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Hoping for another Zuckerberg: Millennials conference aims to attract the young ones

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By Noel Young, Correspondent

October 13, 2016 | 6 min read

A conference expected to draw 5000 millennials gets under way on Sunday in Boston - and one hope is that hosting the Forbes Under 30 Summit will convince millennials that Boston is the place to be.

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg

The problem is that the city - one of the most youthful in the world thanks to its colleges and universities - can’t seem to hold onto its young people after they graduate, says the Boston Globe.

So Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Governor Charlie Baker, and a group of local CEOs have decided to roll out the red carpet for the event.

The organisers are thinking big : Two entrepreneurs under 30, one profit and one nonprofit, will each win a $500,000 prize in the conference’s “Change the World” pitch contest.

Shirley Leung writes in the Globe, “It’s as if we are a region that remains haunted by what could have been when Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, only to drop out and move his company to California, where he found receptive investors.”

Leung points out, “Today the social media company is worth about $370 billion.”

The 3-year-old conference — previously staged in Philadelphia — is built around Forbes magazine’s annual list highlighting the world’s brightest minds and entrepreneurs under the age of 30. The four-day confab will draw an estimated 5,000 attendees from more than 60 countries.

“These are the people who are going to run the world for the next 50 years,” said Forbes editor Randall Lane. “That’s a group we want to be in the middle of. That’s the proposition for Boston, too.”

The conference, spread across five venues in the city, is as much about deal-making and networking as it is about having fun. Fidelity Investments, for example, is sponsoring a discussion on access to capital at Faneuil Hall. Harvard Business School will host sessions on the creative economy.

Celebrity speakers include Jessica Alba, Ashton Kutcher, and Maria Sharapova. A “startup village” on City Hall Plaza will include a stage for musical acts and a beer garden. The conference will even feature its own beer: a limited edition “Millenni-Ale” courtesy of Boston Beer Co., brewer of Samuel Adams.

“It’s the ultimate youth conference, and it’s a great statement of how far Boston has come,” said Dan Koh, Walsh’s chief of staff who has attended the event in Philadelphia.

Koh made the Forbes Under 30 list in 2014for his role at Huffington Post, where he worked before coming to Boston City Hall.

Another bonus: The ability to show off home-grown tech talent as if to tell the world, yes, you can make it here. Among the Boston entrepreneurs who will be featured are WayFair cofounder Niraj Shah , DraftKings cofounder Jason Robins, and Peter Boyce, cofounder of Rough Draft Ventures, which invests in college startups with money from Cambridge venture firm General Catalyst.

The drive to bring the Forbes conference to Boston began in January after a small group dinner General Catalyst cofounder David Fialkow organized at the Algonquin Club.

Fialkow, the Cambridge venture capitalist, summed up the meeting this way: “How do we bring young people here to see how great a place it is to start a business? It’s not just don’t leave but come here.”

He, fellow CEOs, and Walsh made a pact that night. “Let’s work together to find one or two major things we can win on,” recalled Fialkow.

That something became marshaling business and political support to bring the Forbes summit to Boston. At the time, the magazine was exploring a move out of Philadelphia. The summit had been underwritten by a city-controlled nonprofit but that was unlikely to continue amid some controversy. Forbes subsequently told the city it no longer needed a financial guarantee.

A few weeks later, some of the CEOs from the original dinner, along with Walsh and Koh, met in Governor Baker’s office with Lane, the Forbes editor, to discuss the summit.

The Baker and Walsh administrations had just won a huge coup: luring General Electric to relocate its headquarters to Boston from Fairfield, Connrcticut. How closely the governor and mayor worked well together with business leaders impressed GE executives, as it did Forbes.

“They were showing us that Boston stood together. I had never seen anything like that,” recalled Lane. “It was very impressive.”

In February a bigger group of business leaders gathered at the Parkman House, a city-owned mansion that serves as the mayor’s ceremonial residence. The leaders included Suffolk Construction CEO John Fish, Boston Beer founder Jim Koch, and Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce chairman Nav Singh.

Shortly after that meeting, Forbes picked Boston, and both Baker and Walsh attended the press conference in March . As eager as they were to bring the summit to Boston, they pledged no public money, nor did Forbes ask for any. Instead the magazine relied on drumming up local business support.

Business leaders hope that Forbes will make Boston a permanent home for its annual summit. Lane said it’s too early to make that commitment.

“We want to get through this year and see how it goes,” he said.

Shirley Leung is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter@leung.

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