Benjamin Peace Hoffman

I’ve been running cityHUNT for 25 years. And if there’s one thing that’s consistently fueled my creativity, kept ideas flowing, and made the work exciting—it’s travel. Not vacations. Not escapes. Travel as a way of seeing, thinking, and staying alive as an entrepreneur. My Happy Place This year alone, I’ve already been to New York and Miami—and I’m just getting started. Every time I land somewhere new, something shifts. I notice more. Street art. Neighborhood changes. The feel of a hotel lobby. The energy inside a hostel common room. My brain just clicks on differently. That’s not random. That’s intentional. That’s why I keep going. Both Worlds Here’s something people don’t always expect: I love both high-end stays and hostels. There’s inspiration in both. Sometimes I’m in an incredible hotel because of a client, and that experience has its own kind of impact. Other times, I want the raw energy of a hostel—the mix of cultures, the unpredictability, the conversations with people from e...

Everyone’s talking about what AI might take away. I’d rather talk about what it could give back. I’ve spent the last 25 years in the live events and team-building industry. I watched COVID bring it to a halt. I saw firsthand what happens when people are cut off from real interaction for too long. Now, as AI accelerates at an incredible pace, I believe we’re at a turning point—but not a negative one. Not if we approach it the right way. What COVID Took COVID didn’t just slow down cityHUNT—it stripped away the core of what makes this work meaningful. You simply can’t recreate a real-world game in a real city through a screen. I experimented with virtual formats, but only the ones I believed in. I wasn’t willing to push out something mediocre just to keep revenue flowing. For me, it was worth waiting until people could get back outside. That decision came at a cost. Other companies leaned heavily into virtual events and scaled volume. But for me, connection has always been the point—and i...