Should you launch at a conference? | Hacker News Reader

Should you launch at a conference?

joelonsoftware.com

120 pointsrudd20 comments

This is an excellent post. I would like to add that what you get out of a conference is proportional to the work you put into it. There is no magic place where you just show up and then become successful.

This includes pre-planning:

+ Get a list of journalists that will be at the event and email them beforehand. Don't just mass-mail a pro forma press release.

+ Track down bloggers from that list that you think may be interested in your product (because they have written about a competitor, or have written a feature on the space) and tweet them or email them a quick intro and tell them you will be at the conference

+ Do the same for investors. A simple tweet like "@vc would love to grab a few minutes with you at TC Disrupt to show you a demo of our product which is xyz etc.". Attending a conference is a great intro to cold emailing or tweeting somebody

+ Plaster your website, blog, twitter etc. with information about the conference and where you can be found. Include clear contact details. I would go as far as to place contact details on the front page of your site (or a separate conference dedicated page which is clearly linked to from the frontpage), along with your photos (so people remember you). This is so when somebody from the conference lands on your site they remember you and can find an easy way to get in touch with you.

During the conference:

+ Use the time you have at the conference to book demos with people you know will be there beforehand.

+ Don't just sit and wait at your demo table. Be pro-active by having one person constantly out and about on the conference floor introducing themselves to people and handing out cards

+ Be memorable - plaster yourself in your brand and color with t-shirts or shirts. Have a gimmick such as handing out sweets. One desk at TC Disrupt had a basketball hoop with prizes. I always seem to remember the companies that look good and are out and about.

+ Make it very clear what your intentions are - press, fundraising, hiring, partnerships, etc. Have a 30 second pitch for each one of these, a 30 second demo, and then a 4-5 minute pitch and a 4-5 minute demo. Take down contact details and place a note beside each contact you get

+ Attend all the after-parties

Post-Conference:

+ Attendee's are inundated with information during the 2-3 days of the conference. Have a way to remind them of who you are and what you do after the conference. Take down their email. Don't just be another business card in a pile of business cards. Don't assume that a journalist or investor remembers who you are when you email followup - always re-introduce yourself

Disclaimer: former techcrunch employee

This is all excellent advice but a huge chunk of the attention Trello received is a reult of the name "Spolsky" being attached to it.

He has a strong personal brand that has been cultivated for a decade.

Yes, and this post IS part of the continuing launch publicity he's generating for Trello.

I'm surprised there wasn't a mention of the "Joel"-factor in this paragraph:

That’s it. Those are your chances to get news. Under no circumstances can you expect to be covered because you take a walk in the woods with potential employees... you’re not Mark Zuckerberg. (Unless you are, in which case, Hi Mark!) You’re not getting font changes on the home page covered, unless you used to work for Mark Zuckerberg.

In short, you only have two or at most three chances to got coverage unless there’s Mark Zuckerberg involvement.

Joel is in the other camp than me when it comes to launching. I believe in getting feedback from the public as soon as possible, but I just realized that there is a factor that Joel not mentioning here but which makes a big difference: celebrity.

If you launch something and have a large following like Joel, lots of people will see it. For me, the "one chance of making a first impression" isn't that important because very few people are going to get that first (and bad) impression. For me, the feedback is of higher value and losing maybe a few hundred potential customers is not a serious threat. But what would happen if, say, Steve Jobs announced a poorly iterated new product? Millions would try it out and two things would happen: 1) they would hate it and never try it again -- the first-impression thing. But more importantly, 2) Steves reality distortion field would lose many energy-points (or whatever those run on).

If Joel "officially" launches a three weeks old web page with an input element and a submit button, it could damage the personal brand he has worked hard to establish. But if you are not a celebrity, and your ego can handle it, it's possible that you are better off with the launch early strategy..

Joel is doing a live chat right now (11 AM EST) at http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1293/onstartups

I think in general the "you never get a second chance to make a first impression" attitude by startups is overblown. It's a big world out there. That's not to say you should launch something that sucks, but get it out there if it's interesting.

Yeah, honestly, a lot of these sites are so low profile that your "launch date" is whatever date you tell the reporter you are talking to at the moment.

This depends. For most startups what you say is true. You can launch 5 times and most wouldn't notice. But for a startup with a lot of press, a bad launch can hurt momentum (I'd think). Look at Color.

or Cuil. Or Apple Ping, or Google Wave, or Google Buzz.

Ok, so if you're a big name, big brand, or have invested big money in a product you may not a get much of a second chance (be it from customers or investors/managers).

But, for the rest of us nobodies, there will be other opportunities for news and first impressions as we trudge along. I launched my first app in 2005 to no press, just a couple of blog posts. It was almost dead, then NY Times writes about it 3 months later while covering the topic (Personal Finance). Every few months a another press mention would popup out of the blue and 5 years later when it got its second NY Times coverage a whole new batch of people discovered it. Of course, I no longer own or work on it, and I'm still "working for the man" so what do I know?

This is a great writeup. The only thing I would add is that if you are a startup and you don't have press contacts a PR firm is a huge help. We launched http://www.ApartmentList.com at Disrupt and got a similar response as Trello did because of it.

Or it could have been the Sprinkles cupcakes we handed out.

The morale boost you’ll get will be incredible. After months of toiling away, the feeling you get from seeing real-world people actually start using your product is the best feeling you will ever get as a software programmer in your professional life. These are the great moments that make it all worthwhile. We made something. People used it. It matters.

Ain't that the truth. I shipped some code last week, and then spent some time at a customer's site demoing the new features and doing one-on-one training. It's a real buzz to see people use the stuff you made. It's easy to lose sight of that feeling when sitting in your air-conditioned beige office, divorced and detached from the realities that your users face, but when someone hugs you because of all the time and energy the code you just wrote will save them, it really validates what we do.

Imho, when you're launching a product, if your final goal is to get VC funding, then go for a tech conference. If your final goal instead is to sell a product, then you probably want to look at other venues, and spend your energies in marketing efforts to reach out to your potential clients.

If you have to rely on any conference to gain traction you are in deep trouble. Make sure you have a solid business that can execute with as little external dependencies as possible. Launch on your results and accomplishments, not just stories and promises. People who attend these conferences are suffering from information overload. Prove something and you'll get a chance to stand out from the crowd. Generally you'll get way better treatment if you make them want to be part of your success, rather than be a supplicant desperate for a lifeline.

Joel - I'm just wondering. With your reputation and clout, how would your product launch have compared if you'd just announced it via your blog / twitter / SO ? I wont be surprised if you'd have gotten a pretty good response via that method as well. I think launching @ conf is even more important to others who dont enjoy the same reputation / following as you do.

Agreed that launching in a conference is useful. Getting a table, not so much. You may get a visit from a few VCs who will most likely waste your time if they don't know you. Most VCs send their most junior staff to walk the floors and results in perceived traction with said VC - not real traction.

Secondlife for facebook.Nice!If secondlife was done right, maybe there wouldnt even have been FB!:P

Joel completely nailed it - if you can get on stage at a big conference, do it.

Another question is: Should you go to a conference like TCDisrupt but present at Startup alley?

We (FeeFighters) did that. We aren't launching anything sexy that TC would like (We are in payments and even if you are making money and have saved businesses (including Fog Creek) $75million it isn't sexy unless Jack Dorsey is running the show) so we didn't bother applying to Disrupt.

We're launching next week at Finovate instead. So we decided to present at Startup Alley. It isn't cheap. We had to fly out there, it costs $2k for a table, etc. For us, its good to get out to SF every so often to visit with friends, investors, partners, etc anyway. Early on, not that many folks came by our booth (we were in the 500 startups alley, not the main one, so we were a bit away from the crowd).

Ultimately though, for us the exposure was worth it. We had several good meetings and customers came out of it - often it was often from folks we met at an afterparty who stopped by our table the next day. We also did a few guerilla things that helped us gain even more exposure: http://feefighters.com/blog/3-ways-feefighters-disrupted-tcd... Who else can say that top VC's tweeted about them from the bathroom? We then followed up with some of the VC's who said they love our scrappiness and have had several email conversations (we aren't actively raising money, but never hurts to meet w/ VC's).

There are ways you can maximize your opportunities and I think far too few people did those things. Generally though, if you can afford it, I think it is worth going even in the alley - but you have to make the most of your opportunities... We saw folks sitting behind their table, and people who just weren't very friendly/outgoing. That doesn't work at conferences. Send your most extroverted people out there. You need to be able to talk and relate to people instantly.

Good job on the marketing. I honestly never noticed your booth, but definitely noticed the urinal things (I assumed it was something officially sponsored).

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