

Ask HN: Am I a Sucker for Paying to Pitch at Web Summit? - zabramow

Our company was selected to pitch at Web Summit, but Web Summit doesn&#x27;t give free tickets to attend.  Is this standard and, even so, does it make sense for an early stage company to shell out all the cash to attend and pitch or is this for suckers only?
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gyardley
Welcome to the events business, where someone will happily sell you a dream of
fundraising / winning an award / getting media exposure for the low low price
of as much as they can possibly extract from you.

Yes, the occasional company comes away from these cattle calls with more than
they came in with - which is why this sort of scheme continues. But for every
one that does, many more just come away with empty wallets. Talking to
investors is free - I'd put the money towards bettering your product instead.

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mtmail
We once got invited to an award ceremony to pick up a prize "top small company
in section XY" and we'd still had to pay for attendance. I think that event
company didn't even have a agenda other than a keynote and giving out prizes.

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leoncrutchley
Bottom line to a question like this is "it depends". Define yourself in
advance what your hoped for return on investment is. eg new users, new
investor leads, contacts, new hires, press, the story etc. And see how you
perform against your benchmarks. I ran a small startup in London once that
paid to pitch at Techcrunch startup alley in SF. Well it led indirectly to my
startup getting acquired and moved from London to SF where i live now. So it
was worth it, but that value didnt directly come from the conference. Had I
not gone though, i'd not have made the contacts that led to this journey..good
luck!

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JSeymourATL
If I'm a true VC-- why would I want to see a pitch that everyone else is privy
to? I find the real deal opportunities where others aren't looking.

Incidentally, highly recommend Oren Klaff's book Pitch Anything! >
[http://pitchanything.com/book/](http://pitchanything.com/book/)

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domrdy
Are you under 25 by any chance ? Last year they gave out some free tickets for
'coders under 25' and 'women coders'. It's a cool event (love the food summit)
and seeing Richard Stallman was pretty exciting.

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dreamweapon
Sucker, no.

But if your idea is such that you have to pay to "pitch" it, then either your
idea just isn't so hot... or you need to find the right community to pitch it
to.

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domjbs
How much do you have to pay and how ready is your company to win a pitch?

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jMyles
I'm not familiar with the event, but these two of the three questions that
immediately sprang to my mind as well, with the third being: Who is the
audience and how likely is it that their interests are already aligned with
your product?

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zabramow
We're in good pitching shape and it's definitely the right market. My thinking
is that early stage companies should not be spending big money on conferences
and it will all things considered run us 5K. I also think it's straight up
disingenuous to have an application process if acceptance still means you have
to shell out cash to participate.

The other side of this is spend money to make money.

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27182818284
If I found the correct site on Google, I'd personally stay away just because
they were awkward enough to have a timer count down to higher prices. Yuck.

