Fight Club is back.

What's Fight Club?

Fight Club is a networking event (usually dinner) for entrepreneurs and startup CEOs who are interested in building their network. Yeah, there are a number of other events around but Fight club is for startups to network with each other.

Why Fight Club?

Geek Dinners already taken. Besides, it's cooler to tell your wife/staff/buddies that you're going to Fight Club than have to ask strangers directions to the Geek Dinner. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Fight Club is about connecting, not selling.

Fight Club Members are entrepreneurs and business owners who understand that people are not the sum of what they can do for you. We're organized to build introductions and relationships between entrepreneurs outside the regular business environment and without the need to immediately sell to everyone.

Read this post on Horizontal Networking for Entrepreneurs.

If you're smart, and Fight Club Members are, you build relationships that give you access to another network and have other members actively looking out for you.

How you fit in.

Fight Club is small on purpose. We want to offer an environment where people can get to know the 'person' they're talking to, before the business. Anyone can come, you just have to attend with and be invited by an existing Fight Club Member the first time.

Fight Club is not an Old Boys Network.

We're just a bunch of similarly situated guys who value semi-inteligent conversation and understand that expanding your network and being of service is also good business.

Fight Club is also about deal flow.

From time to time I expect Angels from the local community to be involved. Certainly I've found it beneficial.

Park City Angel Network

I had dinner this week as a guest of the Park City Angel Network, an angel group that formed up here in Park City towards the end of 07 and around the same time that we put together our little angel group.

Certainly this is going to be a beneficial group to Utah's entrepreneurs and startups. I was impressed that they've already invested in three of the fifteen so startups that have pitched so far. An impressive clip out of the gate.

One of the immediate benefits of this group is that it's started out with a larger group, somewhere around 25 right now, allowing them to have some ability to fund more deals and spread the love around a little. 

Last week's meeting was more than four hours long, with two pitches and dinner. I can see that the Park City Angel Network will be around for quite some time and the the members are serious about creating a sustainable group. I mentioned that I thought it would be beneficial to roll our smaller group into this larger one. There's a considerable amount of bandwidth needed to manage these groups and 7 is just too small.

There's a growing community of quality startups out there. Park City is set to be the place to bring the best of them if you're a Utah startup. 

Park City Angel Investment Group is on. Get ready to reap the whirlwind.

I had a long phone call with Clint Carnell yesterday about finalizing the dates for the first meeting of whatever this group turns in to.

Clint was kind enough to offer to host the inaugural get-together at his home over in Promontory which should provide ample room for everyone's egos.  It surprised me slightly when Clint informed me that three of his invitees will be flying in from CA for dinner. It seems that the potential to have some sort of investment vehicle up here in Park City carries some real interest for those guys who have a second home up here and would like to make a move.

There's another group forming up here and I had coffee with one of the founders to discuss what we're both up to. That group (I've forgotten the name since they're just forming) is at 50 now and I think a majority of them are real estate guys. There may some crossover but the feedback I've received is that our little group will stick to 'real businesses'.  (not my emphasis)

I'll have to be careful since my wife's horses are now dependant upon the hay we're buying from Barry Hobbs' son Jake. If something goes wrong I could loose it all.