PlantCon International

How Parking Lot Meetups of 50 People Became the Nation’s Largest Plant Convention with 10,000 people.

This August 2025, PlantCon is traveling to New York City backed by some of the largest global names in the plant industry, including Kunzo Nishihata, a legend in the rare plant world from Hyogo, Japan; Summer Rayne Oakes, a renown YouTube star who pioneered the trend of bringing greenery into industrial spaces; and even The New York Botanical Garden. But, this grassroots movement didn’t always start with big names or major venues, it began with parking lots, tent weights, passionate hobbyists, and plant cuttings.

In 2020, when the world was shutting down, small online communities were seeing hoards of plant enthusiasts hit the scene. Loss of connection was so tangible that a household hobby like plant care was seeing a rise. Plant enthusiasts would join online marketplaces to meet up, sell plants, and share plant care tips – Kenny Nguyen, founder of PlantCon International, being one of them.

Kenny began to organize local meet ups in a furniture store parking lot for the community to gather, trade plants, and connect. What is usually an isolating indoor hobby, became a space for those who craved connection. Quick parking lot exchanges quickly became full day events. People lingered, laughed, and formed lasting friendships. As mass layoffs began and financial insecurities burdened families, plant sellers began relying on the income from the popups. In the midst of a global crisis, plants brought a sense of stability, comfort, and togetherness.

From there, the Houston Plant Market was born, helping local sellers sustain their businesses year-round. A scrappy team of three began hosting pop-ups in breweries, parks, and creative spaces across the city. Then, in 2022, PlantCon made its official debut, a 60 booth convention with no sponsors, no keynote speakers, and just four staff members. Over 2,000 people showed up. It was clear that this passion project had evolved into a movement.

Today, PlantCon steps into New York City for the very first time and will have over 10,000 people in attendance. The same familiar faces will travel for miles to see the show and new enthusiasts join the PlantCon community each year. From its humble beginnings in Houston, to New York City, and now scoping new cities to expand to next – PlantCon’s story is truly a reminder that with vision, community, and a whole lot of heart, you can grow something small into a movement that touches thousands.

“PlantCon has been such a labor of love,” says Kenny. “Building it up block by block over the years within our local community in Houston to bringing it all the way to Manhattan is unbelievable. I’m so thankful that so many people have found profound value in what we’re doing, and that the reception has been overwhelming no matter where we’ve been.”

Event Details

What: PlantCon International – New York

Where: The Seaport Level 4 at Pier 17 | 89 South St, New York, NY 10038

When: August 30–31, 2025

Tickets: plantcon.org/tickets-purchasenyc

About With Heart Collective

With Heart Collective is a non-profit event and production team focused on creating inclusive spaces and opportunities for small, minority-owned businesses and their customers. Their mission is to provide educational resources and support in areas such as tax compliance, branding, marketing and more, while fostering connections and promoting diversity within the community. Under With Heart Collective, the nonprofit organization includes Houston Plant Market, PlantCon International, Heart of Hou, The Vendor Alliance, and The Little Plant Library. As a proud AAPI, BIPOC, and Queer-led organization, With Heart Collective is dedicated to empowering underrepresented voices and promoting equity in entrepreneurship.

Press Contact

Eli Marcus

motivatea2z@gmail.com
plantcon.org/nyc-home
withheart.co

https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/nychappenings

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A leading mind in business growth for 30 years in Silicon Valley, Venture Capitalist, and Author Philippe Bouissou, Ph.D.

Aligning the Dots: The new paradigm to grow any business

Publisher: Onward Business Press Author Website: https://philippebouissou.com/

It’s eight o’clock Monday morning. What do you do to outpace the market and grow faster than your competitors? Aligning the Dots provides a clear answer to that deceptively simple question.

Although many how-to-grow business books have been published, none offer a pragmatic and reliable blueprint for top-line growth that is built on deep data analysis and a universal framework that leads to revealing insights. Without a clear roadmap to growth, a CEO’s demands for innovative product development, better marketing, and increased customer acquisition and conversion often fail to produce desired outcomes. An effective leader understands that without clear direction and guidance, teams will revert to business as usual and no amount of inspirational taglines will help the business grow faster.

Aligning the Dots introduces a new paradigm. It’s a universal, data-driven and prescriptive methodology, called A4 Precision Alignment, designed to accelerate any business. Based on the profound insight that the maximum top-line growth rate can only be achieved when a business and its target market are perfectly aligned, this methodology reveals how quantitative measurements of alignment form the base for the development a Growth Playbook.

That blueprint will guide any business to align the dots to outperform its target market and fly past its competitors.

In an interview on your program Dr. Philippe Bouissou can discuss:

1. There are 11,000 business books published every year. Why should we talk about your Book?

2. What results does this new paradigm to grow any business deliver?

3. Why did you choose to focus on the topic of growth?

4. What is unique about Aligning the Dots?

5. What are the traditional methods to grow a business?

6. Why do these traditional ways of growing a business rarely work?

7. What is counterintuitive about your new paradigm?

8. What is surprising about it?

9. How does it provoke new thoughts or bring “conventional wisdom” into question?

10. How did you come up with this new idea?

11. What in your background was critical to invent this new paradigm?

12. Does this new methodology apply to any business?

13. Can you give an example of a bad and a good alignment?

14. Who is the audience for this book?

15. How does the COVID19 pandemic affect the teachings in this system?

Aligning the Dots offers a new systematic methodology for optimizing resource allocation towards long-

term profitable growth. Philippe Bouissou’s engaging style uses a combination of personal anecdotes,

scientific analogies, and relevant case studies to convey his message of alignment. While the target

audience cuts across the broad business community, I find the methodology to be most directly relevant

to young technology startups who have a very low margin for error in their business model.

—Eric Benhamou Founder and General Partner, Benhamou Global Ventures and Former Chairman and CEO of 3Com

Every executive intuitively knows the importance of aligning what a company sells with what its customers

want, but few executives actually know how to do it right. In his smart, new book—Aligning the Dots—

business growth expert Philippe Bouissou presents a simple, but powerful framework for building

alignment along four critical business axes. No matter what size your business or what industry you’re in,

Aligning the Dots is the playbook you need to spark revenue growth right now — and well into the future.

—Peter Economy The Leadership Guy, Inc. Magazine

Aligning the Dots offers a precise, logical way to understand how the fundamental drivers of business

work, and how to align your company with them for long-term success. It’s the rare book that combines a

comprehensive science of how business works with dozens of practical tips that any leader can apply.

—Chris Yeh Co-author with Reid Hoffman of Blitzscaling

I’ve seen so many businesses struggle as the vision and expectations of entrepreneurs and company operators

are out of sync with the customer or the marketplace. Aligning the Dots provides an articulate, pragmatic,

and innovative framework for solving these misalignments. It is a resource that can and should be

referenced repeatedly to help pressure test strategy and plans for the competitive edge that derives from precision alignment.

—Lori Bush Former President and CEO, Rodan + Fields

Genius often creates out-of-the-box thinking. Aligning the Dots makes you think differently and that makes

it powerful. Any business should understand and use these concepts.

—Nolan Bushnell CEO of X2 Games Founder and former CEO of Atari and Chuck E Cheese!

Category: Business

Publisher: Onward Business Press

Page count: 240 (full-color)

ISBN: 9781734208702

Price: $27.95

Formats: Hardcover, e-book

About the Author:

Philippe Bouissou, Ph.D. has spent three decades in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur, a CEO, a venture capitalist, and a management consultant. He is Managing Partner at Blue Dots Partners LLC, a firm he co-founded focused on top-line acceleration. He started his career as the founder and CEO of G2i, Inc. a Unix software company that was acquired by Matra. He then was Senior Vice President at Matra Hachette Multimedia, Inc., where he led US business development for electronic publishing for the $12 billion, high-tech and diversified media company before joining Apple as Director of the Worldwide Internet Commerce Group, where he founded and managed the online Apple Store and grew its revenue from zero to $350 million.

After Apple, Bouissou became a venture capitalist and successfully invested $43 million and generated double-digit cash-on-cash IRR. For over half a decade, Bouissou co-managed the Milestone Group, a management consulting firm serving over 220 clients. During his career, Bouissou led over 120 management-consulting projects with companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, SAP, and Verisign and served on the board of directors of 20 companies, including ACG (Association for Corporate Growth) Silicon Valley, where he currently serves.

Bouissou graduated from École Normale Supérieure in Paris and holds a BS in Mathematics, an MS in Physics, and a Ph.D. in non-linear physics and chaos theory.

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