In late 2023, after a 2.5 year break that was brought on by the pandemic, I relaunched Startup Lean Coffee. It seemed like we came along with the right vibe at the right time for some members of the NYC startup community who were looking for an opportunity to build real connections with other founders. As we grew, we quickly wore out our welcome at coffee shops. In early 2024, we found a new home at Foley Hoag LLP, a full-service law firm with a strong offering for emerging companies across technology, health care, life sciences, cannabis, climate, non-profit, among many other sectors. I would like to thank Chip Korn, Theo Simko, Rebecca Oliveira, Zoe McLean, and the rest of the Foley Hoag team for continuing to make Startup Lean Coffee possible!
We met every month last year, in groups ranging from 10 to 50 participants. We had genuine, raw conversations about entrepreneurship. The hard stuff. Dealing with co-founders, employees, customers, and investors. Fundraising. PMF. GTM. We had community members become co-founders in startups and organize other events together, friendships form, companies get funded, founding teams struggle, and companies shut down, all while trying to navigate a year full of economic and political uncertainty.
We participated in NYC #TechWeek for the first time and had our largest attendance ever. We actually had to break out into 3 groups (we're usually 1-2 groups these days). Fortunately, our community stepped up to help facilitate some of the larger groups! I would like to especially thank Benjamin Friedman, Celeste Layne, Karina Muller, and Paul Thorogood for their support!
We built an extremely diverse community: gender, race, nationality, age, as well as company industry and stage. We were also very diverse in entrepreneurial experience, ranging from serial founders to those who were considering taking the plunge for the first time, and to angel investors, advisors, consultants, and students who each brought a wealth of experiences and different perspectives to share.
Most importantly, I would like to thank all of you who participated in our discussions. You are the community. Startup Lean Coffee is literally nothing without your willingness to show up and share your successes, challenges, joys, and pains.
Startup Lean Coffee was born in 2018 from a question about startups on a CTO mailing list that turned into a long thread and evolved into a call. We liked our first call so much that we decided to do it again! Then we decided to meet in person. Over the next 6 years, Startup Lean Coffee grew into the talented, accomplished, and diverse community of entrepreneurs that it is today, sharing our journeys for the sole purpose of supporting one another.
In 2025, we will continue with our Startup Lean Coffee meetings every month. You can now subscribe to our calendar on Luma and download the mobile app (iOS | Android) to make sure that you never miss any news or announcements from our community. You'll see that this year's events are already scheduled (I reserve the right to adjust these dates as we get closer).
If you are organizing an event that might be of interest to our community, please feel free to [+ Submit Event] on our calendar. You can also follow us and mention '@startup lean coffee' on LinkedIn.
Is there anything more that we want do for our community, beyond meeting in-person and getting real with one another once a month (as awesome as this is)? We don't need to change anything; but if you have ideas for how to better serve our community, let's talk about them!
May 2025 bring you delighted customers, revenue growth, funding, and most importantly, the fulfillment that comes from building a business that you care about!
Geoff
P.S. Don't miss our first Startup Lean Coffee of the year on Wednesday January 15!
