#73 How to Fill a Room With 2,000 People on Zero Budget

How to Fill a Room With 2,000 People on Zero Budget Guest Introduction I'm joined by Vasily Alekseenko, Founder at Rare Founders. He started Rare Founders when his own fundraise stalled, has welcomed more than 25,000 founders and investors through its doors, and is now building SoPhy to help people keep the relationships that matter. Episode Summary London has 200+ startup events in a single ten-day window, and many of them promise investors who never show up. This episode is a playbook for filling a room with zero budget: free venues earned through partnerships, 60-second pitches, and formats built so nobody gets stuck in a dead conversation. Then it goes further: why 1,000 real relationships beat 13,000 LinkedIn connections, and what it takes to measure the difference. Key Points 🍺 How a zero-budget founder booked a free venue for 250 people in two minutes 💦 Why founders get 60 seconds on stage, and a water gun if they go over 🚪 The format trick that lets you leave any awkward networking conversation 💸 Why family offices avoid founders, and the event that got them into the room anyway 🤝 The partnership rule that gets venues, catering and speakers without paying 📉 Why a big LinkedIn network can hurt you when you ask for an intro 🤖 How AI raised user expectations so high that a manual MVP no longer works Important Links You can reach Vasily Alekseenko at   / alekseenkovv   Vishesh, your host at https://vishesh.space Checkout Rare Founders at https://www.rarefounders.com Hands hurt while you use the keyboard or mouse? https://tryneo.dev Chapters 0:00 - Introduction 0:58 - What Rare Founders is: 25,000+ founders and investors in two and a half years 1:47 - The failed fundraise that started it all 3:28 - Why paid pitch slots with no investors in the room felt like a scam 4:22 - The pub with a no-show organiser and a free venue for 250 people 6:37 - Going full-time and launching London's Largest Demo Day 8:52 - Why events are hard to monetise, and the 40+ media partners behind them 11:35 - Inside open mic pitching: one minute, raised hands and water guns 14:57 - Breaks that let you exit an awkward conversation 16:28 - When a volunteer copied the whole format 17:28 - What San Francisco events get wrong, and right 18:23 - Why UK investors avoid founder events 23:49 - Family offices vs VCs: who wants to meet whom 25:36 - Moving from open mics to technical and sector events 28:42 - How the events business pays the bills, and why it is not the moonshot 30:52 - The channels that drive traffic: partnerships, content and word of mouth 34:08 - The pub lesson: what a real partnership looks like 38:23 - The LinkedIn problem: 13,000 connections, 95% strangers 40:57 - Social physics: why well-connected founders reach Series B 43:07 - SoPhy's AI agent for your inbox, calendar and WhatsApp 49:00 - Can you measure trust between two people? 55:32 - Where SoPhy is now, and why launch is limited 57:14 - SoPhy vs Boardy and Instinct 59:31 - How AI raised user expectations and killed the manual MVP 1:03:47 - Using Rare Founders events as SoPhy's go-to-market 1:05:14 - SoPhy's one-minute pitch Topic: Startup Community Building