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

What Sydecar Director of Revenue Halle Kaplan-Allen learned from fireside chats with venture leaders

9 Oct 2022 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:58

In this interview segment, Halle Kaplan-Allen explains the motivation and design behind a series of Zoom fireside chats she ran with venture industry leaders during the pandemic. Hosted on the Automatter platform, each session featured a single expert speaker and a tightly curated audience of five to ten participants. The small, value‑focused groups were intended to foster genuine conversation where every attendee both learned and contributed. Halle notes that the format not only delivered peer learning for participants but also served as a rich source of free content ideas for her and her writing partner, Jeremy, by revealing topics that resonated with the community.

Chapters

You did some really great intimate fireside chats on Zoom throughout the pandemic with leaders in the venture industry that I attended and enjoyed. So can you speak more to the spark behind putting those together?
Yeah, so we did these fireside chats through Automatter, and like, it was— the point was to bring people together in conversation. And like, we always had a featured speaker, so someone who had some expert, you know, subject matter expertise on something specific. But Then we intentionally kept the groups really small to like 5, maybe 10 people. And, and the participants were somewhat curated because we wanted it to be a conversation where like everyone was providing value. Like we said, we want everyone to learn something and to teach something during these events. And I think that really did happen. It was a lot less about just like having people come together. I mean, honestly, like it was a tremendous tool for Jeremy, my writing partner, and I to learn about what people were interested in so that we could get free content, right? Free content ideas.