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Pomp's Holiday Party
Ted Merz
December 06, 2023
I went to my first large corporate-style holiday party in decades.
It was both familiar and utterly removed from the events I attended in the 1990s when I worked for Bloomberg, which held parties at the Museum of Natural History. Dow Jones once famously rented out the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Those lavish open-bar events combined colleagues and alcohol in a way that inevitably led to shenanigans.
The era of big New York corporate holiday parties with excess drinking were toned down after 9/11, when celebrations seemed less appropriate. Companies were probably happy to reduce the expense and potential liability.
The event last night appeared similar on the surface to the old parties. It was held at Nebula, a nightclub in Times Square. There were 1,200 RSVPs, mostly startup founders, investors and tech employees. People came dressed up.
The big difference: The event was arranged by an individual, not an institution.
Anthony Pompliano was holding his third annual Christmas Party.
Pomp, as he’s known, is a tech entrepreneur and crypto enthusiast with a newsletter (250,000 subscribers) and YouTube channel (530,000 followers.)
Most of the people I spoke with at the party didn’t know Pomp personally.
He invited subscribers to his newsletter and people who follow him online. It was free, but you had to RVSP.
Some people came hoping to raise money, others because they follow Pomp on YouTube. A woman from Deloitte came because her friend needed a wing-person. Another guy said he came because it was Tuesday!
The alcohol wasn’t free, but I scored two drink tickets from Charlie Stephens, an executive from Fidelity, which sponsored the event.
I met some great people, including:
–Jolynn Lenz, an HR expert, in town from Denver. She offered to provide me some advice for my writing agency.
--Dimitrios Mano, who co-founder of Roofty, which helps buildings with amazing amenities rent out space.
–Nadia Shalaby 🚀, founder and CEO of Pakira, Inc., was in town from Boston where she has a startup focused on making the supply chain in the wood industry more efficient.
–Fraser Spivey, a four-time founder, is running a non-invasive biotech company that measures blood glucose levels with the goal of installing the feature in automobiles to prevent drunk driving.
–Yaryna Hotlib came to New York from Ukraine to work on her startup, Getgrant.ai, an AI platform which simplifies the grant discovery process.
The music wasn’t too loud. People didn’t get drunk.
I stayed much longer than I expected.
BRIEF OBSERVATIONS
AI Has Gotten Everyone’s Attention Generative AI is now regarded as a bigger threat than immigration.
Bandwidth for Venture: This is a wild trend: venture capitalists posting publicly on social media to recruit startup founders to pitch them before deadlines they have to allocate capital.
Dreading the Workday: The data from an Alight survey seems incredible: more than one third of employees said they “often dread starting their workday.”
Digital Natives: Advertisement in uptown Manhattan for a service that transfers any tape cassettes or VHS to digital flash drives. Love the way the advertisement to go digital is so analog: a piece of paper on a pole.
The Hutch: There’s a hutch in my parents’ house that reflects the season. It was festooned with Halloween decorations in the fall. Within a few days after Thanksgiving, the transformation was complete to the Xmas holidays.
