About us
Friday Coffee Meetup (FCM) brings together Pasadena’s innovation and startup community on the first Friday of every month in the comfortable environment of FoundrSpace in Old Town Pasadena. Cohosted by CALE at Caltech
Here you will learn from leaders in the tech, entrepreneurship and venture capital community; experience presentations from dynamic speakers; and engage with other innovators.
For almost ten years now, Friday Coffee Meetup has been where Pasadena’s innovation community gathered weekly, and then most recently during the pandemic monthly. Today, with a revived partnership with Innovate Pasadena, Friday Coffee Meetup continues the legacy of connecting and invigorating our community with programs of authentic, inspiring and informative presentations and valuable welcoming and personal networking.
Friday Coffee Meetup is open to Pasadena’s entire innovation community, including (but certainly not limited to) entrepreneurs, programmers, chief technology officers (CTOs), venture capitalists (VCs), angel investors, thought leaders, and more.
Each meeting includes a monthly presentation from a leader in the innovation community, followed by Q&A, and then time for meet-the-speaker in person and informal networking. Please note our Speaker Criteria below, especially if you are interested in presenting.
Friday Coffee Meetup is supported by a team of dedicated volunteers, currently including John Chou, Doreen Chen Allen, Evan Tsang, Jan Young, Nathan Hurvitz, Holly Bowyer, Cameron Church, Meredith Jung, John Deyto, Christine de la Fuente, and Christy Conner.
Founded in 2013 by Andy Wilson, and Mike Schaffer, with sponsorship provided by Echo Factory the last few years, Friday Coffee Meetup is now sustained through a partnership with Innovate Pasadena that began in 2022. We invite you to learn more about upcoming meetups by visiting innovatepasadena.org and following Innovate Pasadena on social media.
Recordings of many previous events are available on our YouTube channels:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/innovatepasadena](https://urldefense.com/v3/https:/www.youtube.com/user/innovatepasadena;!!Fh--17vRJmFW!n1nOw9oBscDsITeJR8MuG1BvafIH25aJs5bhCF0UFDmUiKJaGs2v7Qz2vqKtTQmOyu4KIA$)
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqEpMLu3srTmz_hbS0ucCBQ](https://urldefense.com/v3/https:/www.youtube.com/channel/UCqEpMLu3srTmz_hbS0ucCBQ;!!Fh--17vRJmFW!n1nOw9oBscDsITeJR8MuG1BvafIH25aJs5bhCF0UFDmUiKJaGs2v7Qz2vqKtTQnstxEnYw$)
OUR SPEAKER INFORMATION & CRITERIA
Notes:
• FCM cannot be used to primarily promote an individual’s service or business.
• Our speakers are traditionally Innovators, CEOs, Founders, Angel/Venture Investors.
• If you are a service provider, this is not the right forum for you. But if you have CEOs and leaders of industry that you work with and would like to highlight, please recommend them.
What our audience likes to hear about:
• Entrepreneurship…successes and/or failures
• Lessons learned - what went wrong and how you fixed it…we love a good turn around or pivot
• Investors, VCs, etc. - what type of investments are you looking for: industry, fund size, previous background/experience, successful exits, stories of failures, etc.
• Innovators - how you took your idea to fruition.
Thank you!
Upcoming events
1
The Cards You Collect: How Experience Shapes What You Build
87 North Raymond Avenue, 87 N Raymond Ave, Pasadena, CA 91103, USA, Pasadena, CA, USWhat if the experiences that seem completely unrelated are actually preparing you for what comes next?
Ben Ikwuagwu’s path to entrepreneurship has been anything but linear. He spent nearly a decade in global supply chain at Dell and Apple and then pursued a very different path as a performer—leading Sweet Matcha Band and playing stages including Carnegie Hall, ACL Live, and FOX. Today, he’s the Co-Founder and CEO of Soundcheck Live.
Those chapters weren’t a branding story. They were the training and each experience gave Ben a different set of skills—or “cards”—that he eventually learned to play together.At this Friday Coffee Meetup, Ben will share how seemingly unrelated experiences, failures, and career pivots can become unexpected advantages when you’re building something new. He’ll take us inside his first year building Soundcheck and talk candidly about the pivots, the misses, what actually stuck, and what he’s learned about earning people’s trust and getting customers, investors, and teammates to believe in what you’re building.
### About Ben
Ben Ikwuagwu is Co-Founder and CEO of Soundcheck Live, an operations platform for pro duction companies, agencies, and talent teams. Soundcheck helps live-event operators move beyond spreadsheets, group texts, and memory to manage and scale their businesses.
Ben brings together experience across corporate operations, live entertainment, and technology to build tools for an industry he knows firsthand.### Networking
Come early to connect with fellow founders, technologists, creatives, and community members. Friday Coffee Meetup is as much about the people in the room as it is about the conversation on stage.
Accessibility: FoundrSpace is located in a historic building without elevator access. If you require assistance, please email pasadena@foundrspace.com and admin@innovatepasadena.org by October 30.
1 attendee
Past events
430
