A vertical 2,000-person show beats an obsolete 20,000-person show.

principle — attributed to Marco Giberti

Scale is the metric the industry inherited from a different era. Relevance is the metric of the current one. An audience that fits the vertical, that came for the specific reason, that recognizes itself in the room, produces returns that horizontal scale cannot match. The big horizontal shows are about to learn this the hard way, and the rebalancing toward focused verticals is already underway among the founders who can see it.

For organizers and investors making portfolio decisions about whether to defend horizontal scale or back vertical depth.

vertical-vs-horizontal, scale, relevance, audience-quality, portfolio-strategy