Two Events by a Self-Proclaimed ADHD Networker in Seattle
Disclaimer:
Everything below is a mix of what I observed and heard during the event. The goal isn’t to pinpoint "who exactly said what," but to share (usually) an outsider's view and overall perspective on these industries. I’m not here to act as a definitive firsthand source—readers should do their own research. I hope this inspires you to attend events, explore new industries, and hear what leaders are presenting. These notes combine my observations with thoughts on how things could run smoother and how ideas connect (IMO). I’m not an expert, you know? Just hanging out in the room with them. Enjoy!Venue (5/5), Food (4/5), Speaker Content (3/5), Networking (4/5), Likeliness to Return (5/5)
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Venue (5/5), Food (4/5), Speaker Content (3/5), Networking (4/5), Likeliness to Return (5/5) 〰️
I attended two events hosted by the same guy today. He said he had ADHD (as do I) and I’ve been to his events before. Pretty cool! The first was planned, the second was a bit more spontaneous cause it sounded fun (and was advertised at the first event). The first was to help people with their mental health as they’re founders - mostly peopel building with AI, the next was just a community gathering “backyard bbq” style event with an “after party” that was a tiny bit pricey but still seemed worth the investment.
Why Attend: I want to network more and really start building my software, connect with others, and you know.. .make friends! lol. And really make my dreams a reality and get bigger and better with my work.
Photo Collage + Commentary
Notes from the Event
The first event I won’t share notes on since it was more vulnerable AND I was only able to stay for the first half. But the second event’s notes are here:
This event is pretty welcoming, a bit too welcoming - the guy sitting next to me was talking during presentations to have small talk. asking what I do, why i’m here. I just gave short answers cause I want to listen to these presentations. And he doesn’t give off the right vibes.
They let people announce their events. If they’re hiring. If you’ve got a community announcements.
Only four people are hiring - including myself. I made an announcement about how I’m taking on current students + recent graduates
A guy is here who runs a venture… incubator? So I want to talk to him about this.
Now they’re onto presentations.
Okay so the first group is up that is an AI company that helps your business.
She’s the founder and wants to talk about what they’ve been building over hte past few months and what surprises them.
Lots of businesses are trying to implement AI. It’s kinda obvious that AI should fit YOUR business… but most often the opposite way around it's that they’re trying to fit their businesses into AI.
Every company is bending to fit their AI and has bought AI in the past 12 months. Then spent months hanging their workflows to have the system work for them eventually. AI got the easy part and humans got the hard part.
BTW it was annoying how the guy sitting next to me was only asking questions about me - during presentations - so that he could try to sell his business to me. IT was so pushy.
Also, there’s another guy here who the last time I saw him in person, he and I were alone togehter in a room and he hit on me and grabbed at the bottom of my dress. Extremely nonconsensually. Then he was over and over asking me to invite peopel to his events and I said like, waht do you want from me? And then he blocked me. I haven’t seen him in at least a month. So, yeah. We made eye contact and I just gave him “the nod”. My old business partner just said whenever you se peopel you know (and if you don’t want to talk to them), just say someting nice and move on. So, there we go.
Okay back to this lady’s presentation… I jsut wanted to get that off my chest cause yeah. That’s the problem with getting to know people, not all relationships go well - many go wrong.
Autonomous support agents + assistant
You tell your AI to either be an agent or an assistant - ro a mix.
One product two modes. Built for your business.
AI can run your accounts - your data crosses the boundary but nothing leaves your boundary.
Security teams have big issues on controlling and compliance.
What they built never leaves your boundary and runs in your own data based account. Your encryption keys no one else has access to. Your data says in that system.
Where does the ticket arrive from? End to end every step is logged. Ticket arrives, it reads your knowledge, it does diagonostics, then it will act anonymously or pass it on to a human - and log everything.
BTW they had decent snacks here and I ate two tiny plates full when I got here. But I was very late, over an hour late. But there’s an after party apparently, so I can stay here a long time and then go to the guitar jam after. I even have my guitar this time - lately I keep showing up with no guitar. Also, I’ll work on my puppy fashion show blog, too. That one I’m still behind on since it matters more than usual because I was an invited VIP.
Every business has a 40% that is automatable. Its can help with support, finance ops, compliance, and your workflow.
THere’s even another guy here I recognize from the open claw event. Lots of familiar faces here.
I think its good to like take your time to meet people. The biggest takeaway I have from that sexual harassment and trafficking/exploitation event I attended earlier today, it makes me think that, like, it really takes a while to trust peopel - AND people exploit weaknesses and your vulnerabilities. Traffickers and just random peopel who have bad intentions (or bad habits). So, yeah… I just see the value is playing hte long game and taking your time to get to know people. Plus its so easy to have weird/akward relationships with people, like freaking a fw of the peopel in this room - well, mostly one of them… and like, take your time to get to know peopel. I jsut think in the past I’d jump into friendships (also when I was drinking, which still hangs with me) but there’s huge value in holding your cards tight. Being friendly, charismatic, but holding your cards tight. It’s poker. Friendly poker.
OH I like how she’s saying: what we need from this room:
Design patterers, operators with weird workflows, ,and introductions
- wow I cud see the world where you get to know peopel and then they’re hyped to see you build out your busines
This girl is still up on stage talking about her business doing Q&A. I’m excitdd/motivated to keep building my business… and I really wants sure I wanted to come to this event tonight but now Im glad that I did. I just see the value in what I can do in the future. But I know my weakness is always being so excited for the future and having not a lot to show in the present - compared to my goals. So, you know. Just really need to keep workign on “the present” and today.
One person asks the next 5 hires: data engineer,s, ai scientists, AI professionals, and sales.
Yes, I want to get some sales interns to help out, too
Also I had a great interview with an intern today who was taking great notes during our talk too. Was cool. Usually I take good notes but I had the whole talk while traveling on public transit
Okay, the next guy is taking, e says he wants to talk about rainbows. How they’re magic, we don’t know why, but they are
Rainbows reveal something we didnt know. They travel through rain dots.
- I don’t think his mic is working.
Does anyone know that pattern? It’s a color pattern that is a finger print of the molecular structure of light.
If you have a crystal in your living room, and light travels through it, it’s a different rainbow. It’s a fingerprint of the materials.
Or he just holds the mic so far from his mouth. Okay I’ll just copy down the info on his slide:
What we do: Identify substances with special cameras in virtually any environment
The problem: quality control
- standard camera’s making life-and-death decisions from only size, shape, and color
Can’t identify substances
Can’t tell you waht a contaminated actually is unless its already know
Assuem bad things look bd, which often they dont’
Lives are lost and 10’s of millions of dollars lost due to contamination
Lol the way he uses the word “contamination just sounds like… this sounds like teh begininng of hte movie “contageon” or something hahaha.
He says: is you food safe, is your clothing safe, is the air safe? Current systems only do it with color shades go red, can’t tell you if the apple is fake or real.
Hi solution is these cameras - not a 3d camera. These hyper spectral take an image in 3d.
This is interesting and reminds me of the fashlight I saw that was invented and pitched at the venture/incubator’s space they used to own. The flaslight that captured images and/or recorded memories? I don’t remember exactly how it worked but it was mind-blowing tech.
The product is a SaaS subscription and licensed.
b2B software:
- mobile laptop application available now
Spectral database subscription
b2C apps
Mobile phone
App is 3200/year
DB. Oh, he moved on
He said it can tell the difference between flour or cocaine
They want to focus on pharmaceutical and food safety. But there are many more markets:
Forensics
Archeology
Investment art
Environmental
Geology, mining
Agriculture
The market is booming
THey’re at many trade shows, do digital advertising, have distributers in teh USA and china.
Their traction: they’ve done an early pilot
Lol his slide is many slides long and it makes me think of Ryan Cohen’s chewy pitch which was apparently two slides
Also I learned that Larry Cheng literally stopped by RC’s house on his way home from Disney with his family!!!!
New feature: they want pilot programs with meat and poultry, seafoods, dairy, and produce companies.
Their competition - not a lot - and only 4 companies do this but the others don’t do unknown substances or have an online database. The there 4 companies have all already been bought.
The moat is the “crowdstrike effect of users adding to the shared database
Proprietary special database (measured and synthetic)
The management team + mentors (one of my friends is listed as one of his mentors). They have investors and his former CEO which has a successful exit. And a few others who put in a few hundred K. Alrighty hahahah. This stuff is the big leagues.
The founder invested +100k of his own, 300k already subscribed.
They’ll use he funds to add d asejkfsljlkfse;jkse;jefl;se - idk he changed the slide.
His exit path is to sell it to big tech. Alright. But there are other options too, quite a few
Right now HSI tech is gettin better and cheaper rapidly. Mobile phones will have this within 3-4 years with 10x adaptation.
They’re thinly one positioned to capitalize on this massive shift
They have like 20 pages on this “8 minute talk” or something.
Omg what a crazy future. I can see this being super popular in the future and even relating to Ryan Cohen’s plan for eBay in the future with influencer-led content being sold on their videos and they’re gonna do QVC on eBay. This would tie into that.
Okay - the final presenter - she looks a lot like the first presenter. Same outfits, same hairstyle, hahah . Only cause I wasn’t paying much attention. I’m sure if they stood next to each other they don’t look much alike.
Her company’s name sounds liek someone mispronouncing Tesla. They have weekly BBQ’s in a nearby city and she’s talking about bacon jalapeños. Didn’t turn out well - she tries to make a joke about the food she’s holding in a pic but no one laughs.
Oaky she’s seen companies say their websites are AI enabled but all they do is put a chatbot in the bottom right corner .
This makes me think of hte Northwest Event Show’s HORRIBLE chatbot on their website which was super annoying.
Chatbots are fine but it’s not what agentic AI is. Chatbots are glorified research. A complex agednt does something
Ugh she’s reading off of a piece of paper/speech. I’m so sock of peopel reading off of paper to give speeches. People underestimate how well they know things and/or shouldn’t’ be talking. Like how can you not give a speech about your business. I see so many speeches and usually when peopel give speeches off of reading its SO hard to listen to and type, cause its super inautnethic.
Okay - let’s go… liek she keeps talking like its an infomercial
Some reason we are shipping AI like she said: that we built up over the decades. Of. Relating software. Weird pauses
The biggest takeaway - when workign with complex systems, measure it. Everything in AI is measurable. It’s hard but doable. Know if AI finishes the tasks you need it to do. Too many calls or wasted your tokens. You shoudl know this. Know any action it called and if it failed. When a lawyer you shoudl know all the steps you took and all the efforts you put in to make sure your AI did the right things
Dude that makes me think of the last lawyer I worked with who added in things I didn’t need and then charged me an extra 2k for this. It was liek 2 years ago but still an expensive lesson.
AI Native ins - oh hahah omg. Now she lost her speech order and the slides dont’ match up with her typed up speech. So she’s reading a part of her speech that doesn’t match up with the slides - or it does. She sayid its the wrong order.
She’s talking in a voice that really feels like she’s giving a school presentation. Though her sweater is really my style.
Okay - she’s just hard to listen to
AI native (I’ll type up her presentation)
- software fundamentalsEnterprise rigor
AI-speciifc depth
Anyway. I dont wanna type anymore. This is silly. Okay, well it was an inspiring event decently and I’m excited to buy and show off to this city over and over again waht I’m building as it come more and more together over time.
She’s just saying AI shoudl empower everyone
Democratize ai for everyone, small and large businesses alike
Shouldn’t be juggling 100 subscriptions
Small and midsize businesses have an out of the box suite.
Anyway. Her logo is kinda my style too… i’l be honest. But I dont’g et what she does and it sounds liek another AI app. You know what I mean?
I still have basically no idea what her company does - but hte last slide (she keeps saying, So… yeah) so many times. Meet with her if you wanna talk about AI or learn about tAI infrastructure (she keeps joking you wan talk about hat - we’re here), if this (here as well) and this thing (also here) thank you. But yeah. So, yeah.
Anyone have any questions? One question: how are you distributing?
Mostly direct sales with AI agents going out and prospecting.
- smart, I coudl do this to find entrepreneurial parents.
No other questions. Oh wait, noe more. But okay I wanna put away my laptop.
WOW I had an amazing time. Over 5 peopel came up to me after the event all wanting to be my interns and work together. Then I just talked to more people and networked a lot - and even talked to my friend who owns the venture/vc fund thing and he basically said I don’t need to do an accelerator or anything like that - just build with a team of 5 and make it happen. Lol. This is cool. Now I’m off to the guitar jam.
I feel proud of myself and happy for going out tonight, talking to people, and being an interesting person.
This was a great event and I want to attend it monthly, probably. Its good vibes and great connections and its awesome when you tell people you’re hiring - even unpaid internships cause people to stand in line to talk to you and its really neat hahahaha. And it’s just fun to network. Also I invited people to other relevant events and even one of hte girl s two wants to be an intern with me, I connected her with someone else I met who sho’d be even better to be an intern with. LOL. An even better fit.
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time.
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
