The Handbook

How to run a room worth coming back to.

Why host a Clay Club

Different hosts want different things, and that's good. Be honest with yourself about which one you're optimizing for — it shapes the room you build.

  • Personal growth: public positioning, a network of GTM operators, and learning by teaching. Hosting is one of the fastest ways to become known in your city's GTM scene.
  • Agency / business growth: co-marketing with Clay, warm relationships with prospects, and credibility as the local Clay expert. This is real and welcome — with one rule: the room is never your lead-gen funnel. Give first. The business follows.

What makes a great Clay Club

  • Interactive by default. Live builds, roundtables, breakdowns, workshops. If someone's presenting at people for 40 minutes, redesign it.
  • The room is the product. Curate who's there. Brief your speakers. Pull in the quiet people. A full room with dead energy is a failed event.
  • Intimate beats big. Twenty people who all talk beats eighty who watch. Cap it. Stockholm caps at 20 and fills every time.
  • The room continues online. Every event seeds a Slack thread so the people and workflows don't evaporate when the night ends. (See: The 24-Hour Room.)

Choose your format

Live Build
You or a guest builds something real, live, while people watch and ask. The Zurich and Seattle chapters run this. Highest energy, lowest polish required.
Roundtable
8–15 people, one sharp question, everyone talks. Best for senior or quiet rooms.
Co-working Session
Everyone brings a real problem and builds alongside each other. Great for retention.
Workshop
Structured teach + do. Good for newer markets and beginners.
Dinner
Small, curated, no agenda but a great guest list. Pure relationship-building.

Avoid: panels and product demos, unless tightly designed. People come to interact with each other and with Clay — not to watch a stage.

The 24-Hour Room (your IRL→URL ritual)

The goal: the room keeps talking after everyone goes home. Make it a ritual, not a hope.

  1. Before: create a Slack thread for the event. Generate a QR code that links to it. Print it on table cards.
  2. At the door: every attendee scans the QR. New folks join the Clay Slack automatically; existing members land straight in the event thread.
  3. To open the event: ask everyone to drop their answer to tonight's question in the thread ("What's the last thing you automated — in 10 words?"). Read one or two aloud. You've just broken the ice and put 25 people in Slack before you said a word.
  4. Within 24h: post your recap, tag who demoed, drop the templates. Make the intros you promised — in the thread, not by DM.

Why it works: the demand is already there (members ask to continue the room unprompted), and Slack onboarding becomes structural instead of optional.

What Clay gives you

Free Clay credits for attendees · a listing on the global Clubs calendar · setup/AV contractor contacts · the host network and peer group · co-marketing for events that meet the bar.

When to ask for help

Use the Request Support form. Venue, AV, budget, speakers, promotion — that's what the Clay team and Events are here for. Asking early is a strength, not a failure.