You guys are the originals: the reason the Network Under 40 exists. It all began in Atlanta in March of 2011, as a fun way for me to help my friends make friends and business connections because they lamented the fact that every other event they attended was awkward or creepy (everyone seemed to be in a big meat market and/or shoving business cards in one another’s faces). They wanted a place to connect more genuinely and without an agenda other than to meet interesting new people. So Atlanta Under 40 was born.
Because so many of you flocked to our events and they grew, so did the national attention and exposure we got. We began to get inquiries from people in other cities asking how they could bring “Under 40” to their community. After a lot of consideration, I decided to graduate from informally offering them advice, to formally helping them design, build, and execute top-tier networking events like you’ve experienced in Atlanta.
For all you lawyers and business people who are familiar with Intellectual Property laws, we ran into some road blocks when it came to using the same format in our name: (City) Under 40. So, we named the parent organization “Network Under 40” and in each of our new cities, that’s how the organization is recognized.
Because we’ve always been “Atlanta Under 40” here, we kept it that way. But now, we’re going to join in with the other cities and adapt our name (ever so slightly) to reflect the brand you know from our website and newsletters. From now on, you’ll see the events branded at Network Under 40: Atlanta. Everything you know and love about them stays the same. We just wanted to give you the inside scoop on the ‘why’.
As always, thanks for being a part of this community. As the founder, it means the world to me that my love of connecting people has come to fruition and that you enjoy it. I look forward to seeing you at an upcoming event soon!