Forbes And Beyond
Updated: Jan 2, 2019
Two weekends ago, I got to participate in Forbes Under 30 Summit. It was a fantastic event.
I had a lot of fun with Arnav and Tai (the latter who's startup I profiled on Forbes here). Both of them were 30 Under 30 Listmakers in 2016.
The Under 30 Summit was a three-day affair. I was there on behalf of Rough Draft Ventures (the venture capital firm that I am now a part of - more info here). The first day started off nicely - I got to meet the RDV's New York City team in the first couple of hours. It was great getting to know them over lunch initially. They are a talented group of individuals I'm happy to learn from and work with going forward.
After that meeting, I attended the Marshmello performance with Arnav and Tai later that night. I've never seen Marshmello perform before but heard a lot of good things from others about him, so I had high expectations going into his set.
He exceeded them! I was impressed with his DJing skills and overall. It was awesome to see everyone dancing and enjoying themselves during the first night of the summit.
The next day was exciting. Boston City Hall, the venue of the summit, was packed with individuals under thirty going to panels, networking with one another, lounging around in the VIP lounge, and getting lunch from the food trucks.
The lines were long to get into any event. Considering the size of the venue, Forbes should have had more areas for events to be held. Not that that mattered, since I only cared to hear Jeff Flake and John Kerry have their separate talks with Forbes Senior Editor, Randall Lane.
As expected, plenty of people in the audience and right outside the venue were protesting Flake for his role in the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. (I'm not going to go into details about the politics of the situation - the pictures here can speak for themselves.)
All in all, I enjoyed both sets of talks.
The evening was fun - I had a nice dinner, but spent too long there and didn't link up with Arnav and Tai to see Marshmello at Landsdowne Pub, unfortunately.
The final day of Forbes was more toned down. Not as many people were there on the last day than yesterday. Lines to panels were non-existent. Most talks were on the shorter side of things. Not much was happening on the main stage like the first two days.
I mostly just chilled in the VIP lounge, checking-in with Arnav and Tai every so often while meeting new people from all over the world. Even though nothing major was going on, I really enjoyed being by myself as I am chatting with strangers.
Looking back on it, having that confidence of being on your own in social settings makes me feel great.
Later that night, I ended up going to The Grand (a nice club in the Seaport District of Boston) with a large group of African Forbes 30 Under 30 Listmakers. (That explains the first photo in this blog entry - I usually don't post pictures of myself in the club because club photos are super tacky, but that was too good of a view not to showcase.)
All in all, it was a great way to end my first Under 30 Summit. I definitely had a great time and met beautiful people across all three days of the conference.
Maybe the next time I go, I'll be a 30 Under 30 Listmaker too, just like Arnav and Tai! A man can dream, right?
Soda