PURPOSE: Create a community within a membership tier of competitors

Event Date: July 2023

Event Location: Queenstown, New Zealand

Details: Connecting the membership tier of 120+ VCs from 89 funds across Australia and New Zealand over three days in Tāhuna (Queenstown), Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Mission: Innovation Bay wanted to do something ambitious: build a genuine national community of founders and investors across Australia and New Zealand, and shift from a networking organisation to a fully-fledged membership model. I was brought in to create the event programme that would make that transition real.

Design: I designed and produced 60+ events annually across the country — from intimate curated dinners to larger flagship gatherings — translating each membership tier's objectives into a specific event experience. When COVID hit, I pioneered a hybrid model that kept the community alive across four simultaneous physical locations and a digital audience, because the connection the community had built was too valuable to lose to a pandemic.

Impact: Membership grew from zero to 200+ across four tiers. The hybrid event model I built became the blueprint for how Innovation Bay operated through and beyond COVID. And a community that genuinely changed careers, sparked partnerships, and funded companies across the region..