For years, the tech world’s default way to meet has been the same: thousands of people in a convention center, a packed agenda, a lot of stage time, and a constant low-grade pressure to be “on.”
But as the industry enters an era defined by AI acceleration, remote work, and relentless information flow, a different kind of gathering is gaining gravity. The people with the most leverage—founders, investors, top operators—are increasingly prioritizing smaller, invitation-only events that feel less like conferences and more like retreats.
Outcove sits squarely inside that shift.
A retreat, not a circuit stop
Outcove is an invite-only gathering that brings together entrepreneurs, investors, and operators for a few days of shared experiences—hikes, skiing, long meals, late-night music—and the kind of conversations that don’t translate well to a panel or a post. The group typically does a hotel buyout at a high-end property, trading the sprawl and anonymity of a convention center for a contained environment where people keep running into each other—in the best way.
The format is deliberately low on programming and high on trust. There are no lanyards. No speaker lineups. No public agenda built for social media. The structure is light enough that attendees can breathe, but intentional enough that people don’t drift into separate bubbles.
It’s a setup that reflects a growing reality: in a world where everyone can access the same information, the differentiator is access to people—and the depth of the relationships you can build with them.
Built by founders who were tired of the usual playbook
Outcove was founded by entrepreneurs Jess Mah and Noah Berkson, both of whom have spent years moving through the standard tech calendar—conferences, dinners, fast coffee meetings, and the familiar churn of “great to meet you” with little room for anything deeper.
Mah has built and backed multiple companies and has long been candid about the emotional tax of high-performance environments. Berkson, who has built and exited businesses, noticed another pattern among peers who had “made it”: achievement didn’t automatically create community, and the louder the professional ecosystem got, the harder it became to find spaces that felt human.
Outcove is their response: a small, curated room—except the room is a bought-out boutique hotel or resort, where the group can move through the property as a temporary, private community.
Why now: AI, scale, and the collapse of signal
The Outcove model is part of a broader trend reshaping how high-end networks form.
AI has made it easier than ever to access knowledge, generate output, and replicate surface-level competence. At the same time, mega-conferences have become more content-heavy and sponsor-driven—useful for broad visibility, but often exhausting for the people who don’t need exposure and aren’t looking to be sold to.
What many high-performing attendees want instead is a setting where:
- conversations can be candid and off-the-record
- serendipity is real, not manufactured
- people aren’t performing for an audience
- time together is long enough for trust to form
In other words: fewer people, more context.
That’s also why the best outcomes at gatherings like Outcove often show up indirectly—through partnerships, investments, hires, and collaborations that don’t begin with a pitch.
What it feels like inside
A typical Outcove day doesn’t look like a schedule. It looks like a rhythm.
Mornings often start with movement—hikes in Hawaii’s green terrain or winter days in Park City. Meals are communal and unhurried, often in private dining spaces carved out through the hotel buyout, with conversations that swing between business, personal recovery, and big-picture bets.
Then the room does what small rooms do: it deepens.
Instead of “introductions,” people trade real information—what’s working, what isn’t, what they’re worried about, what they’re building next. Instead of panel Q&A, conversations unfold in clusters: a founder pressure-testing a thesis; an investor discussing incentives and time horizons; someone else talking candidly about leadership, burnout, or rebuilding momentum after a hard year.
At night, Outcove leans into play. Music and dancing aren’t a side activity; they’re part of the design. The founders describe the social energy as a feature, not a distraction—the mechanism that helps people drop their guard and stop negotiating for status.
One attendee described it as “summer camp for adults who take the work seriously,” but without the self-conscious networking layer.
Others emphasized that deals do happen—but the sequencing is different. As one founder put it, “I met two investors I’d absolutely work with, but we didn’t start with a pitch. We started as people. By the time business came up, it felt obvious and clean.”
A repeat attendee who runs a company said, “It’s the first time in years I’ve made new business relationships that actually felt like friendship..”
An investor described the environment as a filter: “At big conferences everyone can perform. Here you can’t. After two days together, you know who you’d trust in a crisis. That’s what I’m underwriting.”
And a founder who came in skeptical of yet another ‘curated’ event said, “What surprised me was the tone. It’s not transactional. It’s not cliquey. It’s just… warm. We need more environments built like this—where connection is the goal and the business outcomes are a byproduct.”
The “anti-conference” ethos
What makes Outcove interesting isn’t that it’s luxurious—many events are.
It’s that Outcove is intentionally not optimized like an industry product.
The gathering isn’t set up to maximize ticket revenue, sponsor impressions, or headcount. The draw is the opposite: small scale, careful curation, and an environment where people can be present without constantly managing their image.
The founders have been explicit about not trying to franchise the experience. They host only a few times a year. They keep the group size limited. And they resist turning it into a branded machine.
That constraint is part of the point. The experience works because it stays intimate.
Where it’s been, and what’s next
Since its first gathering in February 2025, Outcove has hosted retreats in Hawaii and Park City, Utah. The guest list has grown by word of mouth, with a waitlist that reflects the same demand shaping the broader trend: high-signal people are seeking environments that feel more private, more grounded, and more emotionally intelligent.
Outcove is not the only event moving in this direction. Across tech, finance, and the creator economy, salons, micro-retreats, and invite-only communities are increasingly replacing the role that big conferences used to play for top-tier networks.
The economics are clear. When time is scarce and attention is the scarcest resource of all, the value of a gathering isn’t the number of people you can meet. It’s the quality of the relationships you can build—and whether the environment is designed for truth rather than performance.
Outcove’s bet is simple: if you create the right conditions, the best outcomes happen almost as a byproduct.
And in 2026, that premise is starting to look less like a niche preference and more like where the culture of business is headed.
