Launch.it took off and came back to earth…
T-minus 10,9,8…
We launched at the New York Tech Meetup on May 9th, 2012, a day I will never forget. Over the years, I’ve attended countless meetups and always wanted to be on stage, pitching my company to almost 1000 people, and on May 9th we had that opportunity. My dad (Brian) and I have been working together for almost 5 years, and I must admit, it is an added reward to work with someone whom you respect, enjoy, trust and love.
We started Launch.it with the idea to create the largest searchable database of everything new. That’s a big idea and vision! With our PR backgrounds, we started to work with PR agencies and startups, as they are the source for lots of news of the new, and so grew we created the term “PR Journalism” in order to try and push PR professionals to publish more blog posts and thought leadership pieces. Months before the platform was ready, we met with dozens of PR agencies, holding focus groups to get their feedback, input and ideas.
While Launch.it was very well received by most of the agencies and PR professionals, old habits die-hard and we didn’t want to become a platform of just news releases. As with most startups, we explored other opportunities where lots of news is announced at once… Events!
Why do people rob banks?
That’s where the money is! Why do people go to events? That’s where the news is! We sometimes joke that if it weren’t events, conferences, tradeshows, etc., most companies would not get their product(s) launched, as they need an industry event to announce their news to the public and media.
Brian has attended CES for over 35 years, and with me for the last 7 years. While attending in January 2012 (when Launch.it was in the development stage), we ran into a friend of ours who runs an affiliate show for CES (CEWeek, held in New York in the month of June). We mentioned we were building our publishing platform and how we could potentially work together, once it went live. It was quite amazing, that events such as CES, with over 3200 exhibitors announcing 20,000 new products, services and gizmos had no central online location to place exhibitor news for those who may wish to attend, are attending, and media searching for information about the event. Think about that for a second… the biggest show in the country has no technology to properly manage and distribute their show/exhibitor news in order to be found, shared or discovered by all attendees and media. **Light bulb going off**
The Pivot
The question…what business are you actually in? We soon realized we were in the container business. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest produce none of their own content, but are just big containers for everyone else to put their stuff. Launch.it is simply a news platform for everyone else to publish their news.
A few days after we launched at the NYTM, we began working with CE Week to white label our Launch.it platform. This enabled the focus to be on CE Week and not Launch.it, and thus CE Week News was created.
Obviously, we had high expectations, however, never imagined we would get over 60% of the exhibitors to sign-up, create an account and publish their news. Now, “news” is kind of a general term, as exhibitors can launch news releases, sell-sheets, brochures, fliers, images and videos. Exhibitors can save their event dollars on direct marketing materials, that most attendees WILL eventually throw away, and have greater productivity and outreach by placing their news online digitally.
My biggest pet peeve when doing PR, based on my SEO background, was copying and pasting news releases into emails, attaching them as docs/pdfs, which you can’t track, share socially, or generate SEO. With Launch.it, the tradeshow/conference is now able to link to stories in newsletters, share it via social networks, and even reference it after the show ends, as it is “evergreen” and never gets taken down.
*I just want to add that pivots are generally a good thing, and many startups use pivots as a strategy to move their company forward. Many people have the wrong conception of companies that pivot. Yes, it usually means you are changing directions, but hopefully for the best because you figured out something on the way that is a better opportunity. I am proud to say we pivoted within a month of launching into a bigger and more opportunistic marketplace.
Houston, we have lift off!
After the success of CE Week News, we were able to secure a meeting with CEA (who runs CES) communications team. A few months later, we had a signed agreement to do a pilot for Eureka Park, a section of CES filled with all the startups, SMBs, and companies just trying to make a name for themselves – basically the world we live in! To put this in perspective, and proudly so, our first show partner was the biggest show in the country, #1 on our list of potential show partners. If that doesn’t validate our vision, I don’t know what does. Wait! We signed the 2nd biggest show, CONEXPO-CON/AGG, three months later. And we won the “Innovation of the Year” award from the Circle of Influence Summit.
It’s hard to believe but there is actually a show for everything. If you look around at all your stuff, you can start to realize how many different industries there are. So with CES and CONEXPO as our first clients, we gained a lot of credibility and momentum really quick. Launch.it signed a number of shows, domestic and international and our future in the event space looked very promising. The Launch.it name started to vibrate within the industry.
To be clear, we initially built a PR publishing platform and not an Event News Platform, which we slowly began to evolve into. I’m not saying we “faked it till we made it” but… We definitely were learning, changing and doing everything to make it as event centric as possible.
First major set backs
Unfortunately we can’t tell this part just yet for a few reasons and will certainly apprise you of details in a few months.
Our business model
When we first launched Launch.it in the PR space, we never intended to monetize right away, as we wanted to get traction and make the process as frictionless as possible. In the new event tech space though, we had to charge for our services, and after a few shows came up with two different models:
- The show organizers would pay us a flat fee based on how many exhibitors would be attending their event. It was “free” for all their exhibitors who could publish as much news, text and images as they wished, and still had access even after the show ended.
- It was “free” for the show organizers, and their exhibitors paid a nominal fee, agreed to by Launch.it and the organizers. As an incentive to the show organizers, we did a revenue share, so the show actually made additional revenue doing PR and digital media, and no dollars being taking away from their event budget. We really had high hopes, as this was the real “scale” business model with the potential to go viral at a show.
Finally seeing the big picture from 10,000ft
I want to now delve into the opportunities we saw, and challenges we faced, entering a new industry that we only “attended” before becoming active “hands-on” participants. For those who do not know the event/tradeshow community, it’s a very tight knit group with it’s own unique caveats, and personalities. There are really only a few major players who run everything and working/partnering with them can make life easier. Below are some facts/statistics we learned along the way that can be helpful to those venturing in the event space:
- 88% of the industry is run by independent show organizers (ISOs)
- Most of the ISOs are member-driven associations where their yearly show generate 75%+ of their revenue (usually)
- Reed, Messe Frankfurt and UBM basically control the other 12% with a number of other small organizers
Most shows are once-a-year
- Shows start selling their exhibitor space for the next years show, while their present show is taking place. That’s a year lead-time! We generally launched three months prior to a show, so we always tried to sign the show six months before to be on schedule. If a show doesn’t work with you in the current year, then you would need to wait another year before you can even try again.
Shows are the gateway
- While events/tradeshows may be your partner and potentially pay you, your real customers, most of the time, are the exhibitors attending the show. Getting in touch with them can be quite tricky. When partnering with the event organizers, we would receive the exhibitor’s email and phone number, in order to contact them multiple times to launch their news. It’s pretty much an uphill battle when you have to explain digital/social media to someone who has never used it before and convince them to pay for it
- You also need to remember that shows are just a few days out of the year for most companies, so they are busy doing other things and have little time to focus on exhibiting, even though they are probably spending a good deal of money on the show
- You must remember, you are not the only person trying to get in touch with them to get them to do something. If you have ever exhibited at a show, you know exactly what I mean
Shows are still a few years behind with most technology. We take for granted, especially in the startup/entrepreneur/tech world, just how fast tech moves and the truly amazing capabilities of what technology can bring to an event and/or industry
- Websites — Our average show partner had a website that hasn’t been updated in about 5 years, if they had a website at all. Words can’t describe how much I hate IE6/7, etc.
- Social Media — About 50% of our show partners have Twitter and Facebook, but only use them a few months before, during and after their events. The % is significantly lower if you account for the actual attendees/exhibitors at the show who rarely use social media
- No open APIs/SDKs — There is very little collaboration between companies in the industry as information is locked away and not shared with anyone else – I like to call it co-opertition (co-operation + competition)
- Mobile apps — These are just starting to take off and become standard at most events, however, most of them are still not that good. Shows can pay upwards of $20,000 for a cookie cutter event app that is only needed for a few days a year – that’s ridiculous! The other issue is once it’s live, trying to get people to actually download and use it…
- Lead retrieval, badges and business card — Almost every single show has paper name badges that still flip around most of the time, so you can never really see it. Progress is being made as we have now seen badges with RFID chips in them, so instead of using the standard grocery store scanner thing (which it really is) to scan a barcode, you can now use an app, so you get it right away. It’s a step forward, but stats show that only 25% follow-up with people they have met at a show. This percentage will need to be increased for success to be achieved. However, nothing beats an exchange of business cards for some reason
Gimmicky tech
- Social aggregation tools: Always on display to show people what is going on “socially,” but I consider these gimmicky tools just that “gimmicky” as they are mostly for show and they all do the same thing
- iBeacons: Everyone is very excited at the possibility of proximity based sharing, but most people actually have no idea what that means or have the capability to actually use it. This is years out
- Oculus Rift: The whole point of events is to get people face-to-face (f2f), so why would I attend a show to put on a helmet to then be digital again? This is years out and depends on Facebook
- Google Glass: Same as above, but depends on Google
- QR codes: They just need to go away
After reading this, you are probably thinking, “this is a pretty tough industry to get into”, which could be said about almost any industry really, and you would be right. However, as I continued working within the event industry, I saw it only as an opportunity for growth to introduce them to new technology and just waiting for them to adopt and embrace it.
Shows are very cautious about what they use and for good reason – they only have one show a year and they can’t have any mistakes!
Spot – the coolest products
Over the past few months, we have been developing the Spot App based on everything we’ve learned doing Launch.it in the last two years. It has always been our belief that all products need a home and should be easy to find, share and discover. So, we created an intuitive mobile app to help do just that!
We are first and foremost a product recommendation platform. There is no app currently available for you to swipe through all new products. Spot App will curate from the top sites around the world, to create a central place to discover, find and share the coolest new products. How many times have you gone shopping and seen something you want, taken a picture of it, but then get home and can’t remember what it is? By using Spot App, you can take a picture, add the information (name, size, price, location, etc.) and then find it quickly again, and share it with friends.
We are going to build a mobile social network with a community of active spotters who will take pictures of the cool products they see in their everyday life. Using an intuitive tinder-like swiping UI/UX, followers will easily be able to say if they think it’s “Cool” or just “Ehhh” and if they “Want” it! If you’re trying to buy your friend a gift for their birthday or the holidays, just go to their Spot lists, see what they want and buy it! Why guess and feel guilty that they don’t like it?
The Spot App is launching in beta now and will go live around mid-December, so if you’re interested in testing it out and spotting for us, go to Spot.io and sign up! The app will fully launch in time for 2015 CES as we plan to Spot over 20,000 new products with your help!
If you would like your product feature, please email me Trace@launch.it so we can have you in the app when we go live.
Thank you everyone for your support thus far, as we journey into our next phase.
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