As Tom Tom Founders Festival Director Paul Beyer sits in the audience during Founders Summit talks and hears fellow entrepreneurs and creative visionaries speak about the early days of their startups, the successes they celebrated and obstacles they faced, he can’t help but draw a parallel to the festival itself.
The ideas for the festival (April 11-17), launched in 2012, largely came out of casual conversations in Beyer’s apartment—friends would drop by for a beer, and they would discuss his idea for a festival based on the pillars of music, art, innovation, food and, most of all, founding—a nod to Charlottesville’s own polymath, Thomas Jefferson. He says Tom Tom—a regional take on South by Southwest—had no business being as successful as it was the first year, simply for the fact that it was entirely volunteer run. But each year has brought changes and growth—not only in attendance (6,700 the first year up to 26,000 last year) but in the festival’s organizational structure. The festival became a nonprofit after its second year, and Beyer attended the i.Lab at the Batten Institute where he sketched out a five-year plan for the organization, with the end goal of becoming a national festival.
Now in its fifth year, and with the backing of three full-time paid staff members, 14 student fellows from UVA, a slew of subcontractors and an official office on South Street, Beyer says they’ve more or less reached that goal. Speakers at the festival’s Founders Summit on Friday, April 15, as well as at lunches and workshops throughout the week, come not only from the region but throughout the United States. On the bill this year are Charlottesville’s own Bill Crutchfield, who built a $250 million a year consumer electronics business with $1,000; Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, founder of Joyus and theBoardlist, who led an 18-country expansion at Google; and Jason Flom, founder and CEO of Lava Records and founding board member of the Innocence Project, among others.
But perhaps the most notable sign of growth is not in the festival’s list of speakers but in its focus. More locally centered events during the week are no longer held at various venues around town; instead The Paramount Theater will serve as Tom Tom’s home base for events from Monday through Friday. The festival kicks off this year with the Future Forum: The Creative Economy 2025, which brings stakeholders in the local community—artists, entrepreneurs, investors and elected officials—together to talk about the economic impact art could have locally.
“So much of the festival is about projects that are happening now and businesses happening now, there’s no step back and saying what does this mean for the city 10 years from now,” Beyer says. “This year it’s going to be the touchstone for the festival. What is all this dynamism that we’re highlighting actually going to turn in to 10 years from now.”
The goal of the festival is to be a creative conduit and connector for people—of all ages. One of the highlights of new programming this year at the Paramount, Beyer says, is the Youth Summit, which will host 1,000 high-schoolers from around the state to hear entrepreneurs 25 years and younger talk about their businesses and community initiatives. The Founders Summit and Youth Summit are the only ticketed events this year, but Beyer says they’re priced just to break even (the festival has also set aside hundreds of Founders Summit tickets for students that are either heavily subsidized or given away). The underlying goal is to bring out people who are interested in Tom Tom’s array of topics: the food business, innovations in athletics, a crowdfunded pitch night, gender influence in business, etc. That’s what keeps Beyer up at night—making sure they reach each niche audience so that all creative collaborators are in the same place at the same time.
“The goal of the festival is to inspire people to see themselves as creators and to inspire them to see the city in new ways,” he says.
Since its inception, the festival has awarded more than $1.2 million in its various competitions, such as the crowdfunded pitch night, to nonprofits, artists and entrepreneurs. But the winners aren’t the only ones who claim successes, Beyer says. He’s heard several people say they met an investor or collaborator or someone who has an idea on how to help them with their project. And that is what Tom Tom is all about–establishing the foundation for local founders and serving as a springboard for creative success.
“Ultimately what I hope happens is there are dozens of stories of people who look back and say, ‘I met my investor’ or ‘That’s where I met my business partner,’” Beyer says. “You just don’t know these things for these early years because collaborations will have just started–you’re not going to know what happened until three or four years from now. You’re just seeding the ground and hoping really good things are starting to emerge.”
