Case Study

Left Lane's Fast Growth Summit: North America

Hybrid

•

New York City

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March 2022

Super special event, content, speakers…truly one of the proudest days of my professional life.

Harley Miller

Managing Partner & CEO, Left Lane

The Challenge

Left Lane Capital is a leading venture capital and early-growth equity firm that invests in high-growth internet and consumer technology businesses. Their mission is to partner with extraordinary entrepreneurs that are creating companies fundamental to the human condition and spirit. Previous startups in Left Lane’s portfolio include GoStudent, Masterworks, M1 Finance, Tovala, FightCamp, Wayflyer, and Tapcart.

Left Lane’s Fast Growth Summit is the first event of this scale and format that they have hosted. The goal for their Fast Growth Summit 2022 was to position the Left Lane brand as synonymous with ‘fast growth’ within their industry, to own this category and to build a like-minded community through mindshare. This would be done by assembling growth leaders from world-class companies to share success stories, experiences, and challenges tasked with leading new pathways to scale.

It was to be a half-day summit located in Brooklyn, New York City, the borough in which the Left Lane headquarters is located. The event format was to be hybrid, with a blend of in-person and virtual attendees. The guest list of the onsite experience was curated towards Founders, C-suite, VPs, Directors and investors, while the livestream broadcast was open to the public, and for on-demand viewers.

Left Lane partnered with Happily to provide service management of both the onsite and virtual experiences, as directed by their vision. The Happily Experiential, Broadcast, Web, Creative and Strategy Teams were all activated for this hybrid event. This included design services, vendor selection, contract negotiation, installation supervision, video editing, and program management.

A BIG thank you is in order. You made our first annual Fast Growth Summit iconic, unforgettable, and truly special.

Erica Amatori

Head of Platform, Left Lane

The Solution

The Happily Strategic Team included an Executive Producer, a Head of Production, as well as a Head of Broadcast. They provided leadership, quality assurance and co-created the onsite and virtual experiences directly with the Left Lane team.

The Happily Experiential Team handled all the operations and production of the onsite experience. A Producer coordinated and supervised all aspects of the onsite experience, along with the Associate Producer and Production Assistants. A Stage Manager was focused on the Main Stage, coordinating the movements of the speakers to and from the stage, while a Talent Wrangler organized and guided speakers prior to their appearance. Registration Assistants greeted onsite attendees upon arrival and guided them through registration.

The Happily Broadcast Team handled all the filming and live streaming of the virtual experience. A Happily Broadcast Streaming Engineer sat in the hot seat and was the final stop before the recording went live online. A Happily B-Roll Camera Operator recorded and documented the onsite experience, with footage to be used in post-production assets. We collaborated with local vendor UpLight for a Lighting Director, and a Lighting Operator, as well as a Graphics Operator to manage the presentation slides on the main stage. We teamed up with staff from the Roulette Intermedium venue to provide Camera Operators for the live stream broadcast, as well as A1/Systems Engineers responsible for the technical design of the audio system (eg. microphones, speakers). Audio Engineers from Sound Co-op were responsible for all aspects of capturing the audio recording for the broadcast.

The Happily Web Team designed and built a custom microsite for the virtual experience of the summit. It was fully branded with Left Lane’s visual language, and provided virtual viewers with an agenda, an outline of the speakers, highlighted event sponsors, as well as hosted the broadcast itself.

The Happily Creative Team elevated both the onsite and virtual experiences with detailed oriented and custom design assets, such as presentation slides, virtual frames, marketing material and post-production video editing. A Happily Video editor cut each speaker into separate video assets, as well as polished up a final recording of the entire event, for the purposes of on-demand viewing of the summit.

As Left Lane is proudly Brooklyn-based and share our Happily values, the summit was produced as sustainably and locally as possible. Vendors and services based in Brooklyn were preferred as Happily sourced vendors, venues and entertainment. The building selected to host the onsite experience, Roulette Intermedium, is a Brooklyn non-profit venue dedicated to the experiential arts, dance and intermedia. Kelly Moran, the pianist who opened the summit with a moving original performance, is based in Brooklyn, as well as the event’s florist, Boy Flowers, an LGBTQI+ vendor. Any out-of-town speakers were put up in the ACE Hotel Brooklyn, and all of the onsite Happily staff were from New York City. Pixie Scout, a seasonally inspired and sustainability conscious caterer, as well as UpLight, an onsite tech hire, are both Brooklyn-based.

Thank you all for being a part of it and bringing your collective wisdom to our community, and hope that you’ll keep coming back year after year.

Harley Miller

Managing Partner & CEO, Left Lane

The Results

Left Lane’s Fast Growth Summit 2022 was an engaging and rewarding experience. The places for the onsite experience filled up and were confirmed in just 3 weeks, while the viewership of the live broadcast had 2x the average duration.

This summit harnessed the power of convening to ensure that Left Lane is first that comes to mind when their target audience thinks of ‘fast growth’. By positioning themselves as a thought leader in this category, they were able to use a focused community-building strategy to increase sales flow and leads. By launching this learning summit, they are growing a long-term like-minded audience that will turn to Left Lane for content and thought leadership on how to start a business and financially fund it optimized for rapid expansion.

The hybrid format of onsite alongside virtual allowed Left Lane to curate a personalized experience for a selection of onsite attendees, while still connecting with the masses online. It was important to the Left Lane team that all sessions were professionally recorded to be used as on-demand video content, following the live broadcast.

The lineup of speakers were all extraordinary company executives that are considered top leaders within their industry and sector. The program content was a mixture of panel formats with three guests and a moderator, TedX style single presentations, as well as ‘story times’ in which the presenter shared an inspiring anecdote. They were all kept short and sweet to maintain momentum and keep the audience absorbed.

Here is the lineup of speakers:

Alex Lieberman, Co-Founder, Executive Chairman, Morning Brew
Alicia Fuller, Senior Market Manager, SVB
Arif Mansuri, CEO, MetaLab
Ashish Agarwal, CMO, Prosper Marketplace
Ben Shanken, VP of Growth, Discord
Brian Magida, VP of Performance Marketing, Warby Parker
David Rabie, CEO, Tovala
Harley Miller, CEO, Left Lane
Jack Chen, Co-Founder, CEO, Swidia
Jesse Pujji, CEO, Gateway X
Justin Abrams, CEO & Co-Founder, Flagship
Katelyn Watson, CMO, Nurx
Katie Iles, CGO, The Farmer's Dog
Keith Melnick, CEO, The Zebra, Former President of Kayak
Linda Boff, CMO, GE
Lisa Barnett, Co-Founder and President, Little Spoon
Mayur Gupta, CMO, USA Today Network
Myles Kleeger, President, Braze
Nick Cromydas, Co-Founder and CEO, Hunt Club
Nik Sharma, CEO, Sharma Brands
Omar Nawaz, Chief Product Officer, Chargebee
Patrick Chandler, Co-Founder and CMO, FightCamp
Ravi Mehta, Co-Founder and CEO, Scale Higher
Talia Brandt, Partner & COO, IQEQ
Toni Oloko, CEO & Co-Founder, Dandy
Will Flaherty, SVP Growth, Ro
William Leiter, Growth Lead, Shopify
Yahya Mokhtarzada, Founder, CRO, Truebill
Yas Moaven, CMO, Pipe

A massive shoutout to all the amazing vendors of this event:

11th Street Workshop for the fabrication of the big Left Lane logo for the main stage
Boy Flowers for all the floral arrangements
Drape Kings for all the curtains and drapes
Kelly Moran, for an original piano performance to open the summit
Patina for rental furniture and various decor
Pixie Scout for catering
Please B Seated for the bar rentals
Roulette Intermedium for the venue hire and various staff
Sound Co-Op for audio services
Top Notch for beverage supply and bar staff
UpLight for various tech equipment and services

Everyone spoke from their heart and gave commendable insights that made a lasting impression on the audience – the feedback is overwhelming on how amazing you all were.

Erica Amatori

Head of Platform, Left Lane

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