The AI Craze
AI community events are not just after-work parties
On Thursday night, November 21st, I attended an event hosted by The AI Furnace, a newly formed AI Startup Founder + Researcher community with a global footprint of events and followers. They had free food, so I couldn’t resist.
AI communities are a rapidly emerging phenomenon across the US, often rooted in platforms like LinkedIn, Discord, and other social media networks. They are condensed ecosystems where people come to explore job opportunities, recruit talents, connect with others who share their interests, and even discover potential co-founders for their startup ideas.
These groups are constantly hosting events and sharing invitations with their followers. Each event typically revolves around a central theme, sometimes showcasing a specific AI technology with experts presenting their research, other times spotlighting startups pitching their innovative ideas to investors or anyone in the crowd who might offer opportunities. But it’s not just students and VC investors who show up. These gatherings draw people from all walks of life, united by a shared curiosity about the possibilities of AI. While some events require an entry fee, I got lucky—this one was free!
Zooming out, the buzz around startups and early-stage funding has been echoing through major U.S. cities ever since Y Combinator sparked the modern entrepreneurship craze. A duo of a salesman and a tech expert could build the backbone of a million-dollar business. It’s one of the wildest phenomena in the capitalist world. Boston, with its dense network of universities, is no stranger to this dream of becoming millionaires at a young age.
And AI is one of the key drivers propelling this golden age for startups in recent years. With the potential to turn ideas into fortunes in record time, AI startups have drawn in hopefuls looking to cash in on the gold rush. Traditional businesses often take years to scale, but AI companies can skyrocket from zero to prominence in just months, backed by the immense capital flowing from venture investments. Suddenly we see the in-person events of AI related showcases and pitches started to boom, marking the beginning of a new era.
So what do these events really look like?
Let’s walk through an event that I attended
1. Opening Remarks:
Angela and Nico, both members of AI Furnace's founding team, kicked things off with introductions and a welcome speech. A few other guests and sponsors also took the stage to share their thoughts.
We then bump right into the pitch phase, where we have 3 different startup companies, usually in very early stage, giving presentation about their ideas and products.
Sanctum AI
Christian Crowley
"Run & interact with full-featured open-source LLMs locally on your device. Your data is encrypted, secure, and never leaves your Sanctum."
Sanctum AI is basically a platform for you to download and run open-source AI models directly on your device instead of through webpages.
Versara.ai
Will Savage
Versara.ai is a newly founded project that focuses on protecting websites from AI scraping (copying information without consent). It works by serving randomly poisoned html data to web scrapers so they cannot extract valuable information from websites.
Compared to the other two startups, this team is special. Will and Colin, the founders, are freshmen from MIT and Dartmouth. Their idea stems from recognizing the rampant gray-area web scraping practices by large AI companies and the fact that no existing methods could effectively prevent them. Spotting the growing need for security and the opportunity to prevent information leaks, they launched their venture to address this gap. And this proves a point that in these events every idea is welcomed, whether it’s advancing AI or creating safeguards against it!
Enkrypt AI
Sahil Agarwal
Enkrypt AI is a platform that helps companies detect and secure their AI models from being poisoned or distorted by toxic data. It assists companies during the process of training AI models.
Fireside Chat
Caine Ardayfio
In the fireside chat session, Caine Ardayfio, a junior at Harvard, shared the story of one of his projects that went viral online.
Caine and his team developed an app that uses publicly available data to search for a subject's personal information through Augmented Reality (AR) technology. By integrating the app with Meta AR glasses, they created a near real-time tool for conducting background diggings.
And then it's time for networking!
The floor opened up for attendees to chat with founders, guests, and each other.
And most importantly, get connected on LinkedIn.
And after all the sessions, it's time to get food!
And I wish it could have been the ones on the left instead of Chipotle.
But it's not as simple as it seems.
I met Nico van Wijk, a starter member of the AI Furnace, who gave me a glimpse behind the scenes. 26-year-old Nico is both a founder and a developer, with firsthand experience of the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, including the hard lessons of a failed venture. Now, he’s embarking on a new journey as part of a two-people startup. Alongside his entrepreneurial pursuits, Nico plays an active role as an event organizer for The AI Furnace in Boston, helping to shape and grow the vibrant AI community.
Nico joined AI Furnace in October last year as a fresh graduate. Before that, he was just hitting the event circuit to expand his network, attending up to four events a week. He heard about AI Furnace through a pop-up event during its global tour. Founded just months earlier in New York and London, the organization was making its rounds across U.S. cities, often collaborating with prestigious institutions like MIT or Harvard.
As an MIT alum, Nico saw an opportunity to help organize and connect. Soon, he realized that these events were a hack— a way to position himself as someone important by representing something bigger than himself. “I met people at the State Government level,” he said. “Being the face of AI Furnace gave me a seat at the table.”
The Ecosystem of AI Events
AI community events are a magnet for early-stage founders, especially those seeking co-founders or an entry point into the ecosystem. They’re most valuable at the beginning of one’s journey, but as founders progress—raising funds and building relationships—they attend fewer of these open events, moving on to private, invite-only gatherings. It’s almost like “graduating” from the ecosystem.
But make no mistake, these events are inherently transactional. Everyone comes with something to sell—be it themselves, their products, or their ideas. It’s a social routine where introductions are made, value is assessed, and connections are forged, often for strategic gain.
“The more people you connect with, the more you become a nexus in the web of the AI community.” -Nico
Yet, hosting these events isn’t all fun and games. Attendance is unpredictable—157 people signed up for the event I attended, but only about 40 showed up. Organizers must consistently reflect on how to motivate attendees and where during the event the process could be improved. And considering profitability, since some founders of the AI Furnace has committed to become full-time operator, small events often fall short of expectations, which is why AI Furnace has started organizing larger gatherings like the “Hot AI 100.” However, scaling up is costly, especially in cities like New York, and there are so many aspects that need to be balanced. It is not an easy career.
The Culture of AI Events
Despite the challenges, Nico enjoys being part of the scene. “I had a fun time in being the host of these events,” he said. “Occasionally just MC (emcee) conferences on the side for AI, throwing out big corny jokes, and you know, I just crack jokes about the speakers that were upcoming from their time and communicate important things… feels like I’m at the center of all those.” After all, all superficial greetings and follow-ups aside, It’s a culture of energy, ambition, and connection, still a place where big ideas meet the people who can make them happen.
By Hanson Pan
