Welcome Rose Johnson, Marketing Partner for Tech Week at Andreessen Horowitz on this episode of 🔥 The Lantern 🔥
TECH WEEK by a16z is one of the largest founder-focused events in the U.S., and for the first time ever, it’s coming to Boston May 26th – 31st.
🏙️ Why Boston, why now? 🏙️
Boston is the #3 U.S. tech hub by venture funding, behind only SF and NYC.
In 2025 alone, our city raised $17B+.
Rose said it best: Boston is a city for builders. Technical, heads-down, less focused on hype. That’s exactly why the decentralized Tech Week model fits here!
🗓️ What should Boston builders know about Tech Week? 🗓️
Tech Week isn’t your typical conference. It’s a citywide takeover, spread across 80+ Founding Host events over a condensed week (May 26th – 31st coming out of Memorial Day).
Alongside household Boston names like WHOOP, HubSpot, Klaviyo & DraftKings will be Anthropic, Lovable, Cursor, xAI, and ElevenLabs all committed to host events locally.
Last year’s edition across all cities saw 3,000+ events and 100,000+ unique attendees across all Tech Week host cities.
🤝 How can you get involved? 🤝
Submissions are open through Friday, April 17th.
Whether you’re a scrappy early-stage team running a community meetup or an established company hosting a keynote, there’s a place for you. The official calendar drops at the end of April.
Head to tech-week.com/host to submit your event idea.
🤔 What has Rose learned building a program like this? 🤔
First, hand an open brief to the community and trust what comes back. The decentralized model works because people bring creativity you’d never plan for.
Second, she’s had to unlearn a lot of traditional marketing. Her new operating principle is to “ship it” and learn from there. In a world where every channel is experimental, speed beats polish.
Boston builders, get your events on the calendar and show the rest of the world what we’re building here!
The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston & Invest Northern Ireland – Americas this month