10xer Ari Kalfayan in Inc.’s “How a Burning Man Camp is Like Launching a Company”

May 28th, 2015

“Burning Man is a laboratory. Not every experiment works, but we’ll never know if we don’t try.” proclaims the Burning Man website. Like many tech entrepreneurs, our new VP of Strategic Growth, Ari Kalfayan, is passionate about the festival as a hotbed for unrestrained creativity and human connection. 

As both a company founder and primary organizer of the large Disco Chateau Burning Man theme camp, Kalfayan was recently asked by Inc.com for his perspective. In How a Burning Man Camp is Like Launching a Company, journalist John Boitnott discusses how the world-famous festival has evolved into a creative arena and playground for visionary tech entrepreneurs. The major theme camps function as complex organizations which must raise sufficient funding to support their venture: organizing up to hundreds of people living and working together in the challenging desert environment to build and share their massive interactive art and technology installations.

One of those camps is Disco Chateau, co-founded by 4 Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Like many other Burning Man Camps, Disco Chateau is dedicated to celebrating the unique culture of Burning Man but with an emphasis on creating social art, community and wellness among the broader community.

One of the camp’s co-founders, Ari Kalfayan, is also involved with the Startup Tech Mixer, a large networking event that hosts thousands of budding entrepreneurs, and is the VP of Growth for 10x Management, a Silicon Valley talent agency that represents coders. As a serial entrepreneur, Kalfayan says he is struck by how similar Burning Man camps can be to business ventures. I spoke with him recently about those similarities, and how “The Burn” influences his personal approach to building organizations.

Always innovating, Kalfayan is planning bigger and better things this year. Read the full article to learn more.