Larry’s rule for a new event is blunt: sell it first, then go make it. A sponsorship deck can exist before a venue is booked, before a speaker list is final, sometimes before the date itself is fully locked. What a sponsor is actually buying is the room you are promising to fill, not the folding chairs.
Take something like Austin Tech Week, running October 26 through 30, 2026 out of Capital Factory: the week draws sponsors because the audience and the calendar slot are already proven, year over year. That is the External API instinct again, plugging a new sponsorship pitch into a week that already has attention instead of inventing attention from scratch. Selling first also forces honesty, because a sponsor’s check tells you immediately whether the idea has real demand or just sounded good on paper.
If nobody will pay for the sponsorship before the event exists, that is useful information, cheaper to learn in week one than after the deposits are spent. Larry treats the signed sponsorship as proof of concept, then uses that proof to go get the venue and the speakers.
The order matters: commitment first, cost second, exactly backward from how most first-time organizers build an event. A sponsor who pays early is also more forgiving of rough edges, because they were part of building it, not just buying a finished product.
This is the same DJ-two-things-that-exist logic behind External API, an event format plus an existing audience, remixed into a new offer. Larry says the deck sells the room. The room does not sell the deck.
Details: See Austin Tech Week at Capital Factory · 701 Brazos St, Austin, TX 78701
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