Startup Riot – Why I Did It This Way

I’ve gotten a lot of great suggestions from folks who attended Startup Riot so I thought I’d respond to them in a unified manner with an explanation of why I did things the way I did them and what things I’m thinking about changing for the next event. A lot of the decisions I made delivered what I wanted and so even though some people want those changed, I’m probably not going to change them.

Name Badges

By far the biggest request was a way to identify individuals at the event. If you remember, everyone had their name badges just list their first and last name (me included – see the photo on the right). The only exception was sponsors who also had “sponsor” in big letters at the bottom of their name badge. Most people loved the fact that the names were printed in large readable letters. This was mainly to help me remember who was who without having to squint at the name badge. I’m glad it was useful to some other people too.

Folks requested a way to identify investors or presenting companies at the event. As an entrepreneur who has had to raise money in the past, I feel for the folks wanting to seek out the investors. But now that I’m also an angel investor (or more of an angel investor than in the past), I feel for investors who don’t necessarily want to be the target of every pitch in the room.

This was illustrated to me at the most recent Capital Lounge event. I didn’t even realize I got nailed with a green Angel badge until some random entrepreneur came up to me out of nowhere to pitch me. Since he/she said he wanted to talk to me, I obliged and listened only to have this person launch into a long spiel about something I don’t even remember anymore. I happened to look down and saw my badge and realized why they were giving me a pitch with no idea about who I was or what I was about. As an important side note, you should never do a one on one pitch to someone without some rudimentary knowledge of their background – in general your pitch won’t land. You should also not appear like a roving entrepreneur at an event who is just looking for people that may invest – it reeks of desperation (said entrepreneur was doing exactly this). Showing desperation is the quickest way to ensuring you won’t get funded and scaring off people who might actually invest.

The idea at Startup Riot was to create an environment where investors don’t feel they have a target on their backs (or fronts, based on where they decided to place their name badges). In a non-threatening environment, angels and VCs can feel free to approach people they genuinely want to talk to and avoid those who they don’t want to talk to. Unfortunately, this doesn’t help people like Sig Mosley whose mug is widely known and identifiable but I wasn’t about to hand out brown paper bags for people to wear.

So for those of you looking for a better system to target investors at Startup Riot – it isn’t going to happen.

One person suggested having company names and/or different name tags for presenting companies so that others could find these representatives easily. Since Startup Riot is all about hooking these folks up with other folks, I think this is a worthy idea. I’m going to look into options and see what I can do to identify presenting company representatives at the next Startup Riot.

Grouping Companies by Industry/Stage/Needs

One request (mainly from investors but also a few others) was to group presenting companies by either their industry, stage, or needs. The idea being that audience members may only care about a certain industry/stage/need and could then only attend or pay attention during one segment of the day.

This is a great idea in theory for attendees but I actually designed the day to thwart this exact idea. Granted, not all attendees care about every single startup. In fact, you probably only found a handful interesting or intriguing. But you may know someone who cares about a company you didn’t care about. If you aren’t sitting and paying attention to those pitches, you can’t make those connections which may help the startups and/or your contacts.

Also, Stephen Fleming summed up the format and organization the best:

Okay, some of the presentations were painful. But the pace was fast enough to keep me from getting bored… an occupational risk of most investment conferences. I think this proves that Sanjay was right on with the three-minute target. Truly awful presentations are obviously awful within the first 30 seconds. For six- or eight-minute presentations, I have time to wander out to the lobby and get a ginger ale and probably get caught up in a conversation with somebody. When it’s three minutes… heck, by the time I’ve made a snarky comment on Twitter and caught up with the Backnoise channel, it’s almost time for the next presenter! No reason to leave my seat.

Of the few things that happened at Startup Riot, this was entirely intentional. I think there were very few, if any people wandering around during the pitches. That was definitely my goal. If nothing else, I got Stephen Fleming to stay in his seat so mission accomplished!

Distributing Slides

Some folks requested slides be distributed after the event. I probably won’t do this because of logistical issues and some people wanting this and others not wanting this. Also, the slides shouldn’t be that valuable in terms of the presentation. The verbal pitch from the speaker should be the most important vehicle to convey information about the company. In fact, I think the most powerful slides during Startup Riot were those that had very few words and were only simple and elegant graphics that were augmented by the verbal pitch.

BTW, I’m still waiting to get video from the event and pitches. Once these get sent to me, I’ll start clearing them and posting them on the Startup Riot website.

Live/Video Blogging

Loren Norman started doing a live video stream of the event. Initially I was going to say something but then I thought better of it. Loren came up to me and asked if I was cool with it and so then I said it was probably better if he didn’t. My reasoning was that presenters hadn’t been warned in advance and could have two issues. First, some were still working day jobs and weren’t ready for people to know about their startups. Second, some were asking for investment and this broadcasting may run afoul of SEC rules. It may not but I’m no lawyer.

For next year, I’ll probably warn presenters that this will probably end up happening and I’m happy to have it happen (as should all the presenters). The goal here is to have wide distribution of your idea so as to drive great connections. One way of doing that is through a live video stream. If attendees want to do that and I don’t have to worry about it, that’s a double win for me.

More Company Vetting

I had some comments saying that I should think about doing more vetting of companies. This year I only did a little vetting because I was concerned about hitting my initial goal of 45 companies. Of course, that was an unfounded concern since I ended up with nearly 90 applicants and ended up filling 55 slots (1 company backed out the day of the event which led to 54 company presentations).

Next year, there will likely be a lot more vetting of companies including a requirement to have some kind of demo-able product/service and possibly even the ability to allow people to signup for a beta. I know this requirement would have phased out a number of the presenting companies this year so I’m still debating this requirement.

Shorter Breaks

I had a couple of comments on having shorter breaks. In fact, I had planned only 30 minute breaks but since we were always on or under time, each pitching “hour” took 45 minutes or less which led to breaks being 45 minutes or longer. I’m going to somewhat adjust this next year and shoot for between 15 and 20 presentations per hour next year. The upside of this is that I’ll be able to squeeze in more companies next year. So expect something between 55 and 70 or so possible company slots but I’m sure it’ll depend on the quality of companies applying as well.

Along with shorter breaks, I’m also going to see how I can organize an efficient way for people to find the companies that just presented during the breaks. This seemed like a crap shoot this year even though I was hoping all the companies would camp out on the demo tables right after their pitching session. I’ll make this better for next time.

Anonymous Feedback

Some folks thought it would be valuable to provide anonymous feedback to presenters. This happened (I think) on the backnoise channel and on Twitter but perhaps there is some unified way of providing anonymous feedback. I suspect presenters probably got some of this if they were/weren’t approached by interested parties afterwards and also from watching their peers present. I know Josh Luber is one of the few to admit sizing up other presentations to his own.

Coffee, WiFi, And Other Venue Stuff

Yeah, I heard. WiFi blew when too many people got online (which was when more than 20 people were at the venue). Also, there weren’t enough power plugs. I tried to send out an email about bringing your own surge protector but apparently that didn’t get out to everyone. Obviously stopping the live video streaming (see above) helped with the Internet access for folks but that isn’t how I want to provide better access. I’ll try to demand either more bandwidth (depending on cost) or figure out some other solution. Any local companies want to sponsor a bandwidth solution for Startup Riot next year?

I also heard the comments about not having coffee. Given that I’m not a coffee drinker, I didn’t think about this early enough. I asked for coffee about a week before Startup Riot but apparently it slipped through the cracks. I’ll definitely get this fixed for next year.

Pre-Registered Attendees Only

This year there were a number of folks who showed up and tried to get into the event. I had to make snap decisions on letting folks in or not based on what I knew of them. The biggest problem here were the vast number of folks who were sleezy service providers that tried to get into the event. One is still annoying me via email.

I also had three folks who were investors (or supposed investors) who skipped out paying fees. Two skipped paying fees altogether. I’ve approached one to pay and he is refusing to pay. He’s now on my blacklist and won’t be allowed in any future events. One other investor paid half of what he should have paid. He (and possibly his entire firm) will likely land on the blacklist as well.

Next year there will be strict instructions for the folks managing the registration table. If people aren’t pre-registered and pre-approved, they aren’t getting in. Clearly that didn’t keep at least one sleezy service provider from getting into the event but hopefully by outing this service provider publicly, other service providers will think twice about trying to attend.

What’s Next

A lot of folks are clamoring for a fall Startup Riot in Atlanta. That isn’t going to happen. The amount of work involved is pretty immense. Plus, having Startup Riot too often might mean that it’ll become “oh, it’s time again for Startup Riot” instead of “oh, I can’t wait for the next Startup Riot”. I’m planning for the next one to be in Atlanta between February and April of 2009.

That said, I’ve also been fielding some requests to do a Startup Riot event internationally. If this comes together, then I may do a Startup Riot in the fall. My goal though will be to always have one Startup Riot event in Atlanta every year – at least until the event isn’t worthwhile to folks anymore at which time I’ll pack it up and shelve the whole idea.

Happy to take follow on comments, notes, and suggestions.

Tagged as: Startup Riot