Why Early Stage Startups Should Not Exhibit at Conferences

We went to MYGOSSCON (Malaysian Government Open Source Software Convention) and nailed it. Walked away with about 32 business cards, many were interesting, two solid leads (one turned into a sale), and a great deal of confidence that we were pushing for a great market. Gave away 50 business cards. This was despite the fact that we had an extremely simple booth (two banners, nothing on the walls, a desk and some marketing material).

But you don't just go to a convention or conference and expect to succeed. There is little in the way of prizes for just showing up. You have to put in legwork and you have to think through and plan your presence.

The first thing we recognized was that we had no real way to draw people to our booth with our main product (LedgerSMB). Nobody was going to come by and see what we could offer. So we decided to reinvent ourselves a bit and turn the tables a bit-- our primary exhibit was PostgreSQL (since PostgreSQL as an org wasn't going to be there and generally when PostgreSQL is going to be at a conference, we have tended to volunteer at their booth, so the arrangement wasn't unusual except that we paid for the booth) and our secondary one was LedgerSMB. We knew it was government-centric so we planned our marketing materials to be government-centric, including a case study of the use of PostgreSQL at CNAF in the French Government. We gave away probably 100 of those.

Once folks came in to talk with us about databases we'd also talk about accounting and ERP software. While others (Hitachi) were offering a raffle for a free iPad, we got folks to come by, simply offering them something that was interesting to them, and being able to talk about it.

Also we blogged about our presence in advance, and gave a report after, ensuring that people would know that we were there.

The moral of the story is this: with conferences what you get out depends a lot on what you put in. Time and attention to detail goes a long way towards success.

This has been an absolutely fantastic learning experience, even though it also taken a huge amount of time. Being able to get up on stage and comfortably explain to a room full of people is a very valuable skill, and one you can really only learn by doing. Even if you are just standing in a booth, you can cultivate this sort of thing by actively seeking out conversations with passers-by.

Another thing, is we've also noticed there is often a 6-month lag or even more before seeing any tangible returns - people listen, file away the ideas and then come back when they are ready.

So although I agree that it is important to carefully evaluate the costs involved in events like this, I think many of the metrics used in the article may be a bit short-sighted. Basically, "wasting time" is part of the learning experience. If you don't do it, you never learn.

However, 7.5 "man days" really isn't that much in the whole scheme of things. Most small teams lose that much in a weekend. Plus, if the Singapore government is paying the entire bill then you're not spending your own money. To me it sounds like a (somewhat crappy) paid vacation. There are worse things to do with your time.

One final note: I think setting target goals for blog posts, customers, and investors is an excellent idea. It helps to turn very vague "networking" into a goal-oriented task. I have used the same technique in the past to help gauge the value of spending my time and resources at various events.

The $10k or so cost of having a conference booth helps me put other kinds of marketing in perspective, in particular, it helps justify spending $5k on something else that that I think would pay off better.

Note that there's psychology at work even for more established companies. I used to work for a company that, for years, rented a booth at a large conference in Las Vegas -- the president of the company told me that he thought going to the conference was not cost effective, but that if he stopped going, people would have thought we'd gone out of business.

Funny, I talked with a guy who sells newspaper ads who finds that he brings this one up every time a local business questions the value of newspaper advertising.

While I would not take away from the obvious value of DEMO and similar launch conferences, early stage start-ups need to think long and hard whether they are even ready to launch. In lean start-up parlance, most early stage start-ups are still in Customer Discovery and Validation. If you have not locked down what your market type is, what problem you are solving and what customers would buy from you, making a big splash could be a very costly mistake. I have seen too many start-ups go to these events and come away poorer without any results to show for it.

All that being said, like with many decisions, it is the execution that counts. You were going for free, so you had a huge opportunity to make the most of the time. To simply expect to show up however and get attention is naive. The press want interesting stories and you are competing with 50 other companies, all vying for attention. You could have built up interest in numerous ways by being proactive and creative to build up interest. For example, you could have pulled together a Social Media SWAT team of friends/family/business partners to tweet, Like, and push your story out there. Instead, you simply showed up, which is kind of like building a web app and simply expecting people to visit.

As with anything, it was a learning experience, but I would not use this experience to color your views on conferences. You just need to understand how best to utilize these tools to your advantage.

Having never been to SG but the more I hear about its public-private interactions, the more intrigued I become. American young people may be at a disadvantage to Asian young people in the coming years.

I think it would be difficult in the US to have the government provide, what is essentially angel funding, to startups. But this sort of, 'provide angel funding' thinking, is beginning to take hold around asia. For instance, I knew that the Indonesian government was trying to figure out the details of how they might accomplish something similar in Indonesia.

I don't know...just will be interesting to see those structural differences and how they play out over time. Maybe Asia will have more low quality startups since that funding is less dear. I don't know...it'll be interesting to watch.

Seriously if your company can some how help the conference by using your product you will find conferences are much more valuable.

For example we provide inbound mobile marketing software (http://snaphop.com). We often give the conference holder free access to our software to help run the event.

Otherwise: yeah conferences feel pretty much like "circle jerks". Basically all the vendors extolling how awesome they are and how cool the problem space is. If its B2B the press is generally pretty bored. Rarely do I see prospects (leads) at these events. Sometimes I even walk over to other booths in the beginning of the event and pretend to be a prospect so I can hear their pitch :)

Another good strategy for press might have been tracking down bloggers/press that were going to the conf (maybe they tweeted about it? Posted something?) and tried to arrange meetings ahead of time--they are there with goals too, or at least a full appointment book/some ideas on what to cover.

But yeah, the lost man days thing is certainly something to consider, but don't let it discourage you entirely, try it again sometime and do it a little different, maybe get different results. And if you follow up a couple times, maybe something comes out of those biz cards, you never know until you do.

The more I learn about Singapore the more I like it.

Also, given the quality and humor of your article it's probably best that you didn't outsource that press release. You write better than a lot of writers out there.

-They chose the wrong conference -Their product sucks -Their pitch sucked

Conferences are great for networking, raising awareness, getting customers, catching the eye of investors etc. All the reasons they went. Sorry it didn't work out but that doesn't mean it wont work out for others if they choose the correct conference, have a good pitch and have a good product.