Rockstar Lineup

It was really hearth-warming to meet the #elevenz and some old friends. TourViaMe (congratz for launching!) guys, Dilyan, Max and the rest of the #SofiaMafia. First day was also the day of great speakers. There was the omnipresent future-sceptic talk by Alf Rehn, which was really entertaining but kind of bleached. Bashing the buzzwords while being almost too mainstream with the topic. But the rest were more down to earth discussions and especially the Q&A sessions after each talk were a refreshing change. It was great to see Sandro Mur (Bellabeat) and Matevž Petek (Povio) on stage talking about their YC experience. Mr. Biggs had another entertaining talk about how to crowdsource your hardware project — the choose-your-own-adventure style. Lovely Ellie Zheleva shed some light on design thinking for startups. A topic very dear to me. Finally, there was Tony Conrad, the charming About.me founder who sold the company and bought it back. How cool is that. And yes, we’re big suckers for About.me. I agree with Tony that every person should take care of his/her story that is being broadcasted online. So, should we have beautiful Edgar-meets-About.me babies? I think yes.

The second day started with three talks I sadly missed (yeah, someone had to work on the new pitch). Scott Berkun, David Raskino and the amazing Ivan Hernandez. But I got back in time for the inspiring talk about scaling Prezi by Drew Banks and for the energising talk on positioning yourself by the charming Gloria Roheim McRae. The second day lineup ended with the talk on Responsive Marketing by David Armano. Who entertained us with several heart-warming videos about marketing done right.

Pitch on the beach

OK, there was a spoiler above. We did get into the pitching finals ☺ But how? The competition was extremely tough, probably the toughest we ever had so far. Besides the amazing Fishing Booker that reached the finals with us, there were some amazing startups with proper traction and revenue. The craziest one of them? Definitely the Cyber City folks.

Wining the half-finals meant less beer and less sleep for our team. Hm… Let’s prepare something special. We changed the pitch completely, instead of dildos we were showing the story about Vasja, the craft brewer. Also, instead of 5 the finals pitch needed to be 3 min long. Another challenge. We focused on the story of Vasja and what Edgar did and could do for him.

People got it, so did the jury. Which is an achievement on its own ☺ At the end, we lost the first place (congrats again to the amazing Fishing Booker team!), but still got the second which got us tickets for the TechCrunch Disrupt.

Was it worth it?

OK, we got the tickets. Though, Edgar was already in San Francisco and the Berlin Disrupt. So, was it worth it? Worth loosing focus for a week? Focusing on looking good on stage instead of getting new customers? The answer is yes. You see, our goal was simple: to get the feedback about our new business model — the marketplace for stories. We got it already from the market, now it was time to get it from the VCs and the media. And what better opportunity than pitch on the SparkMe stage.

The feedback was great, it seems that almost everybody agrees with our idea of monetising the service while giving the tools away for free. Plus, we got some new potential content writers/producers while at it.

So… see you next year Montenegro. And thanks again for a wonderful conference .Me and the organising gang!

Oh, and do check the Edgar story about the trip.