

What I Learned from TechCrunch50 - 6 pieces of advice for future presenters - kitsguy
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/what-i-learned-from-techcrunch50

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joez
> "Have your product ready for launch at the end of your presentation. If
> you’re product is still in powerpoints or “closed beta” or “invitation
> only”, don’t bother coming to these conferences."

Having sat in the TC50 pits, I noticed one major mistake was not giving out
free invites to the people in the room (and streaming live)! There were
amazing demos that had everyone drooling to try only to get turned off (and
away) when they found out there was no free demo.

Big examples were CitySourced, <http://www.Cocodot.com> and
<http://www.perpetually.com>. If CitySourced had given out a free version for
the day they launched, they could have had enough downloads at the end of that
day to give them the top position in the App Store. Everyone around me took
out their iphones, checked out the app store only to see that it costed 2.99
and put away their phone. Cocodot looked absolutely stunning and especially
with a lite photoshop app built in for customization. It had us all wanting to
try it only to get turned away when there was no free demo.

As Jason Calacanis pointed out, probably about 200 people in the room had over
1000 followers on twitter. If they launched a great product, they could have
had 200,000 people hear about them via twitter alone. (Maybe a bit of a
stretch, but not if you consider the 3000 streaming viewers and some people
had 5000 or 10000 followers).

In short, if you do a demo day, don't forget to capitalize on the publicity by
letting people try it!

~~~
yalurker
Wait, so people were drooling over CitySourced but then weren't willing to pay
3 bucks for it?

Something seems very wrong about that.

~~~
joez
Drooling might have been an over dramatization on my part. But I think there
was a #citysourcedcommittee (something like that) started on twitter.

I did hear multiple mutters of two ninety ninety around me because they
neglected to mention a price on downloading the app. They are trying to build
a tribe (in Seth Godin's words). Their application is not very good if only a
few are reporting issues and they could have overcome some chicken and egg
issues by making it free for a week.

I think the real issue might be the fact that these were applications that did
not solve an immediate pain and yet wanted an upfront payment. In
CitySourced's case, there was no graffiti or potholes in the room for people
to report but people wanted to download it and play around. Perpetually
required maybe months of caching to see a benefit but wanted a $99 upfront
fee. (They've since started offering a trial)

------
windsurfer
I learned that TechCrunch will spam their RSS feed all day for a week, causing
me to unsubscribe :(

~~~
dpcan
I think most people don't unsubscribe. We wait for these TC50 updates all year
like it's startup-news Christmas. And we run the ustream video throughout the
day too.

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anatoly
Is there a greasemonkey script to automatically hide every HN headline with a
number in it?

~~~
ScottWhigham
Yes, sir - thanks to my hero, <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Xichekolas>

Check out <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039>

~~~
anatoly
Fantastic, thanks!

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dschobel
If the rumors are to believe, there won't be any future TC50's.

[http://venturebeat.com/2009/09/16/tc50-techcrunch50-founders...](http://venturebeat.com/2009/09/16/tc50-techcrunch50-founders-
feud-its-over/)

~~~
fallentimes
Techcrunch create rumors and controversy to get links, mentions and pageviews?
Never! Maybe there won't be a future TC50, but what about a TC60 or TC100?
Haven't they run that gag before?

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BRadmin
Now I want to see a picture of Scoble's business card...

~~~
DannoHung
You know those plastic pictures that change based on the angle you're viewing
them at?

