A gift to the industry (be my guest at LAUNCH Festival)

I’ve been hosting my Launch Festival for six years now, with the goal of making the most supportive and joyful startup event in the world for fellow founders.

We’ve had amazing startups launch, including Yammer, Powerset, Mint, Space Monkey, Dropbox, Docstoc, Brilliant.org, Boxbee, FitBit, RedBeacon, AdStage and Swipe.

In this, our seventh year, I’d like to offer a free pass to the event:

UPDATE: "Gift to the industry" tickets are sold out!

Passes can still be purchased here: http://launch.ticketleap.com/launch-festival-2014/dates

Details: http://festival.launch.co

Why?

---------------------------

When I started in the industry in my 20s, I didn’t have a pot to piss in and was a ‘little rough around the edges’ – I was so lucky to have folks like Esther Dyson, Kara Swisher, John Battelle, Tim O'Reilly and (most of all) John Brockman include me in their events.

These events led to me rubbing elbows with Evan Williams, Yossi Vardi, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Ted Leonsis, Steve Case, Mark Cuban and countless other luminaries. Some of them became good friends and/or critical business contacts.

Now I’m trying to pay it forward for the 40+ startups that will launch onstage, the 150 that will be at demo tables, and the thousands of founders and technologists who maybe don’t have the budget yet to come to a world-class conference.

LAUNCH Festival is my legacy and I want as many folks to experience it as possible.

We had 6,000 people sign up last year and this year we hope to have 8,000 (stretch goal FTW!). This makes us the largest startup conference in the world – by far.

How are we able to do this?

---------------------------

First, we have premium tickets for sale that we upsell folks on. Second, we have the massive support of so many friends in the industry who sponsor the $1M+ budget of the event.  

Also, sometimes I lose money on the event.

We couldn’t do these sorts of crazy things without the support of our partners – whom I thank from the bottom of my heart:

* wsgr | SOMA (http://wsgr.com)

* Ludlow Ventures (http://ludlowventures.com)

* DFJ (http://dfj.com)

* MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com)

* Microsoft Ventures (http://microsoftventures.com)

* MicroVentures (http://microventures.com)

* Sequoia (http://sequoiacap.com)

* Yammer (http://yammer.com)

* Autodesk (http://autodesk.com)

* .CO (http://go.co)

* Expedia (http://expedia.com)

* Hotwire PR (http://hotwirepr.com)

* Instaradio (http://instaradio.com)

* Sourcebits (http://sourcebits.com)

* Ticketleap (http://ticketleap.com)

* Traklight (http://traklight.com)

* Zelkova Ventures (http://zelkovavc.com)

If you would like to add your name to the growing list of folks supporting the LAUNCH Festival, just email me at jason@launch.co.

We’re 35% of the way to budget, and with the support of the industry we’ll get there together.

It’s going to be an amazing week (three days for the Hackathon, three days for the Festival) - please join me.