This was two years ago, and so far PG's advice is turning out well: we were able to raise a seed round, series A, get a bunch of customers, and hire an awesome team.
You can never be exactly sure where the other road would take you, but one of our employees, who was very encouraging about the local events idea, told me after he decided to join: "There's no way I would have joined if you were working on local events. A user, maybe, but joining you, no."
And in the same period of time, I've seen a lot of startups focus on some variant of local events, and most have pivoted or failed completely.