The Santa Monica Pier has hosted a lot of things. Ferris wheel proposals. Street performers. Tourists eating funnel cake at sunset. But on October 1, 2026, it hosted something stranger and far more interesting: 1,500 founders, CMOs, and brand builders storming the boards for Hawkefest, the self-described Anti-Conference, while knights dueled with swords a few yards from a mead bar.
David’s Guide was there on the planks, camera in hand, and this is what went down.
The Anti-Conference Lives Up to the Name
Hawkefest is Hawke Media’s flagship event, and Forbes has recognized it as one of the top business conferences leaders should attend. The 2026 edition was produced in partnership with RASA World, the experiential production company behind large-scale events from Los Angeles and Miami to London, Dubai, and Ibiza. That production muscle showed everywhere.
Last year’s event drew more than 800 attendees. This year, the pier expanded to welcome over 1,500 builders shaping the future of commerce. Founders and CEOs. CMOs and marketing leaders. Ecommerce executives, growth operators, and investors. Everyone who is building something ambitious in 2026 seemed to have the same idea about where to be on the first day of October.
But the genius of Hawkefest was never the guest list. It was the refusal to feel like a conference at all.
A Full Renaissance on the Pacific
Every year, Hawkefest adopts a theme that pushes the experience beyond the stage. For 2026, the theme was the Renaissance, and the pier committed to the bit completely.
Live period actors roamed the boards in full costume. Attendees could join sword-fighting demonstrations themselves, which turned out to be exactly as chaotic and joyful as it sounds. Carnival games lined the walkways. Turkey legs and seafood bags replaced the usual sad conference catering. A mead bar poured for the bold. A live pitching competition gave founders a stage and a crowd.
Knights. Castles. The Pacific Ocean. It should not have worked as a setting for serious conversations about the future of commerce. It worked perfectly, because the moment everyone stopped performing the conference ritual, the real conversations started. That is the whole trick of the Anti-Conference, and this year it was executed flawlessly.
What struck me most was how the theme dissolved the usual conference hierarchy. At a typical business event, there is a visible caste system: speakers, sponsors, attendees, staff. On the pier, with everyone navigating the same carnival games and the same sword-fighting sign-up line, those walls came down fast. I watched a founder mid-pitch pause to cheer on a stranger’s duel. That is not a networking strategy. That is just people actually enjoying being somewhere, which turns out to be the best networking strategy ever invented.
The Speaker Lineup Brought Heavy Hitters
The programming cut straight to what it takes to build and grow brands in a business landscape that refuses to sit still. Founders and operators shared candid stories from the trenches, the decisions, the near misses, and the lessons that actually shaped their growth.
The 2026 lineup included Rob Dyrdek, entrepreneur, media magnate, and CEO of Existence; Sean Frank, CEO of Ridge; Brian Lee, CEO and co-founder of Arena Club and the founder behind LegalZoom, ShoeDazzle, and The Honest Company; California State Treasurer Fiona Ma; Shaun Neff, founder of Beach House Group, the company behind Shay Mitchell’s BEIS and Tracee Ellis Ross’ PATTERN; and Shadi Bakour, co-founder and CEO of PATH Water.
That is a murderers’ row of operators. And the format let them actually talk, which is rarer than it should be at business events.
Candid Conversations on the Main Stage
The main stage sat at the heart of the pier, framed by deep red velvet drapes and a stone castle wall that completed the Renaissance illusion, with palm trees swaying behind the lighting rigs. Panel conversations unfolded in front of rows of wooden chairs, close enough that every answer landed like it was meant for you personally.
This was the Anti-Conference ethos in action. No keynotes read off teleprompters to a dark room. The conversations were direct, sometimes blunt, and refreshingly free of the jargon that usually pads these panels. Founders talked about what actually went wrong and what they would do differently, which is the only kind of business advice worth traveling for.
Watching operators of this caliber trade notes in the open, with the ocean behind them and a crowd of builders leaning in, was the single best argument for showing up in person that I have seen all year.
The Brands That Invaded the Pier
Hawkefest has always doubled as a discovery ground for emerging brands, and the 2026 edition turned the pier into a rolling showcase of what is next.
Stic rolled in with a wrapped black Tesla carrying a simple, aggressive promise: get paid to drive. The car-wrap advertising play turns everyday drivers into rolling billboards, and planting it in the middle of a crowd of growth-obsessed marketers was a sharp move. Everyone at Hawkefest understands arbitrage, and Stic was selling it on four wheels.
Then there was CHIP, a tiny purple electric runabout with a friendly LED face on the grille and a sign that read “that’s your friend with a ride.” The @drivewithchip display drew a steady crowd of the curious, and honestly, it was impossible to walk past without smiling. In a sea of serious commerce talk, a cheerful little EV reminding everyone that transportation can have a personality was a perfect piece of counter-programming.
These are the moments that make Hawkefest more than a speaker lineup. The pier itself becomes the pitch deck.
The Business Case for Showing Up
Here is the part that matters if you are on the fence about next year. Every panel at Hawkefest circled the same uncomfortable truth: the tactics change monthly, but the builders who win are the ones in the room. Distribution channels shift. Ad costs climb. Algorithms turn. The founders on that stage kept returning to relationships, to being known, to showing up where the conversations happen before they become trends.
You cannot download that. You cannot automate it with an AI agent. You have to be on the pier, in the sun, talking to the person next to you while a knight walks past with a turkey leg. The ROI of a day like this does not fit in a spreadsheet, which is exactly why most people undervalue it and exactly why the people who get it keep coming back.
Why Hawkefest Worked
Strip away the costumes and the cleverness, and the formula underneath was simple: put ambitious people in an unforgettable setting, remove every ounce of conference stiffness, and let the collisions happen.
The Renaissance theme could have been a gimmick. Instead, it functioned as a permission structure. When everyone around you is watching a sword fight between panels, nobody is posturing. The mead bar did not hurt either.
For Los Angeles, events like this are the city’s unfair advantage. Nowhere else can you put 1,500 commerce leaders on a historic pier over the Pacific and make it feel inevitable. If you are looking for more things to do in Los Angeles this season, our weekend roundup keeps track of the best of it.
Hawkefest 2026 proved the Anti-Conference is not a marketing line. It is a format, and it works. The swords were foam. The conversations were real. See you at the next one.
David’s Guide covered Hawkefest 2026 as credentialed press. All photos by David Christopher Lee.
