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The Next Step in the Verge Evolution

It’s aliiiive!

Our Midwest startup community has grown from a handful of initial members to nearly 1,300 active contributors. In the past year alone, our regular get-togethers have gone from around 50 people to over 200 at every meetup, with spots consistently selling out—sometimes in less than 5 hours!

Verge Membership Growth

But the growth story isn’t really about Verge. It’s about the startups and people who have brought our vibrant community to life.

It’s all thanks to you—the founders who have pitched your startups, the engaged community that gives their attention and valuable feedback (both business and technical), the members who have stepped up to help lead the Verge team, and the founders of fast-growing businesses who support and sponsor our events.

Thank you so so much.

It’s true—we have some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs, gifted software developers, and technology-hip startup investors in America’s heartland.

And, yet, we have much to learn.

VergeatDeveloperTown

There will always be more to learn. There will always be more to do. We learn from our own tests and mistakes. We learn from others. And, as we share and collaborate, others learn from us.

I don’t mean to get all touchy-feely, mushy-gushy with you. What I’m getting at is that this sharing and collaboration is exactly why we launched the beta version of the Verge blog.  It’s another way for us to stay connected—between and during events.

I’m not gonna lie. When this whole Verge thing started to take off, we had no clue what we were doing.

Did we set out to build a 1,300-member startup community? Hell no!

It may have appeared to be pure magic, but there were a lot of people who helped shape what Verge has evolved into today. We just listened to feedback from our community and learned from others.

And we’re still figuring things out. So, we need your help.

As we plan out the next release of this site, let us know what you’d like to see on the final Verge web presence. What are some of your biggest pain points as you scale your startup?  What would be cool, fun, and useful?

Please share on the Quipol and in the comments below:

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12 Comments

  • Matt Hunckler
    Posted November 21, 2011 at 1:02 pm

    Looking forward to your feedback!

  • Thomas Bass
    Posted November 21, 2011 at 1:33 pm

    Great looking site Matt Hunckler! Excited to watch the Verge community grow! Keep up the great work!

  • David J. Tittle
    Posted November 21, 2011 at 1:50 pm

    Nice site! Great job, Matt. The lineups are always interesting. Looking forward to the next event!

  • Lorraine Ball
    Posted November 21, 2011 at 3:12 pm

    Site looks great. Hope it will become a true gathering place for the community.

  • John P. Hunckler
    Posted November 21, 2011 at 3:29 pm

    Love it!

  • Matt Zentz
    Posted November 21, 2011 at 3:47 pm

    Nice work Matt! Keep the energy going and thanks for founding this great organization!

  • Matt Deboard
    Posted November 21, 2011 at 3:48 pm

    What % of the Verge community is developers versus sales/marketing/social media/etc. people?

    • Matt Hunckler
      Posted November 21, 2011 at 4:30 pm

      That's a good question! Verge is a community for software developers, entrepreneurs, investors, and those working at startups. We're planning on doing some segmentation analysis in Q1, but if I were to guess, I'd say that at events we have 10% investors, 20% developers, 40% entrepreneurs, 20% idea guy/girl, 10% other… ?

  • Matt Hunckler
    Posted November 21, 2011 at 4:25 pm

    Thanks for all the positive feedback guys! What else would you like to see here on the site?

  • Nathan J Altman
    Posted November 22, 2011 at 4:15 am

    Nicely done Matt! I would love to see a a quick writeup of the companies that pitched at Verge and a few updates on their status as they move forward. Kind of like TechStars does: http://www.techstars.com/companies/results/.

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