Author: Maksim

1. Context: Identifying an Opportunity and Designing the Event

At the time, our region was experiencing a boom in technological startups—new teams, new products, and growing energy in the ecosystem. However, there was a clear gap:

• Plenty of career fairs and employment-related events.
• Almost no large-scale business development forums where founders, investors, banks, and service providers could meet in one place.

Seeing this opportunity, I decided to launch a major Startup Forum—the first event of its kind in our area.

I already led a team of about 20 experienced event organizers who regularly ran Career Forums. I proposed an idea to them:
even though the target audiences of a Career Forum and a Startup Forum are different, we could leverage the same infrastructure and run the events back-to-back.

Strategic Event Model

We came up with a strategy to maximize impact and minimize cost:

1. Back-to-back events in the same venue
   • Day 1: Career Forum
   • Day 2: Startup Forum
   • Same venue, same booth structures, same meeting spaces, same stage.
2. Cost optimization
   • Reuse:
     • Booth constructions
     • Branding structures
     • Contractor setup
     • Cleaning services
     • AV equipment
   • This dramatically reduced:
     • Setup and teardown labor
     • Logistics complexity
     • Total contractor and venue costs
3. Business Model for Year One
   • Free entry for attendees, with prior registration on the website.
   • Revenue from:
     • Booth fees for startup-related exhibitors.
     • Sponsorship packages for:
       • Banks and financial institutions
       • Franchising companies
       • IT and SaaS providers
       • Any company interested in acquiring or serving small businesses and founders.
4. Promotion and Partnerships
   • Government as a partner:
     • The event was supported and promoted through official channels.
     • We received broad pre-event publicity and institutional validation.
   • Cross-promotion with media:
     • Invitations and special access for business journals and media outlets.
     • This elevated the perceived status of the forum.
5. Program and Speakers
   • We built a business program focused on:
     • Access to financing
     • Practical tools for early-stage founders
     • Legal, financial, and operational topics for small businesses.
   • My sales team successfully recruited paid speakers and partners from financial organizations and business service providers.
6. Venue and Scale
   • We booked the largest venue in the region—a Sports and Convention Palace with a capacity of around 10,000 attendees.
   • For the first Startup Forum, we expected around 5,000 attendees.

I was personally in charge of everything:

• Contractor coordination
• Booth and layout planning
• Financial model and budgets
• Sponsorship and partner relationships
• Overall risk and decision-making

The event was fully set up. Exhibitors had arrived from different regions. The program was locked, the booths were built, and registration numbers were strong.

Then, one hour before the official start, the crisis hit.

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2. The Problem: A Full-Scale Infrastructure Failure One Hour Before Start

With roughly 5,000 attendees expected to arrive within the hour, I received a call from the venue director:

• Water supply and sewage were completely shut down.
• This was not a minor technical glitch; the entire building and the surrounding district had lost water and canalization.
• The venue director’s immediate conclusion:
  “You must cancel the event.”

From a standard operations point of view, that decision was logical:

• Thousands of people in a venue with no working toilets, no running water, no sanitation.
• Obvious health, safety, and comfort concerns.
• No quick fix from city services.

But from the organizer’s point of view, cancelling meant:

• Total sunk costs:
  • Booth construction
  • Contractor work
  • Venue rental
  • Marketing and promotion
• Lost travel and preparation for:
  • Exhibitors from other regions
  • Speakers with prepared sessions
  • Attendees who had committed their time
• Reputational damage:
  • First-ever Startup Forum labeled as “cancelled at the last minute”.
  • Loss of trust from sponsors, government partners, and media.

I quickly did the mental math:

• If we cancelled, we lost nearly everything, both financially and strategically.
• If we proceeded recklessly, we risked a chaotic, uncomfortable experience and possible complaints.

This was a classic high-stakes constraint problem:

How to host a large-scale event in a huge venue, with thousands of attendees, in a building that suddenly has no water or sewage — and do it safely, transparently, and respectfully?

I decided that cancellation was the last resort. Instead, I focused on finding a way to adapt.

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3. The Solution: Rapid, Creative Reconfiguration of Basic Infrastructure

To keep the event alive, I needed to rebuild the minimum necessary infrastructure—in under an hour.

3.1. Negotiating to Keep the Doors Open

First, I had to convince the venue director not to cancel immediately.

• I acknowledged the seriousness of the situation.
• I presented a rapid-action plan:
  • Replace unusable bathrooms with portable and chemical toilets.
  • Control information and expectations through transparent communication.
  • Ensure that attendees, staff, and speakers understood the situation and temporary workaround.

I took full responsibility for:

• Additional costs
• Logistics
• Reputation management with attendees and partners

With a clear emergency plan and ownership, I persuaded the director to allow the event to continue while we rushed to implement alternatives.

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3.2. Emergency Logistics: Rebuilding Sanitation in Real Time

I immediately mobilized my team and our budget:

1. Buying all available chemical toilets locally
   • I personally went to the nearest suppliers and purchased every chemical toilet unit they had in stock, including higher-end cabins that we jokingly called our “VIP cabins.”
   • This ensured:
     • Immediate availability
     • At least some baseline coverage for early arrivals
2. Deploying portable toilets at any cost
   • I instructed my team:
     • “Order every available portable toilet from rental companies. Don’t negotiate too long on price—speed is more important.”
   • We arranged for portable units to be delivered and installed around the building, near the main entrances and convenient access points.
3. Hygiene Measures
   • We improvised a sanitation kit strategy:
     • Purchased large quantities of wet wipes and paper towels.
     • Brought in alcohol-based sanitizers and hygiene stations wherever possible.
   • The idea was to compensate for the lack of running water with a combination of:
     • Chemical toilets
     • Surface wipes
     • Hand sanitizing options

We essentially built a temporary, parallel sanitation system outside and around the venue in less than an hour.

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3.3. Communication and Expectation Management

Technical work alone wouldn’t be enough. With 5,000 attendees and high-profile participants, we needed clear, honest communication to avoid confusion or panic.

1. Briefing with Speakers and Partners
   • I quickly gathered all key speakers and session hosts.
   • I explained:
     • The cause of the issue (district-wide outage, not event mismanagement).
     • The temporary solutions put in place (chemical and portable toilets, hygiene supplies).
     • How I needed them to help:
       • Calmly acknowledge the situation at the start of their sessions.
       • Reassure attendees that solutions were in place.
       • Emphasize our commitment to running the event despite external infrastructure failure.
2. Addressing Attendees Directly
   • Before the official start, I made a main-stage announcement:
     • Explained the emergency situation honestly.
     • Stated clearly that:
       • We had installed temporary sanitation facilities outside and around the venue.
       • Additional hygiene materials were available.
     • Thanked everyone in advance for their understanding and flexibility.
     • Reframed the situation slightly:
       • “Today we are startups in every sense — we’re launching something new and also solving unexpected problems in real time.”
3. Signage and Staff Instructions
   • We placed visible signs directing attendees to the portable and chemical toilets.
   • Staff and volunteers were instructed to:
     • Proactively guide people to the new facilities.
     • Answer questions calmly.
     • Keep communication consistent and reassuring.

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3.4. Outcome and Learnings

Despite the infrastructure crisis, we successfully:

• Ran the Startup Forum as planned, without last-minute cancellation.
• Hosted thousands of attendees in a safe, managed, and transparent way.
• Maintained trust with:
  • Sponsors
  • Government partners
  • Media
  • Exhibitors and attendees

People understood that a district-wide outage was beyond our control, but they also saw:

• Our speed of response
• Our willingness to spend extra to keep the event viable
• Our ability to coordinate a large team under intense time pressure

In many ways, the situation reinforced the event’s brand:

• A forum for startups that itself behaved like a startup:
  • Faced a severe constraint.
  • Refused to give up.
  • Designed and shipped a workaround under brutal time pressure.

Key lessons I took away:

1. Risk planning must include “physical infrastructure” failures.
   Water, power, and basic building services are usually taken for granted—but they shouldn’t be.
2. Relationships with venue management matter.
   If I hadn’t built trust and taken responsibility, the director would likely have insisted on cancellation.
3. In a crisis, speed + clarity beat perfection.
   We didn’t have time to design a beautiful solution; we had to design a functional one, communicate clearly, and move.
4. Honesty with attendees builds goodwill.
   Rather than hiding the problem, we shared it and showed our solution. People appreciated the transparency.

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Summary

This case illustrates not only how I conceived and launched a first-of-its-kind Startup Forum by cleverly leveraging existing Career Forum infrastructure, but also how I handled a severe, last-minute operational crisis:

• Context:
  • Identified a gap in the regional startup ecosystem.
  • Designed a scalable, cost-efficient event model with a strong business plan and partnerships.
• Problem:
  • One hour before opening, a district-wide water and sewage outage threatened to shut down the event completely.
• Solution:
  • Negotiated with the venue not to cancel.
  • Rapidly rebuilt minimum sanitation infrastructure using chemical toilets, portable units, and hygiene supplies.
  • Communicated clearly with speakers and attendees, transforming a potential disaster into a story of resilience and resourcefulness.

The Startup Forum not only took place—it also demonstrated in real time the entrepreneurial mindset the event was designed to celebrate: seeing constraints not as a reason to stop, but as a challenge to solve creatively and decisively.