How they stack up: Disrupt, Launch, and Demo

Author's TL;DR:

if you’re looking for press, go to DEMO, if you’re looking for a good time, go to Disrupt, and if you’re looking for beta testers, go to Launch.

How did you manage to get into these events for free? You mentioned that you got sponsored, but what does this mean? Can you provide some tips?

Was just asked that question on the original post, our response: We applied to each of the conferences directly. At Disrupt, they liked what we were doing but weren't 100% sure about putting us on stage. We were persistent and they offered us a cocktail table. For Launch, Marc responded to Jason Calacanis' post on hacker news looking for innovative companies and we applied directly to the DEMO scholarship program. During our interview with DEMO we told them we were bootstrapped and couldn't pay for even a partial scholarship.

A big part of it this of course is selling your company's vision to them when they are evaluating you. If they get excited by the vision, they'll want you to come to their conference.

How about going where your customers actually are?

well that would really depend on who your customers are Demo is great for enterprise customers, Disrupt is great for consumers