Early Stage Startup Founders Should Probably Not Attend SXSW
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If you're resourceful, you can do Austin during SXSW on a very tight budget (< $500 including airfare) and get a lot of value out of it by not being sucked into the conference mentality. My recommendation is to hack during the day while sessions are going on and go out and have fun at night.
If you're careful with your time and energy, traveling to Austin during SXSW can be a big productivity and morale boost.
Austin is gorgeous this time of year. (except last year for the several days) You can wake up and sit in the yard at 9am in shorts and a t-shirt.
I've done SXSW by sleeping on floors, having a company pay for expensive dinners and lodgings and using startup capital to cooperatively rent a house as well.
You can learn a lot of great tricks there, such as how to get into events without a ticket. For example, last year I was able to quickly meet and join some vip's to catch A$AP Rocky on the spotify roof party. That won't happen again.
Also, they are kind of tired now but Fun. played the relatively small icanhaz party months before they were on repeat on the radio. Reptar did a tiny free show they only announced on their FB page behind a bar in the sun. You can feel the energy in crowds at shows at SXSW and they are very cool and tuned in.
You can also make key introductions. We learned about an event critical to our startup that ultimately led to a pitch competition and an award and publicity. We also met the fellow who helped us with our banking partner there.
The press from this year about how startups aren't putting capital there is good. If you don't have the traction already, you're unlikely to get it out there. And if you haven't raised a solid amount of money yet, you should be making it last. But people should still go!
Notice, I haven't said anything about actually attending the conference.
Sitting at home working on code, going over customer feedback is no substitute, nor necessarily a better use of time and money.
I like that you are including morale. I'm fed up with productivity gurus, GTD peddlers and existence hackers.
Being transformed into a list crossing drone is not my shtick.
Being a clone of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Jack Welch (<insert your favorite prick>) is not what gets me out of bed in the morning.
Remember folks, you can end up dead well before your 100 millions yacht is finished. That has been seen before.
Thanks for your tips anemtiz !
Some of these ego-whores are at every meetup, conference, mixer, breakfast, etc. Imagine how much of the startup's capital they are effectively wasting. All in the favor of "networking" --- 90% of which never pans out because most people at these events are all talk.
Sure, the events are fun, but they're not as productive as hunkering down and writing some code, reaching out to a potential customer, showing off a demo, or reviewing some feedback.
Flying from any hub will be <$200 round trip. Book in advance and you can find cheap rooms (or share a room with other starving founders) and you can do it for <$80/night.
Food is free. There are enough companies sponsoring events with food that you should never, ever have to purchase food- unless you're having a lunch meeting with a potential partner, client, investor, etc.
Booze are free. If you're paying for drinks anywhere- you're wrong.
The people I've met at SXSW have opened doors, landed contracts, moved investment talks forward, and have generally helped more than I could have ever imagined.
As a side note, we shouldn't be reading Hacker News either. Much less commenting.
(someone please correct me if I'm wrong)
This is typically followed by the realization that business is tough, the failure rate is high, and you are probably lucky enough or special enough to be the exception.
But this experience is still valuable; in many cases, success comes from experience, but experience comes from failure. And until YC eventually saturates the planet with 10,000 ex-founders, it looks good on the resume (for now).
I'd assume it got on the front page because people thought it was good advice and/or interesting. I've been told that's how HN works (snark).
2. I was running a test to see why we are getting modded of the front page - this post made the front page without a single vote from friends, coworkers, etc. before getting bumped.
3. There are tons of entrepreneurs falling into this trap - they are all packing for their flights right now, hopefully they saw this post while there is still time.
Also, few people here have as much game as she does.
There are two sides of this - getting readership and getting feedback when content really isn't good/interesting to this audience. Still learning, but I think I have a much better understand than I did a year ago.
At the moment, I don't use much social media to promote my posts. Due to me being lazy. Keeping track if all the networks is an issue even with the tools available. I cannot even fathom how much time you spend doing that. How about a post explaining it?
Also nonsense is one word.