mr. Teten felt the need to create this new targeted meetup vertical because of the proliferation of events that leaves New York’s tech set in a constant state of FOMO. For VCs with growing broods–they’re probably a little more insulated from the cost of raising a kid in the city–that FOMO is particularly acute. Says Mr. Teten:
Now that I’m up to my 3rd child, effectively all of my weekend/spare time is spent with the kids. That’s great, but it also means that I’m somewhat cut off from some of the great activities that the NY innovation community organizes every week: the classes, panels, presentations, networking events, pitch contests, etc. That’s why we’re working on this initiative.
Hmmm, come to think of it, we’re feeling sort of feverish about a location-aware babysitting app that disrupts the venture capitalists with pre-teen kids market.
