There’s a screenshot going around Twitter right now. One of those threads where someone breaks down an industry nobody was paying attention to and suddenly everyone’s resharing it with “👀” as commentary. The IRL connections space, people meeting people in real life, is at $400 billion globally. $800 million deployed in six months. Tinder put $60 million into an events feature. Jägermeister, a liquor brand, started a VC fund for real-life connections.
I read it, saved the screenshot, and went back to what I was doing, which was standing in a room watching a hundred people lose their minds over mangoes and bass at 10pm on a Wednesday.
I NEED to tell you about this week.
Two guys- Priyanshu and Tushar got rejected from YC Startup School India. Most people would’ve sulked about it for a week and moved on. These two decided to build their own version. Called it WHYC. Put out a tweet. One tweet.
300 people showed up on a Monday night. Sold out. An auditorium full of founders and VCs, watching startups get roasted on stage, on a night that’s supposed to be the worst night of the week. Both of them came up to me separately and said the same thing ,“I still can’t believe a tweet did this.”
Okay. Mondays are strange for events but not impossible. Maybe this was a one-off. Maybe the tweet just hit right.
But then Wednesday happened.
India’s first Mango Rave. I still feel a bit ridiculous typing that. A mango rave! On a Wednesday night. The night most people are eating dal in front of a laptop or half-watching something on Prime they’ll never finish.
100 tickets were sold out immediately. Not “we pushed it three times on stories and begged people to share.” Just gone.
I got to the venue early. There’s this thing that happens in the twenty minutes before an event starts where you’re just standing in a half-empty room convincing yourself it’ll fill up. Checking your phone. Rearranging a table that doesn’t need rearranging.
And then the room filled. And it wasn’t the polite, arms-crossed, “I’m here because my friend dragged me” energy. People were dancing. People were talking to strangers. There was a girl trying to explain what alphonso season means to her to a guy who clearly did not care about mangoes but was very much enjoying the conversation.
That’s when it hit me. Not as a business thing. As a feeling. Something is shifting.
Here’s the thing nobody says out loud: weekends are actually kind of terrible for going out.
I’ve had this theory for a while that weekday events attract a fundamentally different kind of person. Someone who shows up on a Wednesday isn’t there because it’s the weekend and they feel like they should be somewhere. They chose this. Over their couch. Over Netflix. Over sleep. That self-selection changes everything, the energy in the room, the conversations, the willingness to actually be present instead of documenting.
Monday proved it. Wednesday confirmed it.
I’ve been getting a question for as long as I can remember. Some version of: “But does this work in India?”
I used to give the founder answer. The patient one. I’d talk about Gen Z, loneliness stats, screen time, behaviour shifts. Very pitch-deck. Very “let me walk you through the market opportunity.”
Now I just think about Wednesday night.
My calendar this week has been back-to-back with people bringing ideas. Concepts I hadn’t considered. Collaborations that would’ve sounded insane six months ago. The inbounds are getting overwhelming and I mean that in the way where you’re tired but you can’t stop smiling because you know this feeling. This is the feeling of something working.
The best experiences I’ve been to this year weren’t on weekends.
They were a Tuesday night pottery thing where I got clay on a shirt I actually liked. A Thursday open mic where a guy performed a poem about his landlord and everyone lost it. A Monday morning run club where nobody talked for the first twenty minutes and it was the most social I’d felt all week.
That Twitter thread about the $400 billion IRL industry, it’s not news to me. It’s confirmation. The world is waking up to something that anyone who’s stood in a room full of strangers who chose to be there already knows.
People want to be in rooms with other people. Doing things that feel a little bit weird and a little bit real. And they don’t want to wait until Saturday to do it.
India isn’t following a global trend here. India’s going to take this, add masala, turn up the volume, and build something the rest of the world will end up copying. I’ve seen enough Wednesdays to believe that.
If you’ve been sitting on an idea for something- a dinner, a workshop, a strange themed night that only makes sense to you, stop waiting for the weekend. Wednesday works. I have a sold-out mango rave and a VC roast show as proof.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.