The role Anthropic (makers of Claude) posted this week caught the event industry's attention. They're hiring an Events Lead at a salary of $320,000 to $400,000 a year, and it says a lot about where things are headed.

Anthropic paying above market rate for an events role is a signal that IRL experiences are not a mere marketing cost but a core part of how one of the most influential AI brands is thinking about their offline positioning.

I'll be watching closely to see how this plays out across the rest of the AI industry.

Let's get started.

I have a habit of following speakers from my events on LinkedIn.

They took time away from work, family, and home to get on my stage for 45 minutes or less. The least I can do is follow their journey and support them wherever they show up online.

That habit paid off recently in an unexpected way.

Dan Krenitsyn, COO of beehiiv, was one of the speakers I genuinely enjoyed working with at a recent event. He was on top of responding to any of my pre-event outreach, prompt for our greenroom check-in, and very willing when I threw in an impromptu speaker meet-and-greet. He and his team were generous with their post-event feedback, both privately and online.

Most C-suite execs on LinkedIn are boring to follow. Their content is heavily sanitized by comms teams or consists of quarterly updates their direct reports feel obligated to like.

Dan is an exception. He shares new customer launches with genuine excitement, company updates with humor, and occasionally goes on public side quests analyzing M&A scenarios he finds interesting.

But it's not just what he posts. It's how he comments.

The COO of a company doing ~$30 million in annual recurring revenue leaves a single emoji as his signature response: 🐝

A new milestone just crossed? 🐝 🐝
Someone just launched their first issue? 🐝🐝 🐝
A comparison graphic between beehiiv and a competitor? You already know.

One comment he left recently actually had a few words: "we love data." I'm a bit of a data nerd, so I clicked through to see what the post was.

It linked to Scalable, a new media company focused on the business of the creator economy.

The co-founders and co-CEOs are Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg. Kaya launched and led the creator economy newsletter at The Information, growing it to more than 100,000 subscribers. Jasmine spent over a decade as an analyst and researcher at EMARKETER, where she built the firm's creator economy research desk from the ground up and became one of the most cited analysts in the space, a regular on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, and the BBC.

After going down a Scalable rabbit hole, I found that the connection to Dan is more than just his comment on their post. Dan’s company supported Kaya and Jasmine's transition to media founders through the beehiiv Media Collective, a program designed for journalists going independent that provides a health insurance stipend, access to editorial tools like Getty Images, and a dedicated point person for business strategy. It's a meaningful infrastructure layer for a two-person media company figuring out operations while simultaneously trying to produce great content.

I've been a fan of Kaya's work since the early days of her previous newsletter (our 2022 email exchange is pictured below), so it was exciting to see these worlds collide.

Now, here's the part that caught my attention as an event professional.

Scalable launched in October 2025. Seven months later, they're hosting their first event, the Scalable Summit, and it's sold out.

Event producers know that a sold-out event is only half the battle. Our favorite phrase isn't "sold out." It's "great event," which means the work is done, and it's finally time to relax. But achieving a sellout on your debut is no small feat.

With such a quick turnaround from media launch to inaugural event, the duo likely had help with planning, logistics, and monetization. Their partnership with The Lighthouse, Whalar Group's IRL creator campus in Venice, CA, provided the venue and possibly production support. Sponsors like Agentio, ElevenLabs, and CAA helped underwrite the cost. And they likely leveraged previous relationships (a smart move while those relationships are still warm) to attract a stacked speaker lineup of industry-leading founders, creators, marketers, investors, and tech executives.

It's a direct example of the case I made in my piece on 1440: media brands that treat events as a core revenue and relevance pillar will have an edge over those still waiting for the right moment to start and those who have ruled it out entirely.

After the summit wraps, I'd love to speak with a few attendees and, if I'm lucky, the hosts as well, to see how it actually went. That kind of post-event debrief could make for a great case study to share with you all.

For now, I'll be following closely. And rooting for a great event.