Ryan Wilson and TK Petersen, the founders of The Gathering Spot, spoke about building the club into a decade-old business at the 2026 AFROTECH™ Conference.
Founded in 2016, The Gathering Spot is celebrating 10 years in business. The founders took the conference main stage in a year when AFROTECH™ is also marking its 10th anniversary.
The panel, moderated by Arielle Clay Poteau, was titled “Third Spaces & Building Real Community with The Gathering Spot.”
“I think the ignorance is part of the superpower, particularly in the beginning, because if you knew how arduous and rugged the path was, rationally most people wouldn’t do that because there are just so many other ways to go about life when you really know the cost, time, and stress that it comes with,” said Petersen.
Petersen added, “But once you’re down that path, you jump into the water.”
Where does one get the energy to build?
“That energy is the moat, right?” said Wilson. “It certainly wasn’t capital for us. Our first round was a little over $3 million, which was more money than we thought we could raise. It was a number that grew. We thought it was going to be a million. It was two. It was three. But even though we have always been competing with people and with companies that are better capitalized than us, our spirit for this thing, like how we care about what we’re trying to do has always kept us competitive.”
Trusting the vision when you can’t see the results just yet
“I used to call TK on Mondays,” Wilson reflected. “This was a real practice for the first two years of business. I would call him on Monday morning. I’d get in my car, and I would say, ‘TK, how much money do we need to make it until Friday?’ How do we survive until Friday?”
Dispelling the negative connotation that surrounds networking
Wilson and Petersen founded The Gathering Spot as a community-building initiative that helps people from various professional backgrounds thrive and connect, with the hope that the connections made within the club can extend beyond it.
“Most deals, and, like they say, most relationships that advance aren’t a direct relationship where I went to college with a partner at this law firm, so they hired me. I play recreational flag football with this guy who babysits for the law firm, and they needed someone, so now I’m doing the electrical rewiring for the richest guy in the city, and it’s things like that, or even when I think about when I started college, one of the pieces of advice that they give you is ‘Go to office hours. Get to know your professor,’ and that’s the truth. Like, if you go to office hours just after midterms or finals, and you’re like, ‘I wasn’t really understanding the stuff, can you help me out?’ They’re like, ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out.’”
“But if you went every Tuesday all semester, having conversations, this is real life, I really should not have passed calculus at Georgetown. And then the professor was like, ‘I’m gonna try real hard. It’s not a requirement for you; the curve saves you.’ Those are the things that can happen.”
At the end of the conversation, an audience member asked what city The Gathering Spot will expand to next. The company currently has physical club locations in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, along with a newly opened rooftop and pool space in West Midtown Atlanta called The Retreat.
Wilson and Petersen said they’re scouting a city with the right infrastructure.