🎧 River Live Sessions
In Episode 3, we caught up with Shaggy Eells—skier, world traveler, and expert event host to talk:
🎯 Hosting with heart (and flexibility).
Hosting isn’t about perfection—it’s about presence. Shaggy keeps it simple and scrappy: don’t stress over RSVPs, just show up and be ready to pivot. If no one comes? Grab tacos. If 50 come? Great, beautiful chaos. The goal is to create permission for people to connect without the pressure.
🌆 Differences in city culture and the social equation.
Every city has its own hosting rhythm. Warm weather towns? Super social. East Coast winters? Tougher crowd. In Salt Lake City, the combo of outdoorsy culture and startup energy gives events a unique edge— people will drive an hour just to show up, there’s a hunger for connection, you just have to make the space.
🧩 Conversation starters that actually work.
Shaggy’s known for his hyper-specific prompts. His faves:
“What are you most excited about this month?”
“Outside of work, what do you love doing?”
“How did you make your very first dollar?”
→ The key is skipping the “what do you do?” and get to the real stuff.
🧃Host tip: Small and consistent > big and random.
Shaggy swears by recurring hangs with just a few familiar faces. “Those are the ones that change your life. It’s like free therapy, community, and co-working all rolled into one.”
👑 Community Content
Michael Miraflor sparked some chatter on X about the comeback of members clubs. But safety is just the start.
People aren’t just craving community for the cozy vibes or the cool amenities. We’re craving it for something deeper. We want to feel safe. We want to feel like we belong.
Private members clubs have been around forever (often quietly, and usually for a select few), but there’s been a cultural shift. What once felt exclusive or elitist—or let’s be honest, a little culty—is now starting to make a lot more sense.
In our last issue, we shared some stats about how lonely we’ve all become. So suddenly joining a club doesn’t sound so crazy, does it?
Paying a membership fee won’t just get you decent coffee and a well-designed space—it gives you access to people you’ll probably get along with, the chance to make new friends, and a reason to hang out with them on the regular. Sounds like a good plan, if you ask me.
But here’s the thing: you don’t need a fancy club to get those same feelings.
Community isn’t always built in curated spaces. It’s built in the act of choosing to connect, again and again.
Featured Community Builders
🏕️ Ryan O’Hara — Ossippi, NHGrowth influencer & startup founder Ryan O’Hara asks: What if you could take a few dozen marketers, demand gen, and revenue operations pros, rent out an overnight summer camp for two nights, and throw the best educational marketing retreat to ever exist?
River is proud to be the official events platform for the inaugural Go-To-Market Camp. If you work or know anyone in any GTM roles at B2B companies, grab your bed before it sells out.
🌎 Adam Burgh — Seattle, WAAdam is a world traveler, building and scaling global tech teams, products, and businesses. He’s focused on growing Seattle’s startup and AI ecosystem by leading hackathons, founder matching, and AI coding events while finishing his one-man rock album.
👥 Daz Edwards — London, UK
Daz is an AI & Web3 Hackathon winner, product creator, keynote ghostwriter, and Lead Consultant at Something Labs Group. Also passionate about health, tech for good, impactful & ethical design, and accessible financial literacy for all.
New communities
⚡️ Bolt World’s Largest Hackathon | The World’s Largest Hackathon will be having IRL watch parties for their live-streamed awards ceremony. Join or host an awards watch party.
💻 RevenueCat Shipaton | The global hackathon for mobile app developers shipping real apps, making real money. Join the Hackathon here.
🍽️ Seacoast Stories Dinner Club | Ex-Spotify producer Troy Farkas moved to Portsmouth, NH and started a podcast about the stories of the Seacoast. Now he’s monetizing meaningfully with a branded dinner club and earned $458 by sending 41 people to dinner on River. Check out the case study.
New features
💸 Paid Events Are Live!You can now host paid events directly on River, with Stripe handling the payments. Learn more about paid events here.
✔️ Checking In GuestsFor in-person events, you can check in guests as they arrive to verify their registration and award badges. See how here.
🎨 White labeled community meetupsYour domain. Your design. Your community. Powered by River’s community event infrastructure.
Thanks for reading. We’ll be back soon with more trends, real talk, and spotlights on community.
✌🏽Ana Rivera SchmidtDirector of Community at River