When The Valley came to Europe
Blinding green light, hi-tech imagery and techno pumping. I half expected the bikini babes from the opening scene of Iron Man 2 to cartwheel onto the stage. TechCrunch had hit Berlin.
Soup on a nail
In Sweden we have a children’s story about cooking soup on a nail. A hobo seeks refuge from a storm in the cottage of an old woman. He asks if he can have some food:
-”Never!”, she responds “I barely have enough to feed myself.”
-”That’s ok” the Hobo says, if I can borrow a pot I can make my own. I have this nail that you can cook an amazing soup on“
-“Soup on a nail?” she exclaimed, I’ve never heard anything like it!”
-“Here let me show you” he says and starts cooking water with the nail. He tastes it “Mmmmm Delicious!”
The old woman wants a taste but he continues :
-“… of course, it would be even better if we had some milk and flour for spicing, but if there isn't’ any it’ll be good as it is”
-”Well, maybe I do have some flour”. The process repeats a couple of times until the old women has contributed everything from vegetables to meat. In effect “cooking soup on a nail”
TechCrunch Disrupt was a bit like that soup
The Start-ups
The main attraction of Disrupt is the Start-up Battlefield hosted by the eminent Mike Butcher. I also saw Mike do his thing at Tech Open Air and I was impressed by his professionalism and gung-ho cheerleading skills.
The idea is that start-ups can “launch” on Disrupt and one lucky winner get a cash prize and all of them get some good PR. Participants will have to pitch their idea and judges will pick it apart. If it sounds a lot like Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den its because it basically what it is.
While great in theory there are a couple of problems in practice. The playing field was, I was sad to see, a bit weak. I talked to a lot of people and this seemed to be the consensus. Nothing bad against the contestants which should be applauded for their hard work and entrepreneurship, but it didn’t feel like “the hottest start-ups in Europe” “culled from hundreds and hundreds of candidates”. In fact if these where the finalists I wonder what some of the entries that didn’t make it where, maybe someone who did a fart app.
The question then becomes, is European start-ups weak in general ? Or is it simply that Disrupt fail to attract the best start-ups? I would say a little bit of both.
Silicon Valley is a product of insane amounts of money thrown at a large number of people until something sticks. If you put millions of monkeys in a room with typewriters one of them might eventually write Shakespeare. If you put enough programmers in a room with caffeinated beverages one might eventually produce Pinterest.
To expect the Berlin to match Silicon Valley right now is not reasonable. Berlin is a first wave start-up city with great enthusiasm and potential, but is in the beginning of its journey, not at its destination. I also think Disrupt might have failed to attract many start-ups outside of Germany.
Are these kind of competitions able attract the best start-ups? I’m leaning towards towards no. There are exceptions but the serious start-ups generally doesn’t compete in these kind of events. They might however inspire young entrepreneurs to future glory.
The winner of Disrupt was Lock8 which wants to be the Lockitron of bike locks,with some plans for bike-sharing thrown into the mix. It’s a neat piece of engineering but as with many start-ups it comes down to feasibility and risk vs rewards. Some ideas need large amounts of money to succeed, some need timing, some need critical mass,and most need luck and flawless execution.
Manufacturing a expensive niche product like Lock8 is a risky proposition and you need to have some serious capital behind you. Even then you’re keep wondering if its not an over- engineered solution that only valley people would buy. The price for the device is more expensive then most bikes in Berlin, and even if it weren’t, its approaching the cost of insurance in some cities. The bike-sharing idea is neat but its one of those critical mass proposals that are very hard to make into reality.
Other start-ups have a neat product but they tend to be more like features, and its very hard to build a sustainable company on top of them.Take another finalist Import.Io which provides a nice UI allowing people to “build an api” from a web page (basically screen scraping) and them provide a hub for those API’s. Its a nice feat of programming and design but aside from a bunch of legal questions I doubt that there are enough non-programmers that a) need this functionality and b) would be willing to pay enough for it.
The start-ups are trying to cook their soup on a nail but there isn’t enough vegetables to go around.
You can’t be a complete cynic though, some of the ideas that make it are also some of the most unlikely. Those who says it can’t be done, should get out of the way of the people doing it.
The speakers
Disrupt packs a wallop with its speakers, bringing with it charismatic and knowledgeable Silicon Valley “rock stars”. Of those I saw there was definitively some stand outs:
Nathan Blecharczyk seems as very personable and honest about the challenges and lessons learned from airBnB.
Aaron Levie from Box became the catalyst for an interesting discussion about privacy. Around the same day as the conference the newspapers announced that NSA has a “spy nest” in Berlin, aaaaakward for the Americans. The discussions turned to how this would affect cloud computing for American companies and Arrington not only turned the knife but repeatedly tried to stab Levie in the back while Levie parried with poise and a dry wit.
I would give the prize for most inspiring speaker to Chamath Palihapitiya of former facebook fame and current venture capitalist. His combination of childlike glee “I have millions of dollars that I don’t really deserve and it’s awesome” -attitude. Together with what seemed like genuine passion and altruism was very endearing,and I would guess, wildly inspiring for the wannabe Zuckerberg’s in the audience.
The logistics
When you organize an conference there’s some basics you better do right:
- Coffee
- Wifi
- Food
At Disrupt you had to queue for more than half-an hour to one of four stupidly slow coffee machines, only to find out it just had ran out. There was tremendous amounts of soda easily available so how they could fail so spectacularly on coffee-front is beyond me.
The only way it could be worse where if the coffee had been abundant, but there’d been only one toilet.
The security seemed to be run by what I can only assume is Turkish Mafia, looking like they could kick you out faster then you could say Dönner-Kebab.
There was no public wifi but luckily I manged to social engineered myself to the press wifi password. The food was ok but nothing more.
Freebies, service and giveaways felt a bit lackluster considering the amount of money people spent on the conference.
Enter Arrington
Tech events can sometimes feel disconnected from reality in an “emperor has no clothes” — kind of way. Luckily Michael Arrington where there to keep things grounded. Not without controversy himself he nevertheless speaks his mind and pulls no punches, in fact he seemed to be looking for a fight.
Arrington cut down companies, statements and audience members with refreshing cynicism; like a lightsaber through bullshit. If TechCrunch is Shark tank, Arrington would be Mark Cuban. A grumpy Mark Cuban.
Please don’t kill me Mr Armstrong
What happens when someone who doesn’t take shit meet someone who doesn’t give a fuck? One of the most memorable moments where when Arrington interviewed his former “boss” and CEO of AOL: the venerable Tim Armstrong.
I was a bit confused when I saw someone from AOL on the agenda. “AOL? Do they still exist?” I thought they became irrelevant around the same time as their floppy disks?” (yeah, I’m old). Then I remembered that AOL actually owns TechCrunch and is the corporate entity behind the conference.
When Armstrong prowled onto the stage I blurted to my seat neighbour:
-”Jesus Christ, that guy looks like he would fire you just for looking at him wrong!”
He replied: -”Yeah he did that to a guy a couple of weeks ago … in a conference call … in front of hundreds employees” (gulp)
If Vlad the Impaler had a baby with Clint Eastwood and left it in the woods to fend for itself it would look probably look like Tim Armstrong.
Arrington started poking the bear immediately, asking whether Armstrong was going into politics (God help us all). This didn’t amuse the Armstrong and it looked like he tried to will Arrington out of existence by the sheer force of his gaze.
Armstrong did the usual CEO corporate spiel. Yada yada, “we’re still relevant”, yada yada, “Expansion!” etc. etc. Then followed some tense back and forth between Arrington and Armstrong about whether he was fired and whether he would ever come back (he was and he wouldn’t).
Luckily the tension was released when they started taking questions and a guy proclaimed in broken English that he had travelled the whole way from India just to meet Arrington. He was promptly invited on stage and given a seat for a photo op. He took the opportunity and asked if Arrington was willing to invest in his company at which point he was quickly ushered back stage.
Summa Summarum
Should we measure Disrupt Berlin against it’s Silicon Valley version? Conferences in general? Tech Conferences in Berlin? I compared it against Tech Open Air (TOA), another tech/startup conference that was hosted this summer in Berlin which I attended.
Where Disrupt felt like “The Valley” in Berlin, TOA (which btw, is Swedish for “toilet”) tried to do its own thing and be “Berlin”. TOA had far better logistics and felt energetic where Disrupt sometimes felt a little tepid.
The main problem is the Disrupt felt very corporate,trying to extract the maximum amount of money and PR from the attendees/companies/sponsors. I’m fine with the fact that conferences are commercial enterprises and needs to make money. Organizing them takes a lot of time, resources and effort, but when the money becomes primary and the attendees/start-ups secondary it loses some of its soul.
The gravitas of the speakers and rebelliousness of Arrington saved Disrupt from being a complete disaster a nudged it into near goodness. TOA could improve the calibre of its content the next time, they were not bad but they didn’t match Disrupt.
Disrupt could use a little more meat and love in its soup, but hey at least they’re brewing something in Europe. It might sound like I’m critical to Disrupt but in the end I think it was a great success both for the scene in Berlin and for Disrupt. Berlin is clearly on its way to become an European tech hub. Disrupt gave people a glimpse of Silicon Valley fame and fortune which is a very complementary to “local” conferences like TOA.
In the end I got inspired, had a lot of interesting discussions and made some friends. I got to experience a DJ in a glitter-suit playing electro-disco music overlooking Alexanderplatz. In the end, who could ask for more?
Maybe Tim Armstrong. And then he would fire you.
