Running Events with Matt Carey from AI Demo Days
Matt Carey has built developer meetups, conferences, hackathons and AI Demo Days on both sides of the Atlantic. His advice: design the event around what attendees should get from it, budget for surprises, and be brutally honest about whether a hackathon is the right format.
Matt Carey is the founder of AI Demo Days, a fast-paced showcase for people building with AI. Before that, he organized serverless events while working at a consultancy and grew a meetup community to around 5,000 members.
We talk about what a polished 50-person event really costs, why community-led gatherings can outperform company-branded ones, how Matt curates attendees and demos, and the narrow set of cases where a hackathon creates genuine value for a DevTool company.
The Q&A below is experimental — extracted from the episode transcript with AI. If you spot a mistake, let us know at jack@scalingdevtools.com.
What are you trying to create with AI Demo Days?
I want it to be free to attend but feel like a high-quality conference. That means a good venue, proper filming and photography, and an experience more considered than pizza in an office. The format is deliberately concentrated: a run of short demos with no breaks, then networking before and after. It should feel like a meetup of friends while giving builders a real stage for their work.
What did the first event cost?
The first event was for roughly 50 people and cost around £4,000, with the venue accounting for about half of that. SingleStore sponsored it and helped make the venue possible. Costs rise quickly with scale — drinks alone can become significant — so I always try to raise a little safety money rather than budget to the exact expected total.
Where can a new organizer find sponsors or an affordable venue?
Developer-tool companies are obvious sponsors, but venture firms can also be a good fit because events help their portfolio, hiring and deal flow. Some will provide office space instead of cash. Whatever the venue, spell out the practical requirements. An office manager may think a room is event-ready while you arrive to discover there are no chairs, no suitable layout or no one available to help.
Why are you skeptical of company-sponsored hackathons?
Hackathons can be excellent for attendees, open-source projects, communities and investors, but they are often poor value for a closed-source company. A weekend London venue can be very expensive, and sponsors frequently arrive with an immature product and a vague hope of awareness or feedback. Remote events remove much of the observation that makes a hackathon useful, while brand awareness can often be bought more efficiently elsewhere.
When does a hackathon work well?
It works when the output itself compounds the product or community. Raycast's extension hackathon is a strong example: extensions are open source, participants could build them quickly, and around 50 people effectively contributed 50 days of useful work. A compact two-hour evening event can also work: use free space, put perhaps £5,000 into prizes that go directly to builders, and stay close enough to watch how people use the product.
How did you know the Demo Days format had product-market fit?
The first one featured Lou from tldraw and about 50 people I invited personally. Most of them wanted to come back, which was the clearest signal. Later, a San Francisco event filled the room despite several competing demo nights happening at the same time. Consistent visual identity, strong demos and venues people are excited to visit all help, but repeat attendance is the real proof.
How do you curate the event?
Both the stage and the room need curation. There may be roughly 30 applications for one demo slot, so I choose work that will be interesting to watch rather than filling the agenda. With tools such as Luma, I can also accept attendees based on who is likely to benefit instead of treating registration as an unlimited first-come queue. A full room is not the same thing as the right room.
Should a DevTool company run its own community event?
Often it is better to support an organizer who already has the community's trust. The strongest community gatherings do not feel stamped by a single company, while a company-owned meetup can easily turn into a sales event. There are exceptions — a genuinely educational lecture from a company such as Anthropic can work — but the attendee's experience and the community's identity should come first.
What operational lesson do organizers learn the hard way?
Something unexpected nearly always appears. About one event in three produces a surprise bill of around £1,000, so leave a buffer and confirm every physical detail in advance. The creative idea for an event matters, but reliable production is what lets people enjoy it without noticing the machinery underneath.