Here's what I can suss out about what happened at Create & Cultivate 2026

Threads is popping off with allegations that this past weekend's Create & Cultivate festival was the latest "Fyre Festival." Naturally, I wanted to know if there was something here we should know about, as event hosts or as event goers. Were people abandoned with slices of cheese to fend for themselves? Or was this just a case of mismatched expectations? I talked to a few people who attended this year's event to find out what actually happened.

Create & Cultivate isn't my scene at all and I didn't go to this. I went to the Girlboss Rally of 2018 (also held in LA) and that was my whole life's fill of "inspiring" celebrities talking about their luxury product lines. But C&C is making a resurgence thanks to its original founder Jaclyn Johnson buying it back from private equity in 2023, alongside her partner and now CEO Marina Middleton. They've raised $2.6M in venture capital since then, hence going much bigger than ever before.

This year's event (which is still technically underway as I write this) was advertised as "the world's largest festival for women in business" with 4,000+ participants convening at The Beehive in South L.A. over two days. Several of those participants took to Threads this afternoon to air their grievances about the lines, about the food, about the heat and about whether or not this was all done poorly on purpose. The most interesting part—and what makes this different from Fyre Fest—is that it's a real mixed bag of reviews. Some people thought it was an abomination and others...had fun.

So, what were the actual problems? Here's a comprehensive list I gathered from talking with a few different attendees and from social posts:

• Entry lines to get in were hours long for both General and VIP tickets
• They kept running out of food and providing inadequate amounts of food (one attendee said breakfast was "a very small amount of yogurt with a little granola, a PB protein ball or a croissant")
• There weren't enough bathrooms
• Microphones kept cutting out during panels and presentations
• The WiFi was spotty so it was hard to use the app to connect
• It was hot as hell and there was absolutely no shade or break from it
• It was packed with sponsorships and it wasn't a very meaningful or thoughtful experience, despite some attendees paying $400-700 plus travel expenses to go

Looking at that list, it doesn't seem that bad. Certainly not Fyre-Fest-send-these-founders-to-prison bad. However, some of the people I spoke with said all these factors combined to make it an uncomfortable, bizarre and unproductive experience. One attendee told me they'd look at other entrepreneurs during the event in silence and share a knowing nod that they were suffering through this together to get their money's worth.

"We're about to go and get some dinner because they didn't feed us," one person said over the phone while laughing at the absurdity of their whole weekend. She and her friend bailed on tonight's closing act, Cardi B, because they couldn't deal with the situation any longer. She also said she saw people Postmate-ing food to the venue and walking around with McDonald's bags they were so hungry.

Not everyone feels this way. I talked to an experienced event organizer I know well who said some things could have been better, including more shade and better tech, but that overall, it was the event that was promised to attendees. Others on Threads are saying they made good connections. Operations strategist Ariana Tenine who posted that being able to use the app to schedule 1:1s with other attendees was how you made your investment back. Even the people disappointed with the event told me the C&C app was the best part. Some festival goers are posting happy selfies, sharing takeaways from sessions and pledging to return in the future.

One of the oddest things about this festival was how many people got free tickets. Several people I spoke to and messaged with on Threads received free tickets. One person got a VIP upgrade just for asking after waiting in that entry line for hours. A few folks confirmed they paid for their tickets, but why were so many tickets just given away to what seems like an expensive production?

More importantly, why were these seasoned event producers so unprepared for the crowd they so proudly drew in?

Current theories include that this was many multiples bigger than anything they have hosted in the past and they were just not up for it. Another theory is that it was just about getting as many bodies in the photos as possible so sponsors were happy. Of course, it could be that Create & Cultivate's own vendors let them down too and that they haven't had a chance to tell us their side of the story yet.

The theory I buy the most is somewhere in between all three of these. I think Jaclyn and Marina want to build their personal brand. They see their window to put themselves on the map. Jaclyn just signed with the Gersh agency a couple days ago as a professional content creator. Both Jaclyn and Marina are angel investors and podcasters who love to rub elbows with celebrities like Tyra Banks, Reese Witherspoon, and Halle Berry. The concept of having an engaged community is highly in demand with both investors and sponsors right now. It doesn't super matter if you actually have an engaged community as long as you can demonstrate that you can get people to turn up.

Create & Cultivate branded the hell out of this event. It was "crawling with sponsors," one attendee told me. A Threads user speculated that this is why they gave away so many tickets because they just needed people there to give sponsors a return on their investment. I got a couple reports that it seemed like the people happiest with the festival were influencers who could hang with these sponsors and make content or maybe even jockey some of their own brand deals of it. As a minor event producer myself, I will say sponsorships are really the only way to make an event at this scale work, but lots of us are wondering...why does it need to be so big?

The answer to that is venture capital. You can't take venture capital without selling your audience out and it would seem that that's what Create & Cultivate has done here. Founder Jaclyn previously sold her audience out to private equity and then, returned home to C&C, presumably to do something interesting, but it kind of seems like we're walking down the same path here. This time, she sees that the cash isn't in selling the community, it's in leveraging the community to get whatever else she wants. More book deals. More celebrity dinners. More speaking gigs. More glossy lifestyle content.

This is a cynical take and I don't know Jaclyn or Marina. They're not the kind of people I hang out with. I don't know any good venture capitalists, which they both now identify as. But I do know community builders. Real community builders in L.A. and beyond and this is not how you build community. This is how you burn community. Create & Cultivate needs to apologize to their audience after this fiasco and rethink whether they're in the right business. Maybe they should stick to celebrity podcasting and leave the rest of us out of it.

Update—Create & Cultivate's CEO responded to attendee complaints

Create & Cultivate's CEO Marina Middleton posted two TikToks on Monday about how the festival went from her POV. She did it as a "get ready with me" video piling on mascara which feels like...too casual a tone for a CEO responding to the volume of complaints online, but also seems pretty on brand for them. This is decidedly NOT an apology, but she is aware of some of the feedback. On Threads, she replied to someone saying a feedback survey is coming to attendees.

Here's some of the things she acknowledged:

• Registration: Marina says the printer broke which caused the lines. For next year, they're planning 4 days of early badge pickup (not sure how this helps out of town attendees or locals given how big L.A. is but that's their plan.)
• Mics: She said Cardi B's team testing audio for two days ahead of the show caused the mic problems, but that it was only 30 seconds each day. (No idea if that's true but it sounded like it was a recurring problem from the attendees I spoke to)
• Food: She is wondering if they should offer paid food options for next year. She says "there was always enough food for everyone" at this year's festival but that it was a timing issue with when the food came out.
• VIP Tickets: She talks about the VIP experience and some of the perks being bigger gift bags, dedicated space, and massages and that they could have done a better job communicating what VIPs had access to. She also says they're planning a VIP agenda for next year.

There was no acknowledgement about the heat, lack of shade, first aid supplies, insufficient bathrooms or spotty wifi. She closes her two videos by saying "I'm just proud of how everything went."

At the end of her second video, she talks about the wins people shared with her. Many of which were fundraising or brand deal wins. "I just raised $500k from this person" or "I got equity from this brand" are the quotes she gives. She also says it was successful for their sponsors.

C&C reeks of the mid-2010s girlboss, Silicon Beach era I lived through as a techworker in LA. It's about skincare. It's about celebrities. It's about "being a founder." It's not really made for normal entrepreneurs like us. It will always be an experience designed for Instagram. Based on Marina's statement, they don't seem to share the sentiment that the event went poorly, as the attendees I spoke to experienced. I would not expect it to improve much next year beyond the things she mentioned.