Last Friday Claire and I cohosted our first business networking event.
Ten people came.
Before it started, I was not sure what to expect. I was not even completely sure if anyone would actually turn up.
MK Lightning were practising behind us. I had quietly treated that as insurance. If the conversation stalled, there would still be something happening in the room.
The conversation did not stall.
People were genuinely interested in one another. Nobody needed rescuing. By the end, everyone had committed to the next event.
The group also found its own reason to meet again. We agreed to hold an AI session, using the different levels of experience already in the room.
None of that looks dramatic when reduced to a number.
Ten is not a large audience. It is not proof of scale. It will not impress anybody who measures a new idea using the standards of an established one.
But that is the wrong test.
The first job of a new room is not to be full. It is to produce enough value that people want the room to exist again.
There are three useful signals.
Did people engage without being pushed?
Did something emerge that was not on the agenda?
Did they choose to come back?
We got three yeses.
That is not certainty. It is evidence. Early ventures rarely give you more than that, and asking them to is often how good ideas get killed before they have had a chance to become real.
I left wondering whether the doubt beforehand had been a confidence problem, impostor syndrome or simply the ordinary discomfort of trying something new.
I am not sure the label matters.
Confidence was not the thing required to open the door. It was one of the things waiting on the other side.
So if you are building something new, do not ask whether the first version looks big enough.
Ask whether it created a reason for the second.
A crowd gives you scale. The right people give you momentum.
PS: What are you currently calling “too small” even though the right people keep turning up? Reply and tell me.