How to Growth Hack a Conference as a Start-up with a Minimal Budget

Last week, we started talking about our technology publicly for the first time at the IDTechEX Conference in Europe. The conference is focused on hardware enabling technologies (Energy Harvesting, Sensors, Printed Circuits, 3D Printing, Wearables, Internet of Things). In order to get as much learning as possible out of the conference, we prepared very well in advance. Below is a list of the preparation required and also some key learnings from the event:

Preparation

Subjective marketing activities like a conference/trade show can only be successful with clear goals set in advance. At this stage, we are much more interested in industry learning, customer development and business model development than specific sales goals. Below were the team’s goals for the conference:

• Minimum of 30 Discussions with the following stakeholders
• Hardware Entrepreneurs: CEO’s from Companies that also had “component technologies” and were looking to integrate with major OEM’s. The goal was to find out what strategies had worked and the Pro’s/Cons of each.
• Research Analysts: Find out which technologies had been most successful in the energy harvesting space, what applications were seeing most traction, where there was most opportunity going forward and what the key hurdles were in the sales cycle. Also, what introductions could these analysts make to potential OEM customers.
• Component Providers/Suppliers for improving our Technology: Determine if there are technologies available to help improve our product — we are a little early here, but it was a goal to start formulating relationships with battery manufacturers for the “internal battery” in our device, 3D printed circuit providers to see if our antenna design could be printed on flexible roll both reducing cost and improving form factor, and a major electronics manufacturer to help us combine our electronic components into a ASIC to start miniaturization.
• In addition to the above, I have also been researching the following:
• How do we best protect our technology? Is a solid patent portfolio enough, or can we provide additional protection through the manufacturing process and a contract manufacturer. Right now, we are an unknown brand, have no community associated with our product and have no software to provide protection, so it is important to give this point a lot of consideration prior to launch. I believe it will be somewhat easy to reverse engineer our product, so we need to think through the best ways to protect ourselves here. ASK: Anybody with expertise in developing strategy to protect hardware IP. We are looking for a seasoned entrepreneur here in the fields of manufacturing, licensing, patent and sales expertise to have a brief discussion.
• What are the key testing metrics that should be included in our test plan for the remainder of 2016 — what will OEM’s, 3rd Party Engineers, VC Partners want to see

In addition to the knowledge goals listed above, there were a number of items we needed to complete quickly and with a minimal budget in advance of the show. I used some excellent tools and sites to do this super cheap. Prior to this, we had been operating in stealth with minimal focus on Branding Assets. I had to move fast, with almost no resources.

Business Cards and Logo: I used 99Designs for the design and branding assets and a friends print shop in Tel Aviv — 99Designs is a graphic design marketplace where you can host an auction for a logo/website/business card and dozens of graphic designers prepare content which you can select. Total cost was $250 for about 500 cards and design.

Low res pic — but the matte black “no-shine” looked good

Next was a landing page: I used Squarespace to host the site, purchase the domain, and design the landing page. I purchased the domain Invi Energy. INVI.COM was already taken and there was no point in spending money at this stage. Squarespace is really easy to use with no development/design background. Check out the landing page below I was able to put together in an afternoon.

Home

The point of the “Landing Page” was simple. Provide the ability for any vendors at the show to contact us, also a button to connect with our LinkedIN to keep updated with what we are doing at INVI and most importantly, just to show we had an online presence. We also had a “Learn More” button to collect email addresses of interested parties. This allows us to track the industry/application they are specifically interested in — more on this later. The total cost of the site was around $100 for the hosting, domain and design. I also put up a LinkedIN profile for INVI. So in advance of the show, we were able to get all of the content we needed ready for about $350.

In addition to content preparation, I wanted to have all of my meetings booked in advance. Proper scheduling required following the steps below:

• Contacted both the head of Business Development for IDTechEX and Event Coordinator in charge of the Conference to obtain a list of all delegates attending the show and a list of IDTechEx research analysts — conference coordinators will usually provide this (if they are hesitant, just ask for names + Companies = you can find contact info using tools below)
• From this conversation, I was able to identify a MasterClass being offered on the day before the conference on Energy Harvesting run by a Senior analyst named Harry Zervos. I booked this class and also had an introductory call with Harry before the show to help determine which Companies to connect with (I find it’s essential to have your targets identified and meetings booked in advance of the show so you can build your schedule and maximize your productive time).
• I also went through the 170 Companies exhibiting along with the 150 Speakers to determine who I wanted to speak with. Below is an example I made of an excel doc with different targets. This can be ported to SalesForce once you start to contact targets.

IDTechX wouldn’t give out contact details for any speakers, delegates or exhibitors, so I used a couple of interesting tools here to get in contact.

• Emailhunter.co — This is a Chrome extension that can provide anybody’s email address based on their First Name, Last Name and Domain. It can also automatically search for email’s via a website or LinkedIN profile. It worked really well.
• LinkedIN Premium — Basic tool to connect with contacts using the “Inmail” Function
• The tools below are all Chrome add-ons that help find common connections with potential targets:
• ConnectSix- Provides emails/phone numbers based on a LinkedIN profile. Links you to others social profiles to search for common connections for introductions/social selling. Finds you the best connection path based on all your social graphs. It also has a search function.
• Discover.ly- Matches your LinkedIN contacts and Facebook connections to search for common people you may know. Similar to ConnectSix.
• Conspire. Show’s you your closest connection to somebody based on your email contacts and allows you to ask for an Intro.
• Streak: A CRM tool you can use right from your mailbox. Also shows you if somebody has read your email, their location and what device they are using. You can use this to determine when to follow-up and also easily organize your contacts — ie. all emails related to IDTechX show in specific folders with notes. (Yes.. I can see when you open and read my emails)
• AirBnb — This isn’t really a tool, but I was able to book a private room in a shared apartment beside the hotel for 4 nights for $268.00 total. I think this was about the most cost-effective prep for a conference possible. The only major costs were the $1,800 entry fee and the $500 MasterClass. *Note — in the future, attendance wasn’t taken at the Masterclass so it would have been possible to sneak-in if you don’t mind being a little aggressive.

I found the most effective method to contact people I wanted to speak with was an email to their direct address with the heading IDTechX Europe. I would include a small blurb about either their speaking engagement, exhibition or what I wanted to talk about. If that didn’t work, I would look for an intro through Conspire or send an Inmail via LinkedIN. Out of 40 targets, there were only 3 that I wasn’t able to reach via this method. *Another note — in the future, if I didn’t want to spend time/money to attend the conference, I would still use the same method above to contact people after the conference was completed and mention that I had attended and had some follow-up questions.

So.. all of the content was complete, my schedule was set for the event and I had meetings in place far in advance!

Who Did We Meet?

Hardware Entrepreneurs

Eight19 — VP Business Development. Energy Harvesting provider using Photovoltaics “indoor” to light displays- particularly in grocery stores. Another good resource to talk about customer development and approaching OEM’s. All of these Hardware Entrepreneurs could potentially be channels to source additional OEM clients. We could offer our services as a cross-sell for where their products don’t work, find out which PR channels they have used successfully, what conferences they attend, etc. This is a great channel for information and learning for us!

CMOS Sensors-Head of Business Development. Builds a sensor to monitor carbon dioxide. Are currently being implemented in Mobile Devices and Breathalyzers. Good resource to discuss approaching OEM clients and business model strategy.

StretchSense- CEO. Builds sensors to detect movement (ie. a glove that can detect exact motion of all fingers) for applications in gaming and military industries. Good contact to discuss business models and approaching OEM customers.

Piezoskin — CEO. Built a piezoelectric energy harvester that harvests energy from the wind provided in a subway station. Again, another example of an entrepreneur with experience approaching OEM’s with a new technology.

Polar OLED — Lead Scientist. Expert in manufacturing flexible displays for POP. Entrepreneur with OEM experience.

PST Sensors — CEO. 3D Printed Temperature sensors. Again, another component Company looking to integrate with OEM’s. Could use our technology to power these sensors and cross-sell a wireless solution.

EMD — CEO. Electro-Mechanical Developments. Builds energy harvester that converts vibrational energy to power. Used in industrial settings like assembly lines. Good experiencing approaching OEM’s.

Otego — CEO. Thermo Electric Energy Harvesting (energy created by a difference in temperature across an area). Again, good learning around business model and approaching OEM’s.

Customer Development / Research Analysts

IDTechEx- Chairman and Principal Analyst. Experts in the Energy Harvesting Space. Strong connections to OEM’s. Are prepared to introduce when we are ready. Also have strong connections to Antenna Manufacturers/Electronic Miniaturization.

Delta — Head of Business Development. Excellent resource for testing. They are a consultant with a massive grant and lab in Denmark. Their mission is to bring energy harvesting technologies to clients. They will provide us free testing in an RF Chamber if they can bring our technology to their clients. Could be a great channel for sales and for help with development.

Analog Devices — Sr. Systems Architect, Head of Bus Dev. Build Microprocessor’s and full energy harvesting solutions for IOT nodes (Power module, energy harvest, conversion unit, processor). This could be a huge customer. Interested in seeing a demo. They would like to power their IOT nodes with our technology.

ABB — VP Business Development. ABB is a massive industrial products Company. End customer looking to see a demo of our technology. We will reach out again when we are ready.

ULIS — Product Manager. Infrared Sensors. This is an end customer. They are looking to power their infrared sensors. They are looking to see a demo and a Data Sheet on our product spec. We are not ready for this, but it is clear there is a need to supplement traditional batteries in these sensor products.

Contract Manufacturers / Components / Suppliers

Jabil — Precision Engineer. Jabil provides manufacturing for 200 of the worlds largest brands. This would be an “end-to-end engineering and manufacturing partner”. Timeline to initiate would be 3 to 6 months.

Wurth. Head of Business Development — Energy Harvesting. Wurth manufactures passive components (Inductors/Capacitors). They can help design our “circuit” to optimize the electronics along with the RF-DC converter.

E-Peas — CEO. Build an efficient AC-DC converter and Power Management circuit all on one chip. Will be able to help us miniaturize our design and convert all electronics to a single ASIC.

Ilika- Product Commercialisation Manager. Solid State, ultra thin battery manufacturer. Will be able to build thin batteries with 10x power density of current batteries. Would like to build a demo using both of our technologies to show a sensor device that would last forever.

Ulvac — Battery Manufacturer. Building ultra efficient batteries for IOT and low-power applications. Not much value for us at this point.

Varta — Account Manager. Builds high efficiency Coin Cell batteries for small scale power devices. Not that useful now, but could be in the future as we look to change the internal battery we use.

BroadBit Batteries — CEO. Builds new sodium battery technology with exponentially improved power density. Will explore potential to use as our internal battery for demos.

IMEC — Senior Business Development. Builds thin film and printed electronics. Could be used to help with antenna improvements and miniaturization of electronics.

Neotech AMT — Managing Director. Advanced 3D manufacturing techniques for electronics. Again, could potentially help with miniaturization of our product.

Fraunhofer — Head of Energy Storage. Academic Institute in Germany with expertise in energy storage, micro batteries, antennas, sensors and RF. Could be a great partner to help further develop our technology.

Fisk Alloy — Business Development Head. Makes extra efficient copper traces. Could be used to improve efficiency of our product.

Drayson Technologies —

Head of Hardware, Lead Engineer. This is our closest competitor. They have developed the “Tag” product for monitoring air pollution quality noted above. They are harvesting energy from radio waves, generally in the “nanowatt to microwatt” range. They are targeting low power IOT devices and wireless sensor networks . Drayson is utilizing the Development Kit business model to get initial customer traction and then building custom solutions for clients. They released a very good white paper detailing the potential RF energy available in London, England across different frequency bands and their ability to harvest small amounts of power.

I’ll write more about what we learned about Business Models going forward and where the opportunities are in this space in future posts.