#CountDown: 5 Days to The New York Supply Chain Meetup #03

We’re now less than a week from The New York Supply Chain Meetup’s third gathering. The purpose of this post is to outline our plans for that event, and preview what we expect to do between now and June 2018 . . . We’re still in the early days of building this community, so much of this is subject to change, especially as we go through the process of recruiting sponsors.

Our Mission

To nurture and grow the world’s foremost open, global, multidisciplinary community of people devoted to building the supply chain networks of the future -  starting in NYC.

Become a coporate sponsor. Email me at: [email protected] for more details about our vision, and the team that's working behind the scenes to build this community.

The New York Supply Chain Meetup is powered by Particle Ventures, a seed-stage fund based in NYC that invests in Supply Chain & Industrial Intelligence. Particle is built by the same team that launched KEC Ventures.

Logistical Details: #TNYSCM #03

• Date: Thursday, February 22, 2018.
• Time: 17:30–20:30
• Location: Work-Bench, 110 5th Avenue, New York, NY, 10011.

This event will combine a Workshop, and a Panel Discussion. Our MC for this event is Brian Lindquist, a member of our team of organizers.

Agenda

• 17:30–17:55: Pre-event Networking
• 17:55 PM - 18:00 PM Welcome Remarks
• 18:00 PM - 19:00 PM Workshop, Q&A
• 19:00 PM - 19:45 PM Lessons From The Field - Panel Discussion, Q&A
• 19:45 PM - 19:50 PM Closing Remarks
• 19:50 PM - 20:20 PM Post-event Networking

Preview — Workshop: Going From $0.00 To $1,000,000 - Towards Product-Market-Fit For The Non-Sales B2B Pre-Seed and Seed-Stage Startup Founder (aka Going From Zero To One - Sales and Marketing Tactics For The Non-Sales B2B Pre-Seed and Seed-Stage Startup Founder)

Our instructor, Victor Adefuye, will walk through simple, inexpensive tactics that early stage startup founders can employ as they try to start building sales and generating revenue. He is the Founder & CEO of Dana Consulting, a firm that functions as an outsourced VP of sales for technology startups and other small business. He also acts as a management consultant to Dana Consulting's enterprise clients as they try to bring new products and services to market.

While this event is being organized primarily for members of #TNYSCM, the workshop is ideal for anyone running a small business that seeks to grow. It is also useful for angel investors, venture capitalists, and startup advisors who do not have a sales and marketing background, but who nonetheless might find themselves trying to help a startup win its very first customers, and grow revenues over time.

The workshop will last about 50 minutes, with roughly 10 minutes of audience Q&A to follow.

Bring pens/pencils and a notebook, because Victor will be sharing practical tactics you can start implementing the very next day. I know - I sat through one of his workshops in July 2017, and I got ideas that I started using at work the very next day.

You'll get completely worthless bonus points if you bring a cool mechanical pencil and show it to me with pride during one of the networking sessions - assuming I am not running around trying to make sure everything goes well.

REGISTER HERE!

Preview — Panel Discussion: Lessons From The Field

After delivering the workshop, Victor will speak with three founders who have successfully grown sales in order to extract insights and lessons, and also to weave those lessons with concepts he discussed during the workshop. This should help the founders in the audience think about how to allocate time, effort, and resources between trying to grow sales, and all the other things they must do in the very early days of a startup's existence.

Our panelists are;

Suuchi Ramesh (@Suuchi_madeforU), CEO & Founder, Suuchi Inc; Suuchi Inc. is a design & manufacturing partner for innovative American apparel fashion brands and Fortune 1000 companies. Powered by advanced design software & manufacturing automation, Suuchi Inc’s vertically integrated supply chain replenishes inventory in as quickly as 5 days. Suuchi has bootstrapped her company to a 7 figure 2017 revenue, and hopes to reach an 8 figure revenue number in 2018. Suuchi Inc. earned its first revenues in April 2016, and grew its 2017 revenues to 5x its 2016 revenues. You heard her describe her business at our launch - at which she was a hit with the audience. Here, she'll talk about how Suuchi Inc. has gone about growing revenues.

Steve Pike, CTO, SevenFifty; SevenFifty is modernizing wholesale beverage alcohol, a massive but technologically antiquated industry with a status quo dating back to Prohibition. SevenFifty offers a web platform that connects over 50,000 on- and off-premise licensed buyers with wholesale distributors to provide them with fast and efficient access to information about products available in their local wholesale markets. Steve was SevenFifty’s first hire and as CTO is responsible for building new products and managing the engineering team. He’s been with the company since 2011, when he built the platform working out of a bar in Manhattan called the Tippler. He too will fill us in on how they grew sales in those early days.

Willem Sundblad (@oden_tech) CEO & Founder, Oden Technologies Ltd.; Oden is a B2B SaaS company combining industrial hardware, wireless connectivity, and big data architecture into one simple platform so all manufacturers can analyze and optimize their production, from any device. Manufacturing has long been an analog world, but Oden is trying to change this by introducing the power of IoT and cloud analytics to factory operations. Willem too will talk about how they have grown sales in a legacy industry that is thought of as insular and unwelcoming to outsiders.

REGISTER HERE!

Preview — #TNYSCM in March, April, May, June

Here is what the team of organizers is working on, between now and June.

• March 15: A showcase of startups applying artificial intelligence to supply chain. Co-hosted with NYC Bots and Artificial Intelligence Meetup.
• April 26: A panel discussion and keynote presentation, focused on the issues that have kept blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies in the lab and out of the real world. The keynote presentation is by Silvio Micali, he will talk about his work creating Algorand.
• May 24: A showcase of startups in Fashion, Apparel, and Retail supply chain.
• June 21: A Sourcing 101 workshop for startups building physical products.

Other Upcoming Supply Chain Events

• TPM2018: TPM, part of IHS Markit is the world’s largest container shipping and logistics conference, 18 years old this year having attracted 2,300 in 2017 representing cargo owners, container carriers, forwarders/3PLs, railroads, ports, marine terminals, equipment lessors and various others. It is one of the three main annual regional container logistics organized by JOC including the Container Trade Europe event in Hamburg and TPM Asia in Shenzhen China. The programs are developed with editorial independence by the JOC team of veteran transportation journalists. I’m attending for the first time this year to moderate the Innovation Jam on Tuesday, March 6.
• Maritime Global Technologies: Reverse Pitch on March 15, 2018 from 09:30–12:30. MGTIC is an initiative of SUNY Maritime College to build a global maritime technology innovation hub by bringing together all that the New York City metro-region has to offer entrepreneurs building software for the global shipping and maritime logistics market. I’m a member of the advisory board and have previously blogged about it here and here.
• Transparency18: This is the flagship event series started by the founders of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance. It follows BiTA’s Spring Symposium, a members only event that occurs on May 21, 2018. I will attend both days of Transparency 18 May 22 and May 23.