Startup conferences are (mostly) a waste of time | Hacker News Reader

Startup conferences are (mostly) a waste of time

zaman.io

51 pointstzaman14 comments

Another little secret is the first priority of those speakers who are telling you their startup story and giving you advice is to impress you, not actually give you any useful advice.

Whatever stories of their startup they tell you are whitewashed, and any "juicy" details they tell you are exactly the type of wants they want to tell you because it will reflect some particular quality they want it to. There is nothing wrong with this, that is their incentive. But obviously for you this is a giant waste of time, and kudos for figuring it out.

Conferences are almost always just another business venture. While they often look like friendly get togethers, it's more often than not just somebody making money off of you, some with better value, some with less. When I worked for one of the big four, I was sent to conferences costing $5.000 a ticket and wondered who would ever pay for this craziness other than the big corps? - And there I met so many young CEOs from various early stage startups with mostly mediocre ideas trying to make the most of it. And all they could do was talking to other startups. Usually, best advise is to fly out to a conference but don't attend. Arrange meetings for breakfast or dinner with those attending and meet them outside, that's where you'll get close to most of the big guys - not at the conference. Had my best meetings always outside the venue.

And one odd thing I noticed with these conferences is that some of the speakers are serial - meaning they do conference after a conference, which makes me wonder if that's a full time job - if so, are they not practicing what they preach?

This is a good question.

This might be a helpful explanation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7842312

Absolutely agree with this. The $400 and two days are much better spent growing a business.

I've always found that the local meetups and events consist of more wantrepreneurs than actual entrepreneurs. I've stopped going to them.

Yeap. I've been invited to many events, and I never went. An event where most people think they'll change the world (which is not bad per se) but who also think they're smarter than "the others" is kind of crap.

I often see that this crowd is addicted to the "movement" itself, not to getting things done. Meaning they like stories and knowing who bought who, etc. I've talked to too many, and they have crappy ideas they would've known are crappy if they've ever talked to another person about it.

They like to use jargon (A/B testing, alpha gamma shit rays and what not, to seem like they're really doing stuff).

There's someone who posted a blog post that his website is now open to the public and that beta testing has ended and people don't need invites to sign up. I tried to sign up, and I got prompted for an invite code. How dumb must someone be, to take care of the blog before taking care of the actual code?

I emailed him telling him his site still prompts for an invite(what's worse, is that he managed to take off the input field, but didn't change the code to account for that).

He didn't reply. He wrote an API that used a non HTTPS website, flagged by myWOT as malicious.

The app he was trying to make was about a wallet, to handle payments.

How much retard (excuse for the word) one needs to have in himself to manage that combo?

I saw him bitch about life on TV, that the authorities don't do anything to encourage inventions and young entrepreneurs. Um, yeah buddy. It's the others' fault, always. (And I sent emails to him warning him about these things: site flagged, impossible to register to the site, etc).

There's only one conference I've found to break this mold, and sadly, they shut it down. It was called LessConf, and it was the only conference experience that left me inspired and happy with the money I spent.

The anecdote I share is that it was the only conference I'd attended where people weren't looking over your shoulder for someone 'more important' to talk too.

Bring it back you bastards, and I'll volunteer to help.

Are you sure they shut it down? It seems like there's a LessConf happening in Savannah, GA Aug 22-24 2014.

http://lessconf.lesseverything.com

try clicking for a ticket. it's an april fools joke

"The organizers and all the speakers left the event. For the speakers dinner."

Fwiw, the speakers at microconf (more of a bootstrapped conf) are assigned tables during lunch. You just pick whatever table to talk a bit more closely to a given speaker.

Your post reminds me to this scene of the beatiful mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d_dtTZQyUM . Basically you all wanted to go for the blond.

Hey folks - Organiser of the conference here.

I am kinda in a wtf-state right now because until this very moment i only received off-the-charts positive feedback for our event - even from people who try to complain about everything (quote: 'the benches were a bit uncomfortable, but otherwise best event in the region in years').

So naturally i am kinda shocked that this is how google will remember our event. To make sure an other side is heard - here my 2c:

1) I agree with the OP that almost all startup events are a waste of time and money - imho you should only go to events if you have a very clear objective and be very pro-active about getting what you want.

But he is right about the fact that most startup events are useless PR stunts - but that's why we organised Foundertalks - it is meant to be different and until this moment i thought we succeeded

The main idea of the event is - everything is off-the-record, screened list of attendees (invited), no vip rooms, no vips, intentionally small audience. Btw the event had nothing to do with YC - just a lot of YC people were speakers.

The ticket price of 200 eur was only to cover costs - not for profit btw.

Main goal of the event: Being able to give real talks and answer audience questions honestly.

We even had attendees who sneaked into the event and afterwards wanted to give us the ticket price.

2) No juicy bits? Same as every other conference?

Sorry i don't believe this.

We had founders naming no-go VCs, talking about fallouts with previous founders in details, telling about things done in SF no one likes to admit. We had one speaker bordering the line of what he is legally allowed to tell. Obviously i can't name half of the stuff here but i am a bit confused right now to be honest.

Half of the speakers came to me just to verify that the audience is clear about the non-disclosure.

It's clear that people can't break their NDAs and it is clear that speakers won't share stuff that could break their business - but it was hundreds miles away from the PR bs you usually get fed in startup conferences.

3) Group mentoring sessions

we had 10 tables a 12-15 people. We couldn't do more tables because didn't have more international speakers. But honestly a 10:1 ratio of international speakers to attendees is more than enough.

I had off-the-charts positive feedback for those sessions.

I am sorry the OP didn't "get" what he was hoping for.

4) Speakers leaving early

I agree with you on this one - we heard it from 3 other attendees and this is definitely something we are going to improve for the next conference.

The main issue was that several speakers were really exhausted and wanted to leave earlier - they were constantly talking with attendees. Because of this we left 40 minutes earlier than planned (also the rest of the event took longer than expected). Next time we will try to keep more energy buffer - maybe we can fly them in earlier to fight the jetlag.

TL;DR

I agree with the OP on the leaving early part but i CANNOT agree on the main premise that only stuff was shared that you would here on normal startup events - sorry i have been to a different event in this case.

In any case - thanks for the feedback - i am personally a bit sad that after all the (surprisingly) good feedback this one negative is in google.

Let's see how we can improve this at the next event.

HN: why has this been downvoted?

I don't think you will be improving much for next event based on this blog post (I am sure you will otherwise), since you just went through all the criticisms and basically just said "Nope, I don't agree." You didn't take it as constructive criticism, you are just completely denying the validity of OP's experience. Maybe you are right, maybe not, but it is absolutely clear that you are not actually thankful for the feedback.

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