

Why I regret going to TechCrunch Disrupt - PanosJee
http://openera.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/why-i-regret-going-to-techcrunch-disrupt/

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spolsky
Were you a battlefield company (presenting on stage) or just a "startup alley"
company (presenting from a small table in the lobby)?

There's a huge difference. The battlefield companies DO get a lot of attention
and, imho, it's a great way to launch (but I'm repeating myself - see
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2011/09/15.html>).

The startup alley companies have a lot of things going AGAINST them. Most
importantly, they're not battlefield companies. That means that in most cases
they were NOT chosen by the TechCrunch editors to present on stage. Now, I'm
not saying that the TechCrunch editors are 100% great at picking interesting
startups, but the bottom line is that it may be that you didn't get value out
of Disrupt because your startup isn't the kind of startup that VCs and the
press are interested in hearing about.

The one thing about these conferences that kind of sucks is that there will
always be a bunch of startups that are desperate enough to get some attention
that they'll go to the conference and pay for a table even if they can't
present on stage, and these companies collectively form a kind of low-rent
district with a faint whiff of despair, so that even if you have the greatest
startup in the world, you'll almost be tainted by association with them.

There are some redeeming features:

* Buying a table is a cheap way to get into the conference... much cheaper than attending as normal full-priced attendee.

* If you have a great idea there's still some chance of getting noticed. At Disrupt ONE of the Startup Alley companies is chosen to be a finalist in the competition.

* Some of the VCs who are at the conference looking for investment ideas WILL at least stop by your booth for a minute to see what you have to offer, so if you are really convinced that you have a great startup IF ONLY PEOPLE WOULD LOOK AT IT, this is your chance.

That said if you keep showing up at conferences and finding that nobody
actually wants to hear about your startup, it may be time for a different
idea.

Most people didn't let the Arringtongate crap distract them too much. Yes, it
is incredibly obnoxious when the press decides that their petty dramas ARE the
news, but for the most part the staff of TechCrunch up to and including
Arrington did a good job of keeping the conference 95% focused on startups.
They seemed to suck in a lot of attention with their soap opera bullshit, and
then take all the negative part of that attention for themselves, leaving the
startups with some positive attention. I certainly can say that none of the
political stupidity in any way harmed us as a startup. (It may have helped...
the fact that the winners of the show were all Arrington investments made it
much easier to swallow the fact that we didn't win!)

FINALLY - it sounds like you went to the conference to "absorb insight, meet
visionaries and explore the highs and lows of startup culture, funding and
innovation." That's not a good reason to go to ANY conference, least of all
Disrupt. As a startup, you can't afford the time or the money to hang around
absorbing culture. Don't do ANYTHING without a GOAL. The goal of a conference
like Disrupt (for startups) is to meet VCs and press. Nothing else. If that is
not why you're there you are at the wrong place.

~~~
socratic
I completely agree with your analysis. That said, this comment and your blog
post seem to have avoided (probably unintentionally!) the two questions that
seem to me to be most salient.

1\. If you ranked the startups in attendance, do you think a 50th percentile
startup would have gotten something useful out of Disrupt? A 90th percentile
startup? (If so, in softer benefits like pulling together as a team or in
something measurable?)

2\. Do you think your traffic numbers for Trello would have looked
substantially different on launch day without Disrupt? In 6 months?

In the first case, I wonder if there really are unfunded, 90th percentile tech
startups that represent some sort of Cinderella story that just need the
spotlight to get funding and attention. In your case, I wonder if 6 minutes on
stage compares to a decade of organic SEO and trust (via your blog), running
the most popular programming Q&A site, and cross-promotion opportunities from
FogBugz, Kiln, Copilot, and others.

~~~
david927
Can you imagine Larry and Sergei taking PageRank to something like TC Disrupt?
They would just get rolled eyes. 6 minutes on stage would have done nothing.
So, not only do I think it's possible; I think it's the rule for strongly
disruptive technologies.

~~~
akmiller
I disagree. Larry and Sergei wouldn't have been on stage demonstrating
PageRank. They would've been on stage demonstrating a brand new search engine
that returns much more relevant results faster than anything out there. That
would've been exciting and held people's attention. PageRank was simply the
technology that helped power it. Therefore, I think the moral is, know your
audience. If Larry and Sergei were to demo to others in Computer Science they
may focus on PageRank and the technology around it. If presenting to news
outlets and VC's you'd better find a way to show the power of your technology
in a way that they can comprehend the value of that piece of tech.

~~~
iqster
For a case in point, consider CloudFlare. They made it to the final round in
SF last year. Who is to say it is similar to PageRank, but when I heard what
they did I instantly thought ... wow ... a company that does deep tech and has
already implemented their infrastructure ... this is going to kick everyone's
behind. I was shocked that the panel of judges didn't get it. What makes it
worse is that cloudflare lost to Qwiki!

After I thought about this for a while, I concluded that perhaps that panel of
judges wasn't equipped to evaluate a deep technology company.

------
psychotik
I didn't attend, but I did watch some webcasts. The moderator (Paul Carr?) was
terribly unprepared and appeared unprofessional. He mis-pronounced company
names, derided sponsors and, on a couple of occasions, introduced presenting
startups with "I have no idea what their product is, but here is XYZ". As a
viewer, it appeared disrespectful so I can only imagine how it would be if I
was presenting or was a sponsor - not because I cannot condone
unprofessionalism, but because there are other more effective ways I could use
my time and money.

From far away, and I might be wrong, TC Disrupt feels like an old-boys-club
gathering where startups are the entertainment.

~~~
sfoguy
> TC Disrupt feels like an old-boys-club gathering where startups are the
> entertainment.

Very good description. It is a fun event, but we got __0 __leads out of it. -
Our startup IS successful and we are close to break even, so the idea itself
is ok.

------
socratic
What is the goal of startups attending these sorts of conferences (e.g.,
Disrupt, Demo, Launch)?

It seems like the answers could be publicity, funding, sales, networking, or
hype. _Publicity_ doesn't make much sense because articles only usually
discuss a few of the (hundreds of?) startups. _Funding_ doesn't make sense
because if you're unfunded, why spend money to go to an expensive conference?
_Sales_ doesn't make much sense because it's not a specific conference for the
specific industry of the startup. (Unless the startup sells services or
software to other startups.) For similar reasons, it's not clear to me why it
is useful to _network_ with other startups from arbitrary other areas.
(Incubators and advisors seem like they would give much better advice than
other startups, for example.) Is the goal just to get the startup's name in a
list so that investors think things are going well ( _hype_ )?

Whenever one of these things happens, it feels like I'm missing out on
something by not being part of it. But on the other hand, I really don't
understand what the purpose is supposed to be. What are the supposed benefits,
and are there actual benefits?

~~~
wiradikusuma
Some startups in my country attended conferences overseas and returned as
local celebrity (i.e. covered in local "TechCrunch" and/or newspapers).
Publicity _does_ make sense in this case. I can't think of other reasons
though other than that.

------
DevX101
I saw an ad somewhere saying entry fee was about 2 grand. I almost fell out of
my chair laughing. The only types of public conferences worth that type of
money are high value supplier/vendor conferences, where you've already got a
product line and can leave the weekend with actual and prospective customers.
Informational conferences, where there is a high signal-noise ratio on the
state of the art in your industry may also be worth attending, but usually for
a couple hundred bucks at most, not 2 grand.

At that price point, probably the only people who should be at a PR launch
type conferences like Disrupt or Launch.is are VC's press, and already
successful founders looking for something to do on a Thursday. VC's and the
press are there to do their job -- get leads and invest or write. And when
they leave, that entry fee is going into a company expense report. The
startups in the audience are just there to get inspired and rub shoulders,
which isn't a good enough justification for the cost.

If you haven't made it yet, get back to the lab and go build.

~~~
ry0ohki
I think that's kind of the point, the high price ensures it's mostly VC and
Press there, that's what most of these startups are looking for.

~~~
jonnathanson
Not only that, but basically think of the $2,000 as a marketing expense. There
aren't many $2,000 marketing campaigns you can ever hope to run that will get
you the kind of publicity Disrupt will get you (if you're successful there).
It's the kind of money you will fork over when you're serious, your product is
solid, you're confident in your team, and you're prepared to make a
potentially big debut.

Companies that aren't ready will see the $2k as exhorbitant. Companies that
_are_ ready will probably see it as cheap.

------
0x12
TC Disrupt is as much or more about TC than it is about tech and startups.

Techcrunch is spending an awful lot of editorial space, time and energy as
well as reader attention on meta issues (ie TC itself).

It's not surprising that TC Disrupt follows the same pattern. TC itself is now
more than ripe for disruption, and TC Disrupt with it.

Maybe you should apply for a refund?

------
ohboy
I like TC, but for the past few years it seems to have lost focus. Ever since
Arrington made a giant stink about the CrunchPad in 2009 the site has really
introverted, wasting time talking about themselves rather than focusing on new
startups and what's on the horizon. It's more like a forum with overbearing
moderators rather than a "blog about technology start-ups".

I still read TechCrunch a few times a week but you have to wade through a lot
of garbage to get to the good stuff. Slashdot I visit several times a day.

~~~
DallaRosa
I used to be an avid reader of TC but lately even all things digital sounds
like a better read(when swisher is not picking fights with TC, of course)

------
martinshen
I have come to the conclusion that nearly every conference provides little to
no value to you if you pay. Having done the SXSW floor and demoed at DEMO.. if
you pay.. it's not worth it (if you're B2C... B2B works if you target
startups)

------
dave_sullivan
I think you make some good points that apply to conferences in general--at the
very least, they can become a real distraction. They can be helpful for
"getting your name out there" and it's possible to make some great contacts,
but I suspect you can get similar results cheaper through other means.

My own experience, I've found conferences to be really draining when
prospecting for sales leads--there's tons of people there but it's impossible
to meet them all. From 8am to 11pm for several days, I'm running around in a
suit, sweating and uncomfortable, trying to meet total strangers in order to
sell them things they may or may not want. Good times :-)

------
psychotik
Out of curiosity, and only if you're willing to share, how much did it cost
your startup to attend/exhibit at TC?

~~~
gsharma
From what I heard around at the conference was $2K/day for a table. Not sure
if that's what the author paid.

------
mcantelon
>My advice to other entrepreneurs? Save your cash, Disrupt is dead. ... Don’t
get me wrong, Disrupt is a great platform

Huh?

------
rms
I was there! Traded a week in my house's spare room for an extra badge someone
had and got there on the second day at 1PM. I was expecting a trainwreck and
instead I got a mediocre conference. I did enjoy the after-after party on
Wednesday. You should just go to Startup School instead.

------
brainless
I have not been to this TC Disrupt, but watched most of it live. Our company
was present in the Startup Alley and is competing with a startup which was
there in Battlefield.

But I did notice that presenting in Battlefield gave startups a lot of press
if their product was good. But visibility in Startup Alley was far less.

I am from India, far from all the on ground activity in the valley and in US
in general. That said I firmly believe that TC Disrupt itself needs much more
competition (beyond Demo, Launch...). The event, in some parts seemed to be a
little under-prepared for. The startup ecosystem needs more such events, each
competing to get a small number of curated startups a leg up.

------
ry0ohki
Here's another take on it (we also exhibited in Startup Alley)... Yes, there
was a lot of drama, but I think that's what focused MORE attention on this
Disrupt then others. Normally the only press really covering Disrupt is
TechCrunch itself (as the other tech publications see it as competition). This
time, because of the drama, I suspect a LOT more people were checking
TechCrunch.com and TechCrunch did feature quite a few Startup Alley companies
during this time. Yes, someone is going to be a loser, and it sounds like your
startup missed out on press and leads, but these are the risks we take as
entrepreneurs.

------
michaelochurch
Here's where I lost respect for Michael Arrington:

<http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/02/back-i-am/>

<snip> When my time was up to leave, I asked Potts if I could stay another
week. He said something about being fully booked, but I offered to pay more
than his usual rate and said I’d plug Surfboard House on TechCrunch (consider
that a disclosure). He had (and still has) no idea what TechCrunch is, but the
dollars did the trick. Schedules were juggled, I stayed. </snip>

Apparently he thinks it's OK to use his blog to push other peoples' travel
plans around. Not just OK, but something to brag about. What a douche move.

~~~
true_religion
You've managed to stay vitriolic for a year just because this man might have
bumped people from their stay in a Bed & Breakfast?

Seriously?

Secondly, as he said "the dollars did the trick". It's not bragging at all to
say "this great guy had no idea of and still doesn't know of my blog".

~~~
michaelochurch
Ok, so he's not explicitly bragging about his blog; he's merely bragging about
being able to throw money around and dick up other peoples' travel plans. That
makes it so much better.

------
nraynaud
Did I just read "Paul Carr" and "moderate" in the same sentence?

