Gaapsavvy × Devon Coombs
Private Executive Dinners
Host the dinner people would want to attend even if you were not selling anything.
$20,000 professional fee per dinner
The strongest executive relationships rarely begin with a sales presentation. They begin when the right people are brought together, the conversation is worth having, and everyone leaves glad they came.
Gaapsavvy Private Executive Dinners are invitation-only gatherings for senior accounting, finance, and business leaders. We curate the room, personally invite relevant executives through our community and professional relationships, and create an environment designed for substantive conversation and authentic connection.
For the sponsoring partner, the value is straightforward: create value for your customers, prospective customers, and key relationships by introducing them to peers worth knowing, hosting them well, and giving them an evening worth attending.
No presentation. No product demonstration. No forced pitch. Just the right people around the right table.
Designed Around the Attendee
Most sponsored events begin with the sponsor’s objective. We begin with the attendee’s.
A senior executive has no shortage of invitations to webinars, conferences, dinners, vendor meetings, and networking events. The threshold for giving up an evening is high, so the invitation needs to offer something independently valuable:
- Relevant peers they would genuinely benefit from meeting
- Thoughtful introductions through trusted relationships
- A high-quality meal and setting
- Substantive conversation with people at a similar level
- No obligation to sit through a sales presentation
When that experience is designed well, the sponsor becomes the organization that made the evening possible. That creates a different foundation for the relationship.
Curated Around the Right People
The quality of the room matters more than the size of the room.
Gaapsavvy works with each partner to define the desired audience based on seniority, functional role, industry, company profile, geography, and strategic relevance. Partners may also identify specific companies or relationships they would particularly value having represented.
Gaapsavvy then develops the broader guest strategy and conducts personal outreach through its executive community, professional relationships, readers, and other trusted connections. Recent dinners in this series have brought together finance and revenue leaders from companies including GoPro, Genesys, Pinterest, PagerDuty, Freshworks, and Elastic.
We are not filling seats. We are assembling a group of people who have a reason to know one another.
Intimate by Design
We design around tables of about eight. One table creates an unusually intimate environment in which everyone can participate in the same conversation. Two tables, about 16 attendees in total, extend the network while preserving the quality of the experience. Most dinners land between 8 and 16 attendees, depending on the audience, venue, and partner objectives.
We recommend the sponsoring partner bring no more than three representatives, ideally executives, product leaders, or subject-matter experts who can contribute naturally to the conversation.
We do not optimize for headcount. Eight highly relevant executives who leave glad they attended create substantially more value than a larger room of loosely connected prospects.
The Sponsor Hosts, Rather Than Sells
The partner is there to host the room, participate in the conversation, and build relationships naturally. That distinction matters. A strong sponsor creates goodwill by giving customers and prospective customers access to peers they respect, thoughtful introductions, and a high-quality experience without immediately asking for something in return.
There is no formal sales presentation, product demonstration, or structured pitch. Angela Liu and/or Devon Coombs attend the dinner, facilitate introductions, connect guests where useful, and help create an environment in which substantive conversations develop naturally.
The commercial value comes from the relationships created by doing this well.
What Gaapsavvy Provides
Included in the $20,000 professional fee
- Executive audience strategy
- Guest-list development and curation
- Personal outreach through Gaapsavvy’s executive community and professional relationships
- Invitation and RSVP follow-up
- Coordination around partner priority accounts and relationships
- Recommendations on date, geography, venue, and format
- Attendance by Angela Liu and/or Devon Coombs
- Executive introductions and dinner facilitation
- High-level post-event attendance and engagement reporting
The professional fee reflects the part of the experience that is hardest to replicate: knowing who belongs in the room, having the relationships to invite them, and creating an experience they value enough to attend.
The Sponsoring Partner Covers
Paid directly by the partner
- Venue and private dining costs
- Food and beverage
- Deposits, minimum spends, service charges, and gratuities
- Registration infrastructure
- Event-specific branding or collateral, if desired
- Paid advertising or third-party promotional spend, if elected
- Other direct hosting or event costs
The setting should match the audience: high-quality restaurants or private dining environments that are polished, comfortable, and conducive to conversation. Gaapsavvy advises on venue, location, timing, and format so those decisions support the intended audience and experience.
Timing and Location Matter
Executive attendance is sensitive to timing. Quarter-end periods, financial close cycles, earnings calendars, major conferences, holidays, and day of the week all affect availability. We recommend starting with several potential dates rather than committing to a single evening before outreach begins.
Location follows the same principle. For Bay Area events, the best venue may be in San Francisco, the Peninsula, Silicon Valley, or the South Bay depending on where the intended guests work and live. We design around the audience, not around venue availability.
What Success Looks Like
A Private Executive Dinner is designed to create relationships, not manufacture leads. Success is reflected in:
- Quality and seniority of the attendees
- Relevance of the group to the partner
- Attendance and quality of conversation
- Valuable peer-to-peer introductions
- Attendee and partner feedback
- Relationships that continue after the dinner
Because attendance depends on individual schedules and relationships develop on their own timelines, Gaapsavvy does not guarantee specific attendees, companies, meetings, pipeline, revenue, or other sales outcomes. The objective is to create the conditions in which valuable relationships can begin.
When to Choose a Private Executive Dinner
This format works particularly well when the goal is to:
- Deepen relationships with important customers
- Build credibility with prospective customers
- Connect executives across a strategic community
- Create value for priority relationships
- Introduce customers and prospects to peers they should know
- Build trust without asking people to attend another sales event
If the primary objective is structured education, product exploration, thought leadership, or hands-on learning, an executive workshop may be a better fit. We deliberately keep the dinner format focused on hospitality, peers, and relationships.
Getting Started
To begin planning, the partner provides:
- 1The desired audience and objectives
- 2Priority accounts or relationships, if applicable
- 3Several potential dates
- 4Preferred geography
- 5The partner representatives who would attend
Gaapsavvy then advises on timing, venue, audience configuration, and format. Once the date, venue, and registration process are established, we begin curating the guest list, extending personal invitations, and following up with prospective attendees.
Common Questions
How many attendees are guaranteed with the sponsorship?
None, deliberately. We use commercially reasonable efforts to curate a strong group and typically target around 12 external RSVPs, subject to availability. Executive attendance depends on individual schedules, close cycles, and earnings calendars, and we would rather be straight about that than promise names. What we control is the quality of the outreach: personal invitations through trusted relationships rather than a blast list.
How many attendees is the sponsor expected to bring?
We treat the dinner as one curated guest list rather than dividing it into sponsor guests and Gaapsavvy guests. The sponsor typically brings up to three representatives who can contribute naturally to the conversation, and names priority accounts or relationships for us to fold into the outreach. The invitation should read as a small group of people worth knowing being brought together, not as sales outreach; that framing attracts the caliber of executives everyone wants in the room.
How do you measure sponsorship success?
By the quality and seniority of the attendees, attendance and engagement on the night, the introductions made, and qualitative feedback from both guests and the sponsor. We do not recommend measuring the dinner on immediate lead volume or sales conversion, because the format is intentionally designed as a relationship-building environment; the commercial value comes from the relationships it starts.
Who handles venue selection, booking, and day-of logistics?
The sponsoring partner books and pays for the venue, food and beverage, and day-of logistics. Send us a few higher-end options and we will help determine which fits the audience; the right location depends on where the intended guests work and live, not on venue availability.
Who handles the landing page and registration?
The sponsor creates the registration page or form, and we use it in our personal outreach and RSVP follow-up. Keeping registration on the sponsor’s infrastructure keeps the guest data where it belongs: with the host.
What can we provide beyond ICP details and a target account list?
Several potential dates, since executive attendance is sensitive to quarter-end, close cycles, earnings, and conferences and flexibility improves the room. Also a preferred geography, a few venue options, and the representatives you plan to bring. The most useful input of all is specific companies or individuals you would particularly value having represented; we factor those directly into the outreach.
Should the dinner have a theme or topic?
We recommend keeping it relatively unstructured. The purpose is substantive conversation and relationships among the people in the room, so we facilitate introductions and discussion naturally and avoid presentations, product demonstrations, and formal programming. If the goal is a topic-driven or educational experience, the executive workshop format is better suited, and we deliberately keep the two formats distinct.
Sponsor a Dinner
The standard is simple: create an evening your customers and prospective customers would value even if nothing were being sold.
$20,000 per Private Executive Dinner; founding or strategic partner pricing may be offered selectively. Venue, hospitality, registration infrastructure, marketing spend, and other direct event expenses are separate and paid by the sponsoring partner. Dinner engagements run under the Devon Coombs LLC Standard Engagement Terms, and sponsorship is disclosed to attendees.