Notes from a dinner with the people actually deploying it.

This week I hosted the Enterprise AI and Agentic Security Dinner in Los Altos Hills, a room of the people who decide what AI ships inside their companies and who own the risk when it does. CFOs, CTOs, security leaders, founders. The event runs under Open Future Forum, where I spend most of my time getting operators in the same room off the record. I moderated a panel with Manjush Menon, Karthik Suresh of ZoomInfo, and Paulina Xu of Agentic Fabriq, covering identity and permissions for agents, governance and standards at scale, and what leaders should prepare for over the next 12 to 24 months.

I went in expecting caution. There was plenty. What stayed with me was how excited these people have become, and how specific that excitement now is. A year ago the conversation was about potential. This week it was about results.

Here is what they are most fired up about.

Agents are doing real work, not demos

The party trick phase is over. The leaders in the room were not talking about what AI might do someday. They were talking about workflows running in production right now. Claims routing. Customer onboarding. First-pass code review. Support triage that clears the queue before a human ever sees it.

The shift in tone was the tell. People stopped asking whether agents work and started comparing notes on which processes pay off first. When a CFO can point at a line item and say a process that took three people now takes one and a review, the argument is over.

Deployment, the hard part, is finally getting easier

For two years the blocker was not the model. It was everything around it. How do you give an agent real access without handing over the keys. How does a regulated company say yes when the legal team is in the room.

That gap is closing fast, and the people closest to it are the most optimistic about why. On the panel, Manjush Menon made the case that governance and structure are not afterthoughts. They are the foundation. Clear use cases, defined workflows, scoped permissions, humans in the loop where it matters, and an honest read on what the model actually produced. That, he argued, is what makes AI adoption hold up at scale.

It reads as optimism once you see the tooling catching up to it. Paulina Xu’s company, Agentic Fabriq, is built around giving agents identity and scoped permissions, so an agent gets access the way an employee does, not a blank check. Control planes now let a company govern every agent from one place. Execution can run inside a company’s own perimeter instead of someone else’s cloud. None of this makes headlines. All of it is the reason a bank or an insurer can now move from pilot to production.

Small teams are doing the work of large ones

The optimism that surprised me most was about people, not technology. More than one founder talked about shipping at a pace that would have needed three times the headcount two years ago. Engineers are spending less time on the work nobody wanted and more on the work only they can do.

Nobody in the room framed this as cutting people. They framed it as range. A small team can now take on problems that used to be off limits. For an early company, that is the whole game.

They can see the edge now

The clearest signal of all was confidence about direction. A year ago the honest answer to “where does this go” was a shrug. This week the leaders deploying AI could describe the path. They know which problems to point agents at first, what good deployment looks like, and where the moat forms.

That clarity is its own advantage. The companies that figure out where agents help are already pulling away from the ones still debating whether to start.

The takeaway

The mood in enterprise AI has changed. The caution is real and the security questions are serious, but underneath them is something I have not seen at this level before: leaders who have stopped wondering and started building. They are excited because the work is paying off, the tooling has caught up, and the path forward is finally legible.

The best conversations on this still happen in person, off the record, with the people doing the work. That is the room I try to build. If you are an operator deep in this, come find me.

Murray Newlands is a Partner at IASV Seed Ventures, Partner at Tilden Family Office Group, and founder of Open Future Forum. Subscribe at substack.com/@murraynewlands.

SNOWFLAKE SUMMIT 26 Side Event

Monday, June 1 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

Convening: How to Build an Executive Network That Compounds

Tuesday, June 2 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Wednesday, June 3 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

AI Agents for Fintech Engineering Teams

Thursday, June 11 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Thursday, June 11 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Swing for CFO’s - Golf Gathering

Friday, June 124:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Swing for CMOs - Golf Gathering

Friday, June 12 4:00 PM - 6:30 PM

YC Founders on the Bay

Friday, June 19 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM

Two years ago I started running small private dinners for senior executives across Silicon Valley for Open Future Forum. CFOs, CROs, CISOs, CTOs, board directors. Eight to 20 people in a room, off the record, no slides, no pitch. The first dinner had ten people and was held in a borrowed private room at a restaurant in Palo Alto. The hundredth was a few weeks ago.

This is what I’ve learned.

I’m not going to pretend the lessons are universal. Different formats work for different audiences. But there are patterns that hold across every dinner I’ve run, and patterns that broke once I thought I understood them. The piece below is the honest version of both.

If you are running these, thinking about running these, or attending them as an executive or a sponsor, this is what 100 dinners actually teaches you.

Room size matters more than anything else

The single biggest variable in whether a dinner works is the number of people in the room. Below eight, the conversation stalls if one person is quiet. Above 20, the room splits into side conversations and the group dynamic dies. Twelve is the number I aim for, and it holds across almost every audience.

This is not a guess. It’s something I tested by accident. Early on I ran one dinner with seven people because two cancelled the day of, and another with 24 because I overinvited. The seven-person dinner felt like a job interview. The 24-person dinner felt like a wedding rehearsal. Both were unrecoverable. The room is what it is by the time people sit down.

The implication is operational. You have to overinvite to land at 12, because senior executives cancel at a 30 to 40 percent rate in Silicon Valley regardless of how good your event is. They have boards, fundraises, families, planes. The math means inviting 18 to 20 people to seat 12. Get the math wrong and you spend two months recovering the room.

Vetting is the entire game

The room is made or broken before anyone arrives. Vetting is the entire game.

A VP of Finance at a Series A is not the same as a CFO at a Series D. Putting them in the same room serves neither one. The VP feels in over her head. The CFO feels like she’s mentoring instead of learning. Both leave thinking the dinner was fine and never come back.

The host’s job is to make sure every person in the room belongs there. That means individually checking every attendee against the rest of the table. Not just the title on LinkedIn. The actual seat they hold, the stage of their company, the topic they’re working on right now. Two CFOs with the same title can be in completely different operational realities, and the room is only as good as the worst mismatch.

The hard part of vetting is saying no. Saying no to a friend who wants to come. Saying no to a senior executive who is the wrong fit for this dinner but a great fit for the next one. Saying no to a sponsor’s contact who would dilute the room. The “no” is what protects the “yes.” If you can’t say no, you can’t run a serious dinner.

I have said no to people who would have brought obvious value to a sponsor in the room because they weren’t the right seat for the conversation. That’s the cost of running the format properly. Sponsors who understand it stay. Sponsors who don’t understand it leave, and that’s fine.

The host is the product

The host is the product. Not the venue. Not the food. Not the topic. Not even the other attendees, in the end.

Senior executives attend dinners because of who is hosting and who has hosted them before. The reputation of the host is the entire signal. A great host with mediocre food in a hotel meeting room beats a mediocre host with a Michelin chef in a private estate. I have watched this happen.

The work of being a good host is mostly invisible. Reading every attendee’s background before they arrive. Having a working point of view on each person’s company so you can frame a question that matters. Knowing which two people across the table would benefit from being introduced after the main course. Being able to bring a quiet voice into the room without it feeling forced. None of this scales, and the moment you try to scale it the room loses.

I have watched operators try to run these dinners with a junior team member as the host. It doesn’t work. The host is not a coordinator. The host is the reason people came.

Off the record is a contract, not a norm

“Off the record” is a contract, not a norm. It has to be stated explicitly, it has to be enforced, and the host has to be willing to disinvite someone who breaks it.

I state it at the start of every dinner. No press. No recording. No posting on LinkedIn about what was said in the room. Brief and direct. The reason it has to be explicit is that “off the record” means different things to different people. A general assumption is not a rule. A spoken rule, agreed to by the table, is.

The first time someone posted a quote from a dinner on LinkedIn, I called them privately and asked them to take it down. They did. They were embarrassed. They were also invited back, because the violation was a misunderstanding rather than malice. The second time someone broke the rule, with intent, I removed them from the list permanently and told the other attendees that I had done so. The trust layer collapses the moment a host tolerates a violation, so the host has to be visibly willing to act.

This is the part of running dinners that operators new to the format underestimate. The off-the-record norm is fragile. It takes one bad actor to destroy two years of trust, and the only defense is the host’s willingness to be the bad guy when it matters.

Sponsors are the hardest part to get right

The sponsor structure is what makes or breaks the room over time. Most operators get this part wrong.

The wrong structure is four to six sponsors per dinner, each with a speaking slot, each with a lead capture form, each with a pitch they want to run. That isn’t a dinner. It’s a trade show with a dinner format. The signal-to-noise drops fast and the executives stop coming.

The right structure is one to two sponsors per dinner, non-competing, with a short introduction at the top and then full participation in the conversation. The sponsor is buying access, not air time. A sponsor who understands this gets more value out of a single dinner than they would from a $50,000 conference booth, because the conversations are real and the relationships are warm.

The hard part is teaching new sponsors the rules. A sponsor whose CMO has spent ten years buying conference booths will instinctively ask for a panel slot, a slide deck, a lead capture form. The host has to be willing to say no to all of it. The sponsors who push back are the ones who don’t yet understand the format. The sponsors who get it become five-event partners.

The economics work like this. A high-quality CXO dinner sponsorship runs in the low five figures. For that, the sponsor gets 10 to 20 qualified conversations with senior decision makers in their target accounts. The cost per qualified conversation is dramatically lower than any other channel. But it only works if the room is clean, which only works if the sponsor structure is right.

The format is conversation, not presentation

The format itself is doing more work than the topic.

A dinner is a conversation, not a panel. Two minutes per person to introduce themselves and what they’re working on. One prompt question from the host. Then the room takes over.

The temptation, especially for first-time hosts, is to overstructure. A pre-arranged moderator. A keynote speaker. Slides. Recorded video. None of this works. Every layer of structure pushes the conversation toward performance and away from honesty. Senior executives have sat through 10,000 panels. They did not come for another one.

The host’s job during the dinner is to keep the conversation moving and pull in the quieter voices. That’s it. If the room is vetted right and the prompt question is sharp, the table will run itself for 90 minutes. The host who tries to control the conversation kills it.

I have watched skilled moderators struggle with this transition. The moderator instinct is to ask follow-up questions and synthesize. The host instinct is to let the room breathe. Different skill, different muscle.

Most of what looks important is not

Most of what looks important about running dinners is not.

The venue matters less than people think. A good private room in a normal restaurant beats a fancy venue with bad acoustics. Acoustics matter enormously and people never think about them until they have sat through a dinner where they could not hear the person across the table.

The food matters less than people think. It needs to be good enough that nobody complains. It does not need to be memorable. Senior executives are not at the dinner for the food.

Wine matters more than people think, because it sets the pace of the conversation. Pour too aggressively and the room loses focus by 9pm. Pour too lightly and the conversation stays surface for two hours. The right pace is steady and modest.

The agenda matters less than people think. A single sharp prompt question, asked at the right moment, does more work than a five-point agenda. The over-engineered agenda is a sign of a host who does not trust the room.

The thing that matters most is preparation. Reading every attendee’s background. Knowing the company stage and the topic. Having a working point of view on each person before they sit down. This is the invisible labor, and it is the entire job.

What has changed in two years

The category itself is shifting faster than most operators realize.

Two years ago, a CISO dinner was about endpoint security, identity, and vendor consolidation. This year, the CISO dinners I run are about agent identity, model risk, AI threat surface, and the question of how you secure a workforce of AI agents and humans. Same audience, completely different content.

CFO dinners have shifted the same way. Two years ago, the topic was banking relationships and FP&A modernization. This year, it is AI deployment inside finance functions, the economics of agent-based work, and what the controller’s office looks like in 18 months.

The implication is that the dinners worth attending are the ones whose programming is keeping up. The communities still running the same content they ran in 2023 are not the ones to bet on. The cycle of relevance in executive content has compressed from three years to about 18 months, and operators who cannot keep up will lose their rooms.

AI is also changing how executives discover dinners in the first place. Senior leaders are starting to use AI agents to triage their calendar and decide which events are worth attending. The dinners recommended by an executive’s AI agent get higher attendance than the ones that arrive as cold email. Hosts who understand this are designing their programming and their public descriptions to be legible to AI agents, which is a real shift in how community marketing works.

The lessons that took time

Some lessons took longer to land than they should have.

The follow-up matters more than the dinner. The conversations at the table are the visible part of the value. The relationships that form after, when one attendee introduces another to a hire or a customer or a board seat, are the part that compounds. The host’s job does not end when the dinner ends. The follow-up notes, the introductions made the next morning, the connections kept warm between dinners. That is where the long-term value sits.

Fewer dinners run well beats more dinners run adequately. Early on I was tempted to add tracks and double the cadence. Every time I have run a dinner that was not fully ready, the room knew. Executives are sensitive to the difference between a dinner that took 40 hours of preparation and one that took 10. They do not say so. They just do not come back.

The host’s own credibility is the asset. Two years in, the brand of the dinner series is real, but the underlying asset is still my own reputation and the reputations of the attendees who vouch for the format. That is the part to invest in. The brand is downstream of the trust.

Turn down sponsorships that do not fit the room. This one has been the hardest to hold. Money is the easiest thing to accept and the most expensive to undo. A sponsor who isn’t right for the room dilutes the room, and the room is the entire product. I have turned down sponsorships I needed at the time, because the alternative was watching attendance drop for the next six months.

Where this is going

Where the category is going is more a working hypothesis than a lesson.

Small rooms are going to keep winning over large networks. The big conferences are getting bigger and less useful at the same time. The membership organizations are scaling and the experience inside them is thinning out. The space for small, operator-run, off-the-record dinners is going to grow, not shrink, because senior executives are running out of time and tolerance for the alternative.

AI is going to compress the value of shallow networking and expand the value of deep rooms. The conversations that an AI agent can substitute for are the ones that are not worth having. The conversations that require a small group of vetted peers speaking honestly cannot be replicated by AI in any form I can see. The small-room dinner is one of the few formats AI makes more valuable, not less.

The operators who run these dinners as a primary practice are going to look like a category in five years. Today they are mostly individuals with no shared identity. In five years there will be a recognized class of dinner-series operators, with shared standards and shared infrastructure. I think this is a good thing. The format deserves to be a discipline.

If you are running these now, the best advice I can give is to protect the room. Everything else is downstream. Protect who is in it, what is said in it, who is sponsoring it. The room is your only real asset. The brand follows.

If you are attending these as a senior executive, the best advice is to attend fewer and go deeper. Two dinners a quarter with the right host is worth more than ten dinners a month with whoever is selling tickets. Pick the rooms whose hosts have a track record, and invest in those relationships.

If you are sponsoring these, sponsor the host, not the event. Good hosts have multiple events. Once you find a host whose rooms work for you, do five with them, not one.

After 100 dinners, that is what I know. I expect the next 100 to teach me what I got wrong here, which is part of the point.

Murray Newlands is a Partner at IASV Seed Ventures and the founder of Open Future Forum, a private executive community in Silicon Valley that runs small, off-the-record dinners for CFOs, CROs, CISOs, and CTOs. He writes Murray’s Newsletter on Substack. Previously: Turing.com, Forbes, Inc.

Over the past two years I’ve hosted a series of private events through Open Future Forum, with CEOs of $100M+ companies in one room, CFOs in another, and family office principals and board members in a third. Different rooms, different stakes. What I didn’t expect was how much the conversations have started to rhyme.

What I didn’t expect was how much the conversations have started to rhyme.

Back in 2023 the three groups were talking past each other. Now they’ve largely landed in the same place, even though they got there by different routes.

Agents, not chat. CEOs see them as the thing that finally changes operating leverage. One told me he expects half his back-office headcount to be supervising agents within 18 months. Nobody at the table pushed back. CFOs see the first AI investment with unit economics they can defend to a board. Family offices see the infrastructure layer where new categories get built.

Identity and governance is the bottleneck. CISOs raised it first. Now CFOs are asking the same question about audit trails, and family offices are funding the answer. When operators, finance leaders and capital allocators independently land on the same chokepoint, something usually gets built.

Headcount has become strategic. CEOs are redesigning org charts around senior hires and compressed middles. CFOs bring a reorg scenario to every planning cycle whether they intend to execute on it or not. Family offices are repricing services businesses on the same logic. Nobody I talk to thinks the reorg is optional. The argument is over timing.

Trust is the new moat. When intelligence gets cheap, what compounds is relationships. CEOs talk about distribution, CFOs about retention, family offices about deal flow. They’re describing the same thing. It’s also why these dinners keep filling up. Conferences are a poor vehicle for that kind of trust. LinkedIn is worse. Twelve people around a table, off the record, is starting to look like the right one.

The most useful AI conversations I’ve sat in this year have actually been about organisational design, capital allocation, and who you want in the room when you figure the rest out.

Murray Newlands is a Partner at IASV Seed Ventures, Partner at Tilden Family Office Group, and founder of Open Future Forum. Subscribe at substack.com/@murraynewlands.

Enterprise AI & Agentic Security Dinner

Thursday, May 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

SNOWFLAKE SUMMIT 26 Side Event

Monday, June 1 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

Convening: How to Build an Executive Network That Compounds

Tuesday, June 2 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Wednesday, June 3 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

AI Agents for Fintech Engineering Teams

Thursday, June 11 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Thursday, June 11 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Swing for CFO’s - Golf Gathering

Friday, June 124:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Swing for CMOs - Golf Gathering

Friday, June 12 4:00 PM - 6:30 PM

YC Founders on the Bay

Friday, June 19 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM

I sit at a lot of tables. Boards, founders, CEOs, CFOs, CISOs, CMOs, LPs, family offices. Different rooms, but the same patterns keep surfacing. Here’s what I’m hearing in May 2026.

• CFOs are asking sharper questions about AI vendor viability. The first meeting is still about features and ROI. The second meeting is increasingly about what happens at renewal if the vendor’s economics don’t hold.

• CEOs are working through a measurement gap on AI spend. The board asks what it’s producing. The honest answer is usually harder to give than the deck suggests. A few are getting ahead of it with internal reviews.

• CMOs are rethinking content and demand generation as AI changes how people search and discover. The 2023 playbook is being rebuilt in real time, and the conversations I hear are more about experimentation than certainty.

• CISOs are working two problems in parallel: how to secure AI agents, and how liability gets assigned when an agent acts badly. Identity is becoming the new perimeter, and the liability conversation is right behind it.

• Public board members have watched AI reshape entire companies in 24 months, and a few are starting to ask the obvious follow-up: what does quantum do to us. The conversation isn’t really about cryptography. It’s about what happens to competitive advantage when one player can run analysis on datasets that everyone else still treats as too large to process. The boards asking earliest tend to have a technologist already at the table.

• Founders I’m talking to are spending less time on the deck and more time on the customer conversation that proves they’re worth funding. The bar for a first meeting has moved. Traction is doing the work the narrative used to do.

• LPs want AI exposure without paying 2025 secondary prices. The serious ones are asking seed managers different questions than they were a year ago. Less about access, more about discipline.

• Intimate formats are taking share. Sponsors who funded large summits two years ago are also funding 20-person dinners now. Trust seems to scale down better than it scales up.

• “Agentic” is moving fast through the vocabulary. Some of the people using it can define it precisely. Some can’t. The gap between those two groups is where a lot of the next wave of enterprise software is going to get sold.

None of these are predictions. They’re patterns from real conversations with people who have real budgets. If you’re building, investing, or governing in this market, the signal is in those rooms more than in the funding announcements.

Are you sitting at the right tables? Are you building them?

The next one is May 28, in Fremont Hills, on agentic security. Twenty seats, CISOs and CTOs, no slides. If that’s your conversation, reply and I’ll send the link. If a different table is the right one for you (CFO, CEO, CMO, board), tell me which and I’ll point you to the right room.

The signal is at the table. The question is whether you’re at one worth sitting at.

Family Office Breakfast at the RoseWood

Wednesday, May 20 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM

CMO Dinner - The New CMO Mandate: Marketing in the Agentic Era

Wednesday, May 20 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

CMO Mixer: Marketing Leaders in the Agentic Era

Wednesday, May 20 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM

AI Agents for Fintech Engineering Teams

Wednesday, May 27 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Enterprise AI & Agentic Security Dinner

Thursday, May 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

SNOWFLAKE SUMMIT 26 Side Event

Monday, June 1 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

Convening: How to Build an Executive Network That Compounds

Tuesday, June 2 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Thursday, June 11 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Thursday, June 11 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

The strongest relationships in my network started with a painting, a boat, or a dinner for a cause.

This weekend I was reminded why. I was invited to exhibit one of my paintings at DrawBridge, an arts program doing work for a cause worth showing up for. Standing in that room, I noticed what I notice at sailing events, wine dinners, and most gatherings where the reason to be there is something other than work: people connect faster, and they stay connected longer.

When two people meet at an exhibit, they talk about the painting. Then about other painters. Then about a trip to Italy, or the kid who just started college, or the cause the host built the night around. By the time work comes up, they already like each other. That is the foundation real business relationships are built on.

The best executives I know lean into this. They lead with the part of themselves that has nothing to do with the cap table. The painter. The sailor. The runner. The person on the board of a cause they believe in. That is the version of them people remember, and that is the version that gets the call when something interesting comes up.

Three things I see again and again in this group:

A great reason to invite. “Come to my exhibit” or “come to a dinner for this cause” is a gift to the other person. It is generous, easy to say yes to, and it builds the kind of goodwill that lasts.

A great reason to be remembered. In a city where every dinner has six partners from six firms, the painter stands out. So does the sailor, the marathoner, the person who shows up for the cause they care about.

A great reason to come back. Hobbies and causes have shows, seasons, races, fundraisers. Built-in reasons to stay in touch and keep building.

Most senior people I know already have a side pursuit or a cause that matters to them. The ones who let it show up in their professional life build the deepest networks. The part of you that is not the title is often the part that opens the most doors.

What is the thing you love doing outside work? That is probably where your next strongest relationships are going to come from.

Thanks to Evelisa Genova, Michael Shuffett, Ilona Song, and the DrawBridge team for the invite. It was a great night for a great cause.

The CFO Playbook for Value Creation in a Volatile Market

Thursday, May 14 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Family Office Breakfast at the RoseWood

Wednesday, May 20 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM

CMO Dinner - The New CMO Mandate: Marketing in the Agentic Era

Wednesday, May 20 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

CMO Mixer: Marketing Leaders in the Agentic Era

Wednesday, May 20 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM

AI Agents for Fintech Engineering Teams

Wednesday, May 27 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Enterprise AI & Agentic Security Dinner

Thursday, May 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

SNOWFLAKE SUMMIT 26 Side Event

Monday, June 1 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Thursday, June 11 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Thursday, June 11 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Every professional asset is getting compressed by AI. Reputation is the exception.

Content has gone to zero. Anyone with $20 a month and a working API key can produce more thought leadership in a week than most executives produce in a year. The marginal value of a well-written post has collapsed.

Outbound has gone to zero. Every CFO inbox now receives a hundred AI-personalized emails a day. Open rates are falling. Reply rates are falling faster. The entire sales development playbook is being rebuilt because the old one stopped working.

Even expertise is being compressed. Junior analysts can produce work that looked senior two years ago. Mid-career managers are being asked to do the work of three people. The premium on raw functional skill is shrinking because the tools have democratized the floor.

In a market where almost every signal is getting cheaper, the rare assets are the ones that resist deflation.

Reputation is the most important one.

It cannot be generated by a model. It cannot be scaled with a tool. It cannot be bought, however much money you spend on PR. It can only be earned, slowly, in person, by doing what you said you would do over and over again until people start saying your name in rooms you are not in.

That is why senior operators with strong reputations are doing better in 2026 than they did in 2022, not worse.

Their inboxes are quieter, but the calls that come through are higher value. Their networks are smaller, but the connections are stronger. Their content reaches fewer people, but the people it reaches are the ones who actually decide things.

The market is sorting itself. The volume layer is being eaten by AI. The trust layer is becoming more concentrated and more valuable. Reputation is the most direct way to own a piece of it.

Here is what makes the asset different from everything else on your balance sheet.

It is the only one that grows when you are quiet. The dinner you hosted in 2018 still pays back in 2026. The intro you made for free in 2021 still circulates this year. The advice you gave a junior operator in 2019 comes back as deal flow when they are running their own company.

It is the only asset that converts directly into capital, talent, customers, board seats, and optionality. Every one of those is a real economic outcome. Most operators treat them as luck. They are not luck. They are the dividend on an asset most people never named.

And it is the only asset that AI cannot inflate. The flood is rising on every other channel. Reputation is the dry ground.

If you are senior and you have spent the last decade building this asset, you are about to see the dividend.

If you are early in your career and you have been optimizing for content reach, the asset you actually want is reputation. Start now. The compounding only works if you give it time.

Stand on the asset that does not get washed away.

Murray Newlands is the founder of Open Future Forum and a Partner at IA Seed Ventures. Open Future Forum runs executive dinners, roundtables, and invite-only gatherings across Silicon Valley for CFO, CRO, CISO, and CTO audiences.

Public Board Member Dinner Series Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Wednesday, May 6 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Join us for live music 🎶, art 🎨 & salsa dancing 💃🏽 at the Embarcadero — opening doors to the arts for hundreds of Bay Area youth!❤

Murray Newlands will be one of the featured artists for this night.

Saturday, May 9 5:00 PM - 9:30 PM

The CFO Playbook for Value Creation in a Volatile Market

Thursday, May 14 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

CMO Dinner - The New CMO Mandate: Marketing in the Agentic Era

Wednesday, May 20 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

CMO Mixer: Marketing Leaders in the Agentic Era

Wednesday, May 20 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM

AI Agents for Fintech Engineering Teams

Wednesday, May 27 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Enterprise AI & Agentic Security Dinner

Thursday, May 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The Reputation Compound: The Asset AI Can’t Touch

Monday, June 1 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Thursday, June 11 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Every CEO has a first room. The boardroom. The exec team. The investors on the cap table. It’s the room where decisions get made, results get reported, and politics get managed. It’s necessary. It’s also not enough.

The first room has structural limits. You can’t fully think out loud in front of your board. You can’t process a bad hire with the team that hired alongside you. You can’t admit pipeline is softer than the deck suggested without it becoming a story. The CEO seat is the only one in the company where total candor has a cost attached to it.

This isn’t only a CEO problem. The CFO can’t fully open up to the audit committee about what’s keeping them awake. The CRO can’t tell the board the forecast is shakier than the deck implies. The CISO can’t admit to the CEO how exposed the company actually is. Every senior seat carries some version of this. The room they sit in by day is not the room where they can think honestly about the hardest parts of their job.

That is why every senior operator needs a second room.

A second room is a small group of peers running similar shapes of problem. People who already trust how you think, who have nothing to gain from spinning you, and who have likely faced the exact decision you’re sitting on this week. It gives you pattern recognition before the data catches up. It lets you pressure test a pricing change, a restructure, or an AI bet without political consequence.

The second room is also where the business gets built. The CFO across the table tonight is the buyer next quarter. The CRO sitting next to you is the go-to-market partner who opens a new channel. The CISO two seats down becomes the design partner for your next product. Trust built in a small room compounds in ways a sales pipeline never will.

I’ve spent time helping CEOs, CFOs, CROs, and CISOs think through what their second room should look like. Who belongs in it, how to host it, how to make it compound over time. If you’re working on this, I’m always happy to compare notes. Reach out, and let’s talk.

Murray Newlands is the founder of Open Future Forum and a Partner at IA Seed Ventures. Open Future Forum runs executive dinners, roundtables, and invite-only gatherings across Silicon Valley for CFO, CRO, CISO, and CTO audiences.

AI Dev 26 Side Event

Tuesday, April 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

CISO Leadership Dinner: Securing the AI Enterprise

Wednesday, April 29 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Public Board Member Dinner Series Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Wednesday, May 6 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Join us for live music 🎶, art 🎨 & salsa dancing 💃🏽 at the Embarcadero — opening doors to the arts for hundreds of Bay Area youth!❤

Murray Newlands will be one of the featured artists for this night.

Saturday, May 9 5:00 PM - 9:30 PM

The CFO Playbook for Value Creation in a Volatile Market

Thursday, May 14 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

CMO Dinner - The New CMO Mandate: Marketing in the Agentic Era

Wednesday, May 20 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

AI Agents for Fintech Engineering Teams

Wednesday, May 27 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Enterprise AI & Agentic Security Dinner

Thursday, May 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Thursday, June 11 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

The most valuable deals I’ve seen get done in Silicon Valley didn’t happen on Zoom calls or over cold email. They happened at dinner tables where the people around them trusted each other enough to be honest.

People write off Silicon Valley all the time. The talent is leaving. The costs are absurd. The culture has changed. Some of that is true. Miami, Austin, New York, and a handful of international hubs have real gravity now.

But the density of decision makers in Silicon Valley is still higher than anywhere else in the world. Founders, operators, capital allocators, LPs, and corporate development teams are within a 45 minute drive of each other. That density compounds. One warm introduction here can do more than 50 cold emails sent from anywhere else.

Over the past two years I’ve hosted more than 100 events through Open Future Forum. My job in those rooms is simple. Make sure the right people are at the table, and make sure the conversation goes somewhere useful. The same thing keeps happening: one conversation in a private room moves something that months of outreach couldn’t. A fund manager meets the family office that anchors their next raise. A founder meets a CISO who becomes a design partner and opens the door to three more enterprise deals. None of it is visible from the outside.

Big conferences don’t produce that kind of outcome. Neither does LinkedIn. It happens when a group of people sit down together with no agenda except to talk straight about what they’re working on and what they actually need.

It’s also why our CEO, CFO, and CISO Dinners have become a useful channel for companies trying to reach the C-suite. Enterprise buyers are drowning in outreach and have stopped reading most of it. The vendors who are winning have figured out that the most effective GTM motion into the C-suite is not a campaign. It’s being in the room when a peer says “we tried this and it worked.” Our new Public Board Member Dinner Series, co-hosted with Shing Pan, takes this further. Real directors, real conversations about what boards are actually struggling with, no panel theatre.

AI does not change any of this. It makes the in-person network more valuable, not less. Anyone can now generate a polished pitch or a warm-sounding email. When everyone sounds thoughtful at scale, the only reliable filter left is whether someone you trust will vouch for the person on the other end. AI can draft the outreach, but it cannot create the trust that makes the outreach matter. The scarce resource is no longer information or access. It’s credibility, and credibility still gets built face to face.

Most people treat Silicon Valley like a place. It’s more useful to treat it as a habit. Show up, be useful to others before you need anything, and don’t rush relationships that take time to matter. The Bay Area rewards consistency over intensity. Showing up regularly for two or three years, and becoming a familiar face who contributes genuinely, changes your access permanently.

I’ve seen founders close rounds they couldn’t get done anywhere else because of a single dinner. I’ve seen LPs get into funds they’d been chasing for years because someone at the table trusted them enough to make a call. I’ve watched enterprise deals worth seven figures get started because two executives kept talking after dessert. It still works. It just doesn’t work for people who drop in occasionally and expect it to.

If you’re a CEO, CFO, CISO, or board member who wants to be in these rooms, or a company looking to reach that audience through our dinner series, get in touch through Open Future Forum.

Murray Newlands is the founder of Open Future Forum and a Partner at IA Seed Ventures. Open Future Forum runs executive dinners, roundtables, and invite-only gatherings across Silicon Valley for CFO, CRO, CISO, and CTO audiences.

Links & Leadership – Engineering Leaders Golf Gathering

Tuesday, April 21 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Wednesday, April 22 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Links & Leadership - CTO and Tech Golf Gathering

Thursday, April 23 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Swing for CFO’s - Golf Gathering

Friday, April 24 3:00 PM - 5:30 PM

AI Dev 26 Side Event

Tuesday, April 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

CISO Leadership Dinner: Securing the AI Enterprise

Wednesday, April 29 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Public Board Member Dinner Series Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Wednesday, May 6 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

The PE-Backed CFO Playbook: Driving Value Creation in a Slower Exit Market

Thursday, May 14 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Enterprise AI & Agentic Security Dinner

Thursday, May 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Everyone assumes AI shrinks the value of relationships. Wrong.

Foundation Capital just published research from 25 companies on how AI is restructuring organizations. The numbers are striking. Engineering teams cut by 80%. Expert-to-generalist ratios going from 1:6 to 1:100. Nine functions collapsing into three.

The reorg is real. And it’s accelerating faster than most executives realize.

But here’s what most people miss: when companies get leaner, decision-making doesn’t disappear. It concentrates. The CFO who survives the reorg isn’t doing less. They’re doing more, with more authority, and far less patience for noise. The CTO who remains after the headcount cuts owns more of the org than their predecessor ever did. Same with the CRO, the CISO, the CPO.

Fewer decision-makers. More power per person. Higher bar for who gets access.

That’s not a threat to relationships. That’s a premium on them.

Cold outreach was already dying. In a world where the average enterprise buyer is drowning in AI-generated emails, automated follow-ups, and agent-produced content at industrial scale, the only thing that cuts through is a warm introduction from someone they already trust. Not a tool. Not a sequence. A person.

Think about what the inbox of a surviving executive looks like in 2026. Every vendor has an AI writing their outreach. Every SDR has an agent personalizing at scale. The volume is extraordinary and the signal is near zero. The delete key is getting a serious workout.

The executives who will shape the next five years aren’t just expanding their networks. They’re tightening them. They’re choosing who gets their time very carefully, and they’re making those decisions based on trust built in person, over time, in small rooms. A referral from someone they respect still opens doors that no AI-optimized email ever will.

This is the part the reorg can’t touch.

AI is an extraordinary leverage tool. It drafts, analyzes, executes, scales. Foundation Capital identifies four human roles that survive the reorg: accountability officers, systems architects, validators, and relationship experts. Of those four, relationship experts are the ones whose value is hardest to replicate and easiest to underestimate. Because the returns aren’t immediate. They compound quietly, over dinners and introductions and favors remembered, until one day they’re the only reason a deal closed or a partnership formed.

The mistake most people make is treating their network like a database. Add contacts, send messages, track open rates. That’s not a network. That’s a mailing list. Real networks are built through shared experience: a conversation that went somewhere unexpected, a problem solved together, a room where everyone was vetted and the guard came down.

That kind of trust has always been valuable. In a post-reorg world, where the buyer universe is shrinking and the stakes per relationship are rising, it becomes essential.

The great reorg is creating a world with fewer gatekeepers and higher stakes per gatekeeper. Your ability to access those people, and to be someone they want in their orbit, is worth more now than it was two years ago. Most people are doubling down on tools and automation to compensate. The ones who win will be the ones who doubled down on the rooms where real trust gets built.

Build accordingly.

Murray Newlands is the founder of Open Future Forum and a Partner at IA Seed Ventures. Open Future Forum runs executive dinners, roundtables, and invite-only gatherings across Silicon Valley for CFO, CRO, CISO, and CTO audiences.

Links & Leadership – Engineering Leaders Golf Gathering

Tuesday, April 21 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Wednesday, April 22 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Links & Leadership - CTO and Tech Golf Gathering

Thursday, April 23 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Swing for CFO’s - Golf Gathering

Friday, April 24 3:00 PM - 5:30 PM

AI Dev 26 Side Event

Tuesday, April 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

CISO Leadership Dinner: Securing the AI Enterprise

Wednesday, April 29 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Public Board Member Dinner Series Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Wednesday, May 6 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

The PE-Backed CFO Playbook: Driving Value Creation in a Slower Exit Market

Thursday, May 14 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Most B2B marketing budgets are built around reach. Impressions, clicks, pipeline volume, cost per lead. Those metrics made sense when buyers were anonymous and decisions were linear

That is not how enterprise deals actually close.

Enterprise deals close when the right person trusts you enough to take your call. When someone in the room vouches for you before procurement gets involved. When the CFO already knows your name because they heard it from three other CFOs they respect.

That is a community problem, not a marketing problem.

What executives actually respond to

I have run over hundreds of executive events across CEO’s, CFO, CRO, CISO, and CTO audiences. The pattern is consistent. Executives do not attend events to learn about vendors. They attend to be around peers who share the same problems.

When you put 12 to 15 executives in a room with no pitch deck and a good moderator, something shifts. The conversation becomes real. Problems get named. Solutions get discussed. And the companies that sponsored the room become associated with that quality of conversation.

That association is worth more than a banner ad. It is worth more than a sponsored webinar with 400 registrants and 40 attendees. It is the difference between being a vendor and being part of the conversation.

The math that CMOs miss

A single closed enterprise deal from a warm introduction made at an executive dinner is worth more than six months of digital ad spend for most B2B companies. Yet most companies spend 95% of their budget on the latter.

The reason is attribution. Digital spend is easy to measure. Community influence is harder to track. But hard to track is not the same as low value. It just means most companies leave it alone and hand the advantage to the ones willing to think longer term.

What sponsoring the right room actually buys you

When a company sponsors an executive events, they are not buying a logo placement. They are buying proximity to a group of executives who were invited because of their seniority and their willingness to have real conversations.

They are buying the right to be in the room. To hear what those executives are actually thinking. To have their product or solution discussed in context, not pitched in a vacuum.

Over time, that compounds. The executives remember who brought them together. They remember who made the introduction that led to a hire, a partnership, or a new vendor relationship. Reputation builds at the speed of trust, not the speed of your ad budget.

Who this is for

This works for B2B companies selling to the C-suite with deal cycles longer than 60 days. If that is your business, the question is not whether executive community delivers ROI. The question is whether you are in the right rooms.

If you are not sure, that is usually the answer.

Murray Newlands is the founder of Open Future Forum and a Partner at IA Seed Ventures. Open Future Forum runs executive dinners, roundtables, and invite-only gatherings across Silicon Valley for CFO, CRO, CISO, and CTO audiences.

Tuesday, April 7 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

ClawCamp: Get Started & Up-level Your OpenClaw Personal Agent Superpowers

Thursday, April 16 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Wednesday, April 22 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Swing for CFO’s - Golf Gathering

Friday, April 24 3:00 PM - 5:30 PM

AI Dev 26 Side Event

Tuesday, April 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

CISO Leadership Dinner: Securing the AI Enterprise

Wednesday, April 29 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The PE-Backed CFO Playbook: Driving Value Creation in a Slower Exit Market

Thursday, May 14 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

You’re a senior executive. You’ve built the network, you’ve earned the title, and you know how to work a room. But somewhere along the way the conversations stopped being as useful as they used to be. Conferences feel repetitive. Your existing network has become an echo chamber. And the introductions that used to come naturally are taking longer and longer to materialize.

That’s not a you problem. That’s a room problem.

The right room changes everything

At a certain point in your career, the quality of your next opportunity is determined almost entirely by the quality of the people you’re around. Not your LinkedIn connections. Not your alumni network. The people you actually sit across from, share a meal with, and talk to honestly about what’s working and what isn’t.

These gatherings are built for exactly that moment in a career.

They are small, deliberate, and selective. Every person in the room has been invited because they raise the quality of the conversation for everyone else. No small talk that goes nowhere. Just senior executives, investors, and operators who came because someone they trust told them it was worth their evening.

What you actually walk away with

You walk away with relationships that don’t start cold. The investor across from you already knows who you are before you’ve said a word, because the person who invited you vouched for you. That context collapses months of relationship-building into a single conversation.

You walk away with deals that started as dinners. A strategic partnership that began over a shared bottle of wine. A customer introduction that came from the person sitting next to you. A co-investor, a board advisor, an operator who has already solved the exact problem sitting on your desk right now.

You walk away with a peer group that thinks at your level and tells you the truth. People who have navigated what you’re navigating, built what you’re building, and are willing to share what actually happened, not the version that ended up in a press release.

And you walk away with a reputation that spreads through the right networks. Being seen consistently in rooms like this sends a signal that no marketing budget can replicate. You become someone who belongs at this level because you keep showing up at this level.

The conversations that change careers don’t happen by accident

They happen because someone put the right people in the right room and got out of the way.

That’s what I’ve been building as part of my work at IASV Seed Ventures, and what has grown well beyond the fund into something much larger. Across more than 100 gatherings, the pattern is always the same. The executives who show up consistently are the ones who close faster, build better, and open doors for each other in ways that compound over years not quarters.

“The people who show up consistently all say the same thing: they wish they had found this sooner.”

How to get in the room

Entry is selective and most people find their way in through someone already inside. The question we ask about every potential attendee is simple: does this person make the room better?

That might be through their network, their experience, their capital, or simply how they think and engage with the people around them.

If that sounds like you, send me three sentences. Who you are. Who you can bring to the room. And what you want to get out of it.

The right conversation is closer than you think.

Links & Leadership - CTO and Tech Golf Gathering

Wednesday, April 1 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Human X Side Event

Tuesday, April 7 6:30 PM - 10:00 PM

AI Engineers Happy Hour at Spin 🏓 during HumanX

Tuesday, April 7 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Wednesday, April 22 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Swing for CFO’s - Golf Gathering

Friday, April 24 3:00 PM - 5:30 PM

AI Dev 26 Side Event

Tuesday, April 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

CISO Leadership Dinner: Securing the AI Enterprise

Wednesday, April 29 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The PE-Backed CFO Playbook: Driving Value Creation in a Slower Exit Market

Thursday, May 14 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

www.trustedcirlces.co

Most platforms are built around attention.

Feeds. Followers. Likes. Notifications designed to keep you scrolling, not connecting.

None of that moves opportunities.

I’ve spent years studying what actually does. Running hundreds of events through Open Future Forum. Putting CFOs, CISOs, CTOs, and founders in the same room and watching what happens when trust is present and noise is not.

The pattern is always the same.

A founder who spent six months cold outbounding closes a deal in two weeks after one warm intro. A CFO stuck on an AI decision gets 20 minutes with someone who solved the exact same problem six months earlier. A CISO who felt isolated finds three peers navigating identical challenges.

The room did what no funnel could.

That’s the thesis behind everything I build. Trusted rooms outperform large rooms. The right conversation with the right person at the right time compresses timelines, sharpens decisions, and creates opportunities that cold outreach never reaches.

I’ve always believed this. Now I’ve found a platform built around it.

Trusted Circles.

It’s not a LinkedIn alternative. It’s not another feed. It’s not a place to broadcast into the void.

It’s a matching platform built around one idea: the right conversation with the right person changes everything.

Here’s how it works.

You share your role, your goals, and what you’re looking for. Trusted Circles matches you to role-based channels, 1:1 huddles, and member-led events with people who actually align with where you are and where you’re going.

A CFO gets matched with other CFOs. A CTO finds peers navigating the same technology decisions. A founder gets introduced to operators who’ve already solved the problem they’re facing. A VP of Sales gets in front of the exact buyer profile they’ve been trying to reach for months.

No cold outreach. No guessing. No noise.

Just high-signal people in focused rooms.

High quality professionals are already inside. The conversations happening inside Trusted Circles are the kind that used to require knowing the right person at the right conference at the right moment.

Now they happen on demand.

I’ve spent years building rooms like this by hand. Curating events. Making introductions. Running gatherings where the goal was always quality over quantity. Trusted Circles does that at scale, with structure, and without the friction.

If you believe the right room beats the right funnel.

If you believe trust compounds faster than reach.

If you’ve been looking for a place where the conversations are actually worth having.

This one is worth two minutes.

Join Trusted Circles.

https://trustedcircles.co

RSA Coffee Meetup

Thursday, March 26 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Links & Leadership - CTO and Tech Golf Gathering

Wednesday, April 1 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

AI Engineers Happy Hour at Spin 🏓 during HumanX

Tuesday, April 7 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

CEO PRIVATE DINNER

Wednesday, April 22 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Swing for CFO’s - Golf Gathering

Friday, April 24 3:00 PM - 5:30 PM

AI Dev 26 Side Event

Tuesday, April 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

CISO Leadership Dinner: Securing the AI Enterprise

Wednesday, April 29 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

(new Open Future Forum website)

Some things evolve quietly.

You don’t plan the evolution. You just keep showing up, keep curating, keep creating rooms where the right people find each other. And one day you look up and realize something significant has been built.

That is where we are with Open Future Forum.

Over the past few years I have written about what makes communities work. About the difference between an event and a trusted room. About why small gatherings of 10 to 20 people often create more value than conferences with thousands. About why the best communities are built by people focused on creating value for others, not competing for attention.

Those ideas were not just posts.

They were the operating principles behind everything we were building.

And what we were building was becoming clear.

Not a general networking group. Not another mixer. Not a place where people collect business cards and never follow up.

A home for executives, founders and investors who want to be in the right rooms with the right people.

If you are an executive trying to understand where AI actually delivers ROI, those conversations are happening here. If you are a CEO, CFO, CISO navigating risks that did not exist three years ago, the people who get it are in this community. If you are a founder looking for your next investor, operator, or advisor, the introductions that matter are being made at these events.

That is the real value of Open Future Forum. Not the agenda. Not the venue. The people in the room and the trust that builds between them over time.

That clarity deserved a brand to match it.

The new Open Future Forum website is built around that focus. Executive events. Curated gatherings. A network deeply embedded in Silicon Valley at the intersection of AI, cybersecurity and emerging technology.

Not bigger rooms. Better ones.

Trusted rooms outperform large rooms because trust creates velocity and velocity creates opportunity. What has changed is that we now have a sharper identity and a front door worthy of the community behind it.

Here is what is coming up over the next few weeks.

openfutureforum.com

NVIDIA GTC Side Event Mixer

Monday, March 16 4:30 PM - 7:30 PM

AI Leaders Mixer - SOLD OUT

The Edge of AI: Builder Night @ Tesla with You.com × Founders Bay

Thursday, March 19 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Links & Leadership - CTO and Tech Golf Gathering

Wednesday, April 1 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Human X Side Event

Tuesday, April 7 6:30 PM - 10:00 PM

Swing for CFO’s - Golf Gathering

Friday, April 24 3:00 PM - 5:30 PM

AI Dev 26 Side Event

Tuesday, April 28 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

CISO Leadership Dinner: Securing the AI Enterprise

Wednesday, April 29 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The PE-Backed CFO Playbook: Driving Value Creation in a Slower Exit Market

Thursday, May 14 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Over the past few weeks I’ve been writing about networks not the superficial kind, but the real ones. The kind built on trust, generosity, and shared ambition.

This weekend reinforced that idea in a very tangible way.

I spent part of the weekend sailing with several leaders who each run exceptional communities and events. Different industries, different audiences, different formats but all built around the same core belief: when you bring the right people together, value compounds.

What struck me most wasn’t just the conversations, but the mindset.

Each of these leaders could easily stay in their own lane. Protect their audience. Guard their events. Compete for attention.

Instead, the opposite is happening.

We are actively looking for ways to help each other’s communities grow stronger.

That means:

• Introducing members across communities who should know each other

• Supporting each other’s events and experiences

• Sharing ideas about how to create more meaningful rooms

• Helping great people find opportunities faster

When leaders collaborate like this, something interesting happens.

Communities stop being isolated islands and start becoming an ecosystem.

A founder in one room might meet a customer in another.
An operator might discover a new opportunity through a different community.
An investor might find the exact company they were hoping to meet.

This is how real networks compound.

Leadership in communities isn’t about owning the room.

It’s about building bridges between rooms.

The people I spent time with this weekend are all doing remarkable work creating experiences from curated dinners to outdoor gatherings to highly selective industry events. Each one brings together thoughtful, ambitious people who genuinely want to support each other.

When leaders of those communities collaborate, the impact multiplies.

Instead of one strong network, you get many networks reinforcing each other.

And for the broader business community, that means more opportunity, more support, and more trusted places to connect.

The lesson for leaders is simple:

The strongest communities aren’t built through competition.

They’re built through collaboration.

The future belongs to people who build trusted rooms and then open doors between them.

Events in the next 2 weeks

CFO’s: How Enterprises Drive Tangible ROI from AI

Tuesday, March 10 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

VC / CISO Sailing On The Bay

Friday, March 13 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM

AI+ Renᴬᴵssance Conference 2026

Sunday, March 15 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

NVIDIA GTC Side Event Mixer

Monday, March 16 4:30 PM - 7:30 PM

Secure AI Factory: GTC Happy Hours for AI Executives with Massed Compute, Gruve AI, EOS, Rapt AI, & MaxLinear

Monday, March 16 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Frontier Room: GTC After Dark Cocktail Experience for AI Founders by Massed Compute, ePlus, Yotta Labs & Rapt AI

Tuesday, March 17 6:30 PM - 10:30 PM

Inference Happy Hour for AI Founders & Builders Hosted by Massed Compute, Rapt AI, Amaara, Qwerky AI, & Modular.

Wednesday, March 18 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM

The Edge of AI: Builder Night @ Tesla with You.com × Founders Bay

Most founders optimize channels.

They debate paid vs. organic.
They tweak CAC.
They refine funnels.
They hire growth leads.

But the fastest growth I see rarely comes from marketing optimization.

It comes from knowing the right people.

Not “networking” in the abstract.

Specific people.

• 10 CFOs who trust your judgment

• 8 CISOs who will give you unfiltered security feedback

• 5 CTOs who will trial something because you asked

When your network includes budget holders, growth compresses.

Sales cycles shorten.
Positioning sharpens.
Objections surface early.
Product improves faster.

You stop guessing what the market wants because you’re in active dialogue with the people who control spend.

And then something more powerful happens.

It compounds.

When you win inside trusted executive circles:

• You generate credible case studies.

• You earn operator references.

• You become “known” inside that micro-ecosystem.

Winning rooms invite you into other winning rooms.

Trust becomes portable.

A CFO introduces you to another CFO.
A CISO brings you into a peer dinner.
A CTO references you in a closed Slack group.

Over time, your network stops being a list of contacts and becomes a distributed endorsement layer.

Fundraising follows the exact same pattern.

Investors don’t fund decks.
They fund signals.

When you can say, “We have 12 active conversations with enterprise buyers,” the dynamic shifts.

Warm conviction beats cold decks.

In a world where AI lowers the barrier to building product, the scarce asset isn’t code.

It’s access to people who can buy — and people who can validate that others will buy.

Distribution is not a channel.

It’s a person.

And the right room is more powerful than the right funnel.

If you can bring real operators to the table CFOs, CISOs, CTOs who want to collaborate and win together. I’m building rooms designed to compound.

Let’s build them together.

Cybersecurity Pitch Night

Wednesday, March 4 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

https://luma.com/cippgzns

Closed-Door CROs: What Works in 2026

Thursday, March 5 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

CFO’s: How Enterprises Drive Tangible ROI from AI

Tuesday, March 10 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

VC / CISO Sailing On The Bay

Friday, March 13 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM

NVIDIA GTC Side Event Mixer

Monday, March 16 4:30 PM - 7:30 PM

The Edge of AI: Builder Night @ Tesla with You.com × Founders Bay

Last week I wrote about how executive advantage is shifting from knowing to routing trust.

This week at DeveloperWeek (DevWorld), I spoke with 30+ CMOs who host executive events.

Here’s the signal:

• 90% want to do more executive gatherings.

• Every one who said their events were successful said the same thing:

They worked because we collaborated.

Not because of budget.
Not because of brand size.
Because of shared curation and shared trust.

The Pattern

The best rooms CFO dinners, CISO roundtables, CRO breakfasts work when:

• Two or three trusted operators co-host

• Each brings a curated slice of their network

• The intent is long-term reciprocity, not extraction

When one person tries to own the room, it feels transactional.
When collaborators align, it compounds.

Executives don’t need more information.
They need trusted peers and interpreted signal.

Community velocity now comes from co-creation.

What I’m Building

I’m looking for operators who want to build high-signal executive rooms together:

CFO. CISO. CIO. CRO. CTO. AI leadership. Venture / LP.

Small. Curated. Repeatable.

If you host or want to host executive gatherings and believe in give-first collaboration, let’s talk.

Reply or message me:

• Who you serve

• What city

• What room you want to build

The future of executive community is shared trust.

Let’s build it together?
Murray

AI Dev Tool Demo Night @ AWS Builder Loft (#4th Edition)

Monday, February 23 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

“The Changing Landscape for CISOs” Dinner 2/26 5:30p @Meyhouse in Palo Alto, by AI Insiders Cyber & Silicon Valley Bank

https://luma.com/eglgrz85?tk=qWV8ys

Cybersecurity Pitch Night

Wednesday, March 4 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

https://luma.com/cippgzns

Closed-Door CROs: What Works in 2026

Thursday, March 5 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

CFO’s: How Enterprises Drive Tangible ROI from AI

Tuesday, March 10 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

VC / CISO Sailing On The Bay

Friday, March 13 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM

For decades, leadership authority came from expertise. The senior person in the room was the one who knew more and had more experience, more pattern recognition, more answers. Organizations were built around that scarcity.

AI has effectively universalized expertise. High-quality analysis, drafts, projections, and recommendations are now available on demand. The question is rarely “what does the data say?” It’s “can we act on it?”

So leadership value migrates to a different layer: who can quickly access someone that understands the nuance behind the answer.

AI gives conclusions.
People supply consequences.

Every meaningful decision still carries second-order effects political, operational, reputational, contractual. The real bottleneck inside companies is no longer analysis; it’s confidence. Teams hesitate not because they lack information, but because they lack validated judgment.

This isn’t about having a small network instead of a large one. The highest-leverage executives cultivate multiple trusted circles operators, customers, investors, technical experts and know exactly which group to engage for a specific decision. Breadth creates reach; trust within each circle creates speed.

Critically, the advantage is often external. The fastest leaders know which operator, customer, regulator, or peer to call outside their company to reality-check a decision. Internal alignment creates agreement; external perspective creates certainty.

But these networks don’t appear when you need them. They are built long before the decision, through consistent giving introductions without immediate benefit, sharing context early, helping others think through problems when you have no stake in the outcome. Over time, that behavior creates a reservoir of trust people are willing to deploy on your behalf.

In this environment, relationships function as decision infrastructure. They reduce perceived risk and accelerate commitment.

The job of leadership is no longer knowing the answer.
It’s knowing who to trust and which circle to activate immediately.

AI for Sales & Marketing Pitch Night

Wednesday, February 18 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM

Sales Enablement With AI - A Hands On Session

Wednesday, February 18 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

ACGSV M&A Tech Connect 2026

Wednesday, February 18 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM

AI Dev Tool Demo Night @ AWS Builder Loft (#4th Edition)

Monday, February 23 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The Evolving Role of the CISO

Thursday, February 26 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Cybersecurity Pitch Night

Wednesday, March 4 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM

https://luma.com/cippgzns

Closed-Door CROs: What Works in 2026

Thursday, March 5 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

CFO’s: How Enterprises Drive Tangible ROI from AI

Tuesday, March 10 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

VC / CISO Sailing On The Bay

Friday, March 13 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM

The most effective leaders don’t chase influence.
They create opportunity.

They do it by giving time, context, judgment, and connection without keeping score. Over time, this changes everything.

Giving builds trust.
Trust creates real connections.
And real connections are where opportunity actually moves.

The best opportunities surface in private conversations, follow-ups, and moments where someone thinks, “You should talk to this person.”

Leaders who give consistently are top of mind when those moments happen.

That’s not luck. It’s leverage.

Giving also changes the speed of growth. Givers hear things earlier. They’re included sooner. They see risk and opportunity before it becomes obvious. Timing compounds just as much as insight.

This week’s CFO gathering was a good reminder of that. Because people showed up to share honestly—what’s working with AI, where productivity is real, and where uncertainty still exists—connections formed naturally and opportunity followed. Christina Bui set a tone of openness, and Protiviti contributed perspective without trying to own the room. Thank you. Trust did the rest.

The best givers are also focused. They don’t give indiscriminately. They make introductions that matter. They share judgment when it’s useful. They protect their time so their giving stays meaningful.

That’s how generosity becomes growth.

Giving builds connections.
Connections create opportunity.
Opportunity drives growth.

If you believe leadership is about helping opportunity move faster for others and you enjoy giving without keeping score I’d welcome the conversation.

No pitch.
Just intent.

ACGSV M&A Tech Connect 2026

Wednesday, February 18 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM

Sales Enablement With AI - A Hands On Session

Wednesday, February 18 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

AI for Sales & Marketing Pitch Night

Wednesday, February 18 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM

AI Dev Tool Demo Night @ AWS Builder Loft (#4th Edition)

Monday, February 23 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The Evolving Role of the CISO

Thursday, February 26 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Closed-Door CROs: What Works in 2026

Thursday, March 5 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

There’s a pattern I keep seeing over and over again in truly successful leaders. The ones who build enduring companies, trusted communities, and real influence over time.

They don’t win by taking.
They win by giving.

Not in a performative way. Not through superficial generosity. But by consistently creating value before asking for anything in return. I’ve seen this across founders, operators, investors, and executives who operate at the highest level. Different industries, different personalities same pattern.

This idea is captured powerfully in Give and Take by Adam Grant. His research shows that while takers may get ahead briefly, they eventually lose trust and momentum. Givers when they’re intentional and not naïve tend to rise to the top and bring others with them.

What matters is how they give.

The leaders who win by giving don’t give blindly. They give context instead of posture. They share hard-earned insight, not recycled opinions. They make introductions without keeping score. They open rooms, not just doors. Most importantly, they help others become more capable and more independent.

That’s not altruism for its own sake. It’s a winning strategy.

Giving builds trust and trust compounds. It creates gravity. People show up prepared. Conversations go deeper. Collaboration becomes real. Over time, something rare forms: a network that actually works.

By contrast, extractive leadership is loud and fast. It scales quickly, looks impressive from the outside, and then quietly collapses under its own weight. Shallow ties. Transactional rooms. Constant churn.

The leaders who last understand leverage differently. They know real power comes from enabling others to succeed without needing permission or constant validation. When people leave a conversation sharper than when they entered, leadership has done its job.

That’s what we’re looking for in this community.

Not the loudest voices. Not the most polished brands. But leaders who contribute signal, who help others think better, and who see leadership as a responsibility not a status symbol.

If you lead by giving, you don’t just win once.

You build an ecosystem where winning keeps happening.

Demo Day: AI Solutions for the Modern CFO

Tuesday, February 3 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM

AI for CFOs: What’s Coming Next

Thursday, February 5 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM San Francisco

Chief Operating Officer Community Mixer

Thursday, February 12 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

ACGSV M&A Tech Connect 2026

Wednesday, February 18 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM

Sales Enablement With AI - A Hands On Session

Wednesday, February 18 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

AI for Sales & Marketing Pitch Night

Wednesday, February 18 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM

The Evolving Role of the CISO

Thursday, February 26 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Closed-Door CROs: What Works in 2026

Thursday, March 5 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM

We’re building a new series of small-group, closed-door executive roundtables for senior leaders who want real conversation not panels, pitches, or surface-level networking. These gatherings are designed for executives who are actively in the seat, carrying the number, leading teams, and navigating the realities of growth, efficiency, and execution in a more constrained market.

This series begins with CFOs and CROs two roles that are now more intertwined than ever. Finance and revenue leadership are being asked to solve the same problem from different angles: drive durable performance while protecting margins, improving predictability, and making sharper tradeoffs with fewer resources. These roundtables create a trusted environment where leaders can share what’s working, compare approaches, and pressure-test decisions with peers who understand the stakes.

The format is intentionally intimate and high-signal:

• Small group, curated attendance (no random crowds)

• Executive-only conversation with clear confidentiality norms

• Roundtable-first structure focused on peer learning and actionable takeaways

• Real challenges, real playbooks, real operator insight

Topics we expect to cover include:

• Forecast accuracy and pipeline quality in volatile quarters

• The new relationship between Finance and GTM execution

• Retention, pricing, and expansion strategies that hold up under scrutiny

• Driving efficiency without slowing momentum or losing talent

• Building operating rhythms that create accountability and speed

• Using systems, data, and AI tools to amplify performance without over-hiring

This is not a one-off event. It’s the foundation of a broader ecosystem of C-level leadership groups that will expand into additional functions over time bringing together executives who want to build long-term relationships, collaborate across disciplines, and be part of something bigger than a single dinner or workshop.

If you’re a CFO, CRO, or senior executive leader who values sharp thinking, high-trust peers, and conversations that translate into real execution, this is for you.

VC / CFO Sailing On The Bay

Friday, January 30 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM

Demo Day: AI Solutions for the Modern CFO

Tuesday, February 3 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM

AI for CFOs: What’s Coming Next

Thursday, February 5 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM San Francisco

Chief Operating Officer Community Mixer

Thursday, February 12 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

ACGSV M&A Tech Connect 2026

Wednesday, February 18 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM

Sales Enablement With AI - A Hands On Session

Wednesday, February 18 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

The Evolving Role of the CISO

Thursday, February 26 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM