Austin mansion think tank drops the conference format for working sessions

A four-day gathering in an 18,000-square-foot mansion in Austin, Texas, running February 20 to 24, is betting sellers are tired of paying thousands in tickets, airfare, and hotels to watch recycled podcast content from a stage.

The format scraps stages, slides, celebrity speakers, sponsors, and pitches. Instead, 23 working experts sit down with sellers one business at a time to solve specific problems across strategic marketing and off-Amazon growth, product launches and scalability, operational efficiency and hiring, profitability metrics, and ambitious growth planning.

Organizers say the problems tackled are too specific to search or prompt an answer for, and that both new sellers and $200 million businesses leave with a concrete plan. Participants from the first edition last September said they would have paid five times the price after experiencing their hot seat.

One hot-seat spot and three observer tickets remained as of this week, with a private chef, massages, and a trainer rounding out the weekend.