Hey folks, thank you so much for starting this conversation; this is awesome. It’s really exciting to see people thinking about funding mechanisms at this level, so props to @nidiyia, @JamesFarrell, and Devansh.
I’m happy to share my perspective from building Edge City. I’ll share a couple of quick thoughts below to start.
Sustainability & transparency
For us at Edge City, sustainability is something that we think about a lot. Our events are run through a nonprofit, and every edition is a big lift. They are budgeted to be breakeven through tickets and sponsorships, which can be a lot of work to align. So if there was a mechanism that could help meet up to 30% of our outlay, that would be a huge help.
At our last few gatherings, we’ve run sessions where we’ve shared the open budget with attendees, and people are always surprised at how much it actually takes to make one of these things happen. That’s why we’d be thrilled to see tools that help make popups sustainable in the long run, not just for us but for everyone else experimenting in this space.
Sustainability for everyone
Edge City is increasingly evolving into a network of residencies which happen alongside each other during the months of our popups (but also often have their own communities and other activations through the year). Each one brings its own theme, community, and in some cases, its own funding model. At Edge City Patagonia this fall, we’ll have 10–12 different residencies happening concurrently during the month before Devconnect in a beautiful mountain town in Patagonia; some sponsored by organizations, others completely community-run.
A few are even crowdfunding ahead of time using tools like ante.xyz, which is a great first step towards sustainability and helps solve the collective action problem of everyone feeling “yeah I would totally join that residency if it happens, but I’m not willing to be the first mover”.
It would be amazing if outcome-based funding could support these residencies as well, because if they’re able to be sustainable and drive impact, that would be great for the whole ecosystem.
Impact & evaluation
We couldn’t agree more that measuring impact is key, but for us, it is also one of the trickiest parts. We can definitely track how many startups, projects, academic papers, etc. get created during the popups (at this point there have been many), but part of the reason why it’s hard to track impact for popups is that often the most meaningful impact shows up months later.
Just the other day someone mentioned to me they’d raised funding for their startup and casually added, “Oh, I actually met my cofounder at Edge Esmeralda 2024.” We would have had no idea, and I’m certain there are many more anecdotal cases like this where so much value has been driven through the community work that people are doing in the space, but it’s hard to measure those ripple effects, especially in a lightweight way that doesn’t add more administrative burden to an already stretched small team.
We’re huge fans of mechanisms like Hypercerts, so if there’s a way to plug into a lightweight, standardized approach that helps prove impact without creating a ton of extra work, we’d love to be part of it.
Really grateful to you all for starting this conversation. We’re locked in and will continue to execute, but we see a lot of our peers burning out from the sheer amount of work it takes to do these things well, and it’s a pity because they do drive so much value to the broader ecosystem. I see these gatherings as necessary building blocks for any kind of future network-society, because people need surface area to meet and connect and develop affinity for each other.
Finding ways to make them sustainable feels like something the whole ecosystem will benefit from.
With love,
Timour