Deals in the Air: Announcing our August Conference

Over the last few months here at Axial, we’ve been working diligently to put together our own conference for deal professionals as part of our ongoing events program. We have great respect for groups like ACG, AMAA, and Buyouts with their annual events; however, every year we run into the same problem at these conferences: they’re almost always held far away from everyone who attends the event.

This makes the events a hassle, takes days of our time traveling, and reduces the number of people at each event. We find this unacceptable, so while we’ll continue to attend other events like Integrowth out of historical tradition, we’re launching our own conference on the weekend of August 16-19th.

To solve the location problem, we’ve used part of our recent venture round to purchase a used 747 and are refurbishing it to turn it into the perfect conference venue. Rather than needing to spend days getting to any event and booking a hotel, we’ll instead be flying from major city to major city over the course of four days.

Each morning the flight will depart New York City at 7am and fly to Chicago. After picking up the next batch of passengers,we’ll fly to Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta and then back to New York. On day 2, we’ll reverse course, departing New York for Atlanta and ending in Chicago before flying back to NYC. After two rounds, a total of four days, the conference will end with closing remarks on the tarmack in New York City.

The conference will be much like many of the events you’ve attended in years past. While we have you locked in your seats prior to take-off and landing, sponsors and keynotes will happen in the first class seating upstairs. After we’ve nearly bored you to tears, and once we’ve hit 10,000 feet, we’ll allow you to move downstairs where we’ve removed all of the seats in the newly renovated networking area. The back half of the plane will be broken into an area for capital connections and a small vendors area. We know no one will visit the vendors, but we need them to pay for the flights, so they’ll be near the bathrooms – ensuring you never miss them.

There are two ways to attend the conference. You can either get on when we fly through the city nearest to you and then stay at a hotel in New York City, or you can get off at any of the locations on the trip. If you decide you need to ‘expand your network’ beyond those on the plane and would rather be “networking” in Dallas, then get off. If driving around town isn’t what you thought it would be, hop back on. As space is limited due to the size of the 747, be aware that once you disembark we may not be able to allow you back on the following day.

We’re really hoping that this new model of a conference takes off. Deals in the sky, bringing networking directly to your doorstep, is where every conference is headed eventually. We anticipate entire fleets of 747s dedicated solely to making conferences easier to attend in the very near future.

We hope you can join us August 16-19th somewhere in a city near you. To ensure you have a space saved on the inaugural flight, register here for the early bird discount.