STROOPWAFELS and ELEVATORS — 6 Tips to Take Your Startup to the Collision Conference
We visited Collision Conference for the first time last week and to be short: It was a blast! Not only the conference itself but also the city of New Orleans is worth a visit if you are in the area. Collision Conference is in the same week as the famous Jazz Fest. Make sure you plan your schedule around the conference as well. A visit to the Jazz Fest is not only an excellent way to experience some great new music but also dive into the amazing food culture of the South with crawfish, Po’ boys, and jambalaya.
For Triggi, it was the first time our team visited Collision Conference. To be honest, we did not have a clue what to expect. Did we prepare? Well, we should have. We were busy in Amsterdam working on the app, talking to partners and investors. Running a company, and we did not do a real and proper preparation, and this gave us some disadvantage. However, it did allow us the freedom to see what will happen in those three days. With that in mind, you will herein receive our six tips on visiting the Collision Conference. Additionally, these tips are for the Web Summit (November, Lissabon), The Next Web conference (May, Amsterdam) or any other future tech conference.
Hustle the Hallways
We were fortunate to be in the Alpha program of Collision Conference. We had a booth on the last day of the conference, but that didn’t give us time to relax on the other days. We visited several talks and keynotes. We were all very active to meet with people, see other booths and making connections on our own business, including the Mentor we were given with the startup ticket. Lunchtime is a great moment to meet other attendees and connect with each other. The new connections gave us some great new relations we could use in the near future. So, do not just have lunch with your team outside the venue. No matter how great the food in New Orleans is. Honestly, we did this once, and it was good to get together and discuss some ongoing issues that happened that morning. However, it is always better to find your spot at the lunch tables. Introduce yourself and just have some chitchat with other attendees.
Prepare to Pitch Everywhere
After a long day at our booth, me and Tom (one of the founders of Triggi) walked back to the hotel to prepare for the night summit at a local bar around the corner. We talked about how many times we might have pitched our story during that day and discussed some strategies what worked best. We were glad to be pitch-free for just a moment before we head down to the bar. We stepped into the elevator and right behind us entered two men. They saw our Triggi shirts, conference lanyards and asked, “So, Triggi, what is that?” We looked at each other and thought this will be a real elevator pitch until we get to our 11th floor. Tom dropped in his pitch and right before the doors opened for us to get out, the two guys were enthusiastic and vowed to check out our site and newsletter. Be prepared to pitch anywhere and everywhere. Yes, even in a bar after 11 PM and you just had your fourth NOLA Blonde Ale.
Do Not Be Over Prepared
I already mentioned this in the intro. We did not prepare that well before we stepped in the main hall. We checked out the attendee list. Each made their list of people to meet, but we soon found out it’s hard to get anyone to respond to your in-app messages, tweets or mail during the conference. It is nice to have some meetings set up before the conference starts but do not overbook your calendar. Make sure you have plenty of time just to walk around, meet new people, find interesting connections, and accidentally bump into people. You never know what might come of it. Our biggest lesson is we need to prepare better for our next conference and make sure we have some meetings set up in advance.
Be Bold
On the night before the conference started, we had some great Mexican food at South Peter Street (forget Bourbon Street) and just before we left, our founder Arjen saw an investor walking in. He sat by himself at a small table and was minding his own business. There is one thing you should know about conferences like this: most investors and VC’s get bombarded with meeting request and messages, not to mention that their badge is in a color easy enough to recognize from a distance. I have seen quite a few men and women with their badge off or turned around so they could walk around relatively easy.
Anyway, we did not want to heckle the guy. Therefore, Arjen just asked the waiter to serve him a drink of any choice. No more, no less. He got his beer (modest hey!) just as we left. So, he thanked Arjen and asked to join him. We left for another bar and had a good time. After ninety minutes, Arjen was back. He had a great talk and made some good connections that turned out fruitful later in that week. So, be bold. Try something else instead of just pitching your story repeatedly. Be creative but do not corner your potential investors or clients.
Bring Swag That Asks For More
Stickers and flyers overloaded the tables at the Collision Conference, and I thought to myself, why would I even bother leaving our stickers? There can be only so many stickers, flyers, and pens. I did leave some on the tables but with little hope that this would help in any way. No! What worked better was our giveaway at our booth. We brought along three boxes of Stroopwafels, these are, the Dutch, creamy caramel waffle cookies. All we did is just pass them to everyone who wanted one. You could only have one. We knew from experience that stroopwafels are addictive so people would taste it, stop in their tracks turn around, and ask for more…
“Sure. You can have one more, but you have to listen to our pitch first.”
Yeah, we know how to recognize sneaky. Nevertheless, it worked, and for our next conference, we will have some food-goodies again. This time, we will have them branded with our logo. Another lesson learned.
Bring the Right People
I talked with some startups where the only guy present was a technical lead. Nothing wrong with that but he could not explain anything about the marketing side of the product. Additionally, the strategy on how to connect with customers could not be explained. Same thing happened with another startup. There was a great woman that could explain everything about the product from a sales point of view. However, she stalled and directed me to their CEO immediately after I asked about their API or connecting with other apps and vendors. Also, the CEO was to arrive in a couple of hours. By the way, they were never heard from again.
Bring the right people to a conference. Make sure you have both technical aspects covered in sales or marketing specialists on your team. Bring the founder, do not forget a product manager if necessary. Make sure your team can answer all the questions thrown at you. If there are things that you cannot answer here is a suggestion. Take the name, and email address of that person and follow up within 2–4 hours. That should give you enough time for sending team replies, e-mails, and perhaps get the prospect to come back to your booth or meet up after the conference.
These are our tips if you plan to attend a tech conference in the near future. Of course, results from the past cannot guarantee success in the future, and your mileage may vary. However, try one of these ideas and let us know how it went. If you have some more tips or would like to expand on one of the above, the comment section is all yours!
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