For years, the tech industry equated success with scale. Bigger stages, larger crowds, more logos, more panels, more noise. Five thousand people became ten thousand. Ten thousand became the goal.
Somewhere along the way, that stopped making sense.
Founders and executives didn't announce a boycott. They simply stopped showing up.
What we see today is not a rejection of events, but a correction in how people who actually run companies choose to spend their time. The shift is subtle, but consistent. Fewer large conferences. More small, curated gatherings. More closed rooms. More dinners. More tables of twelve.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
Big tech events struggle because they optimize for visibility, not usefulness. A founder does not need three days of generic content, dozens of panels with no real interaction, or networking sessions where relevance is left to chance.
At scale, everything becomes superficial by default. Conversations shorten. Access disappears. The signal is drowned by the format itself.
What founders look for instead is simple. Context. Trust. Direct access. Conversations without performance. The kind of environment where people can speak honestly, not publicly.
Even when larger conferences still make sense, there is a clear psychological ceiling. Around one thousand participants, in exceptional cases. Beyond that point, quality becomes impossible to control. The event stops being a place where decisions are made and turns into a product designed for mass consumption.
And tech, especially at the founder and executive level, no longer behaves like a mass industry. It behaves like a precision one.
This is why smaller, niche conferences outperform larger ones on every meaningful metric. Ten relevant people in a room will always create more value than a thousand irrelevant ones in a hall.
At a small table, access is natural. No one needs to chase anyone. Trust forms faster. Real conversations happen because there is no audience to impress.
The most important discussions in tech have never happened on stage. They happen before the lights turn on and after the microphones are off.
In parallel with this shift, we have been preparing a private community limited to one thousand founders and executives. It is strictly invite only. Not a platform. Not a public group. Not designed for scale. Designed for relevance. Quality is protected precisely by limitation.
One thing we can say publicly is that TNW will return with an event in 2026. Details, format, and the official launch will be announced soon, but not here. What matters is that this return will not mirror the old model. It will reflect how the industry actually operates today.
Big events are not disappearing. They are simply no longer where important decisions are made.
Across the industry, the shift is already happening. Smaller rooms. Sharper conversations. People who actually need to be there.
Most just haven't noticed it yet.