Innovate Pasadena Friday Coffee Meetup has proven it can be done!
Innovate Pasadena Friday Coffee Meetup—affectionately known as “Friday Coffee”—has grown by an verage of 125 new members every month for 3 years straight. In a recent blog post for Innovate Pasadena, meetup Organizer Mike Schaffer (and Echo’s beloved CEO) tells the tale of the Friday Coffee’s incredible growth over the past 3 years, chalking it up to something simple but extraordinary—people who run innovative companies coming together with a real passion for a shared vision.
The Backstory
Back in March 2013, the group’s first 12 entrepreneurs met in the back room of Jones Coffee in Pasadena. Reflecting on their efforts and the hard work the group’s members today, Schaffer talks about how a few peoples’ combined passion over the past 3 years has grown Friday Coffee into a marvel of membership expansion. The article reads, “When members of a group—no matter the size—share a genuine passion for a common vision, magical stuff happens. Or, to put it in less mystical and more sociological terms, when a group really wants to achieve a goal, there’s a sort of exponential power in their combined efforts. Efforts being the operative word. This philosophy of action is what Friday Coffee was founded on. Three years and 3,000 members later, it’s the same driving force behind our growth today.”
We asked Ken Goldstein, Friday Coffee member, author and media/technology executive, to offer a few examples of how the meetup has benefited him and his businesses. He said, “We’ve aligned The Good Men Project—which is in residence at Cross Campus Pasadena—closely with Innovate Pasadena’s Friday Coffee Meetup, and we’ve been delighted with the partnership. We’ve hired outstanding contractors from those in attendance, built our network of writers in the shared community and even shot several video projects in cooperation with the Innovate Pasadena membership base. We’re just getting started working together, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the association.”
For the complete low-down on how these motivated folks pulled it off, check out the full post on the Innovate Pasadena Blog.
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