Startup events often follow a familiar, predictable formula: rehearsed pitches, pristine networking introductions, exchanging contact details, and conversations that invariably open with a variation of “So, what are you working on?”
Ugly Talk took a completely different approach.
At a recent NYC founder gathering, local entrepreneurs were invited to do something considerably less comfortable: get on stage and talk openly about everything that had gone wrong.
The idea was to move away from the carefully presented version of entrepreneurship that often dominates startup events and create room for the setbacks, difficult decisions, and unexpected challenges that are usually left out of the conversation.
Simple Format, Zero Polish
The event discarded formal presentations, corporate jargon, and curated success metrics.
Instead, the format was kept intentionally simple: One founder, Seven minutes, One real story.
Each speaker had roughly seven minutes to detail a pivotal, unvarnished moment in their entrepreneurial journey. The stories spanned:
● Failed Deals: High-stakes partnerships that fell through at the last minute.
● Missed Bets: Products launched with high expectations that completely missed the mark.
● Awkward Pitching: Critical investor conversations that went completely sideways.
● Starting Over: The painful decision to scrap months of work and pivot.
● Hard Lessons: Retrospective wisdom that only became obvious after a mistake was made.
There were no slides, panel moderation, or rehearsed fluff—just founders sharing the raw stories behind the stories normally saved for LinkedIn.
By keeping the format short and focused, the event put the experience itself ahead of presentation skills or polished business narratives. The seven-minute limit also gave each founder enough time to explain what happened without turning the stories into conventional startup pitches.
For the audience, that created an opportunity to hear about the less visible side of building a company: decisions that did not work, expectations that were missed, and lessons that only became clear after the fact.
Why BIDLYY Created the Event
The gathering was hosted by Jesse Multani, founder of BIDLYY, a New York City tech startup building an interactive marketplace around creators, audiences, and exclusive access.
While building BIDLYY, Multani remained deeply active across NYC’s founder and creator networks. Ugly Talk grew from his desire to foster a different kind of environment for entrepreneurs: a space to discuss the grueling, uncomfortable experiences that usually get edited out of a company’s public narrative.
Rather than hosting another event centered on fundraising wins and vanity metrics, Multani created a forum that puts the messy realities of entrepreneurship front and center—proving that the best insights often come from the moments that went wrong.
Thoughts from The Ugly Side
In that sense, Ugly Talk challenges the idea that founders need to present a polished version of entrepreneurship at every stage. The setbacks, failed deals, missed opportunities, and difficult decisions are not separate from the startup journey—they are part of it. By creating a space where those experiences can be discussed openly, the event turns failure from something founders are expected to hide into something the community can learn from.
For a startup ecosystem often measured by funding rounds, valuations, and growth numbers, that may be the most valuable conversation of all: not simply what founders achieved, but what went wrong, what they learned, and how those lessons shaped what came next.
