Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

How did TQ Ventures Investor Jana Iris incorporate Burning Man into HashiCorp events?

17 Dec 2022 · 1 min

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In this interview excerpt, Jana Iris, a TQ Ventures investor, explains how her long‑standing participation in Burning Man (since 2013) informs the way she designs HashiCorp’s conferences and events. She highlights Burning Man’s ten guiding principles, its gifting culture, and its distinctive physical layout as key elements she borrows to foster community, encourage generosity, and shape the spatial experience of corporate gatherings. Her personal connection to the festival—describing herself as a California‑based hippie who values deep human connection—underscores the authenticity behind this cross‑pollination of counter‑cultural practices into a tech company setting.

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Talk to me more about like how you incorporated Burning Man, like principles, philosophies, design into HashiCorp events. I would love to hear about that.
It's so funny, I listened to the Kate Cole episode and so we're both like, we're not clichés, but we really enjoy going to Burning Man. Yeah, I've been going to Burning Man since 2013. I just love it. Again, I'm like a hippie from California and I just, I just deeply love connecting with people. And so for me, it was always kind of like, It is what it is and what it's become now, but it's still one of the largest kind of experiments of community building and bringing people together in person based on 10 guiding principles. And I think that's a really cool concept. And also just kind of that it's based on gifting and like the layout of it. So there's a bunch of elements I would incorporate, but even kind of how I would design our conferences, I would set them up kind of how Burning Man was laid out.