$699 to attend lean startup conference | Hacker News Reader

$699 to attend lean startup conference

startuplessonslearnedsf.eventbrite.com

19 pointspelle21 comments

When I was working at a "pro-audio" company a few years back I remember complaining that "no pro musician would ever want this feature; it's a gimmick". I decided to talk to the product manager about it.

He told me very few of our customers were pro-musicians. They were mostly people who liked the idea of being pro-musicians, but mostly dorked around with the stuff at home. And they liked gimmicks.

I suspect that's the same for this sort of conference. It's not for people doing lean startups, it's for people that like the idea of doing them, but are probably working at cushy jobs telling themselves that next year they'll really take the plunge.

And that's fine, really. There are a lot of markets that wouldn't be viable if they were limited to professional practitioners.

The same is likely true of startups and places like HN or Mixergy.

That is good, since many of the startups here need paying customers -> Those customers would have to have money to spend. Having a forum of startup friendly hackers to publicise to is extremely useful.

And the actual musicians, save for rich nerds like Reznor or Timbaland, tend not to spend their money on $700 pro audio software — they pirate all of it.

That does lead to another aspirational pathology: it's not hard to download all of it, but it's very hard to even try a small fraction of it. Scarcity helps you focus on a set of tools.

Ummm... yeah. That represents around seven months of infrastructure cost for us.

Maybe next year, if we can fit in an 'entertainment and networking' budget.

I don't question the value of this, but this price for a one day conference kind of limits it to mainly funded startup.

Most bootstrapped pre and early revenue would find this hard to justify.

I don't think that justifies an editorialized headline.

good point. I uneditorialized it.

$699 for another few months of food and rent while you actually work on your startup.

But they'll teach you how to be lean, so that you can last even longer despite losing the 699$.

Sidenote: where are you guys living?

I assume people that want to make $700 last a few months tend to have a lot of roommates.

We're looking to line up sponsors for scholarships, see here: http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/03/startup-lessons...

If anyone is able to sponsor, please get in touch.

I don't know. Personally I would feel bad about applying for a scholarship. There are probably people who would need that more than I do. I mean I could find the money, it just seems really hard to justify.

That said I still think it's a least twice as expensive as it should be for the target market. And yes I realize that the "Lean" in "Lean startup" is not monetarily oriented, but if only funded startups are present I would think the conference might lack the diversity of attendees you would want.

Why are you charging so much? Is this a money-making venture? Are the speakers being paid?

If you learned just one thing at this conference that helped you optimize development by even a small percentage, this would be worth it.

Or if you met one person who you could ping for specific questions when you hit a roadblock, this would easily pay for itself.

I really encourage you to think about value, not cost.

That's a false economy though. You'd have to learn something that you couldn't learn by watching videos for free online or reading books for the costs to justify themselves and the networking would have to be better than you'd be able to do at other paid or free events.

Conferences are only worth it if you're going to network the hell out of them. It's kinda like business school, you're not going to learn a lot, but you will get pissed with some people who will become friends and help you later on in life. (Well, you can learn in b-school but that is debatable).

That being said, here's one thing that has worked for me, drop the conference organizer a note and ask them if they need volunteers, or help with organization (most conferences do) - the earlier you do it, the easier it is (obviously). Then you can get to attend for free.

Another way is to get a press pass. NY let's bloggers get one these days: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/04/bloggers-eligible-...

I'm in the same boat with Summit Series. The speaker line-up is amazing.. but there's no way I can find ~$3,000 to attend. :-(

http://dc10.summitseries.com/

Price has traditionally been used in things like TED to ensure exclusivity.

However if you look at many of these high end conferences it's the same groups/kinds of people attending all the time making them little more than echo chambers.

Luckily there are lots of alternatives now. BarCamp and friends of course. Reboot and Shift in Europe are also good.

IMVU is sponsoring 8 people and will pay the full price of the conference: http://bit.ly/cNrkmA

how can you be a lean startup if you have to pay $699 to know how to be lean? $699 buys you months of server infrastructure.

ceo

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