We are still buzzing from The Next Web Conference 2017. It’s been a great 2 days in Amsterdam, where Team Quiqup had a great chance to network, showcase and pitch our solutions to a diverse audience, which spanned everyone from startups and advisors to potential partners. In this post, we want to share with you the highlights of these 2 days which made it another great experience.
Day 1: Booth showcase and Tower Pitch competition
“When is Quiqup coming to the Netherlands?”
This is the question I got asked the most while welcoming people to our booth on day 1 of TNW. It’s always exciting to hear feedback on the concepts you showcase, and having people ask you challenging questions (not only the one above, of course), instead of just nodding heads is always invigorating. Usually, trade shows are another lead generation channel, but they can be much more: connecting with like-minded entrepreneurs boosts morale and motivation in the community, sparking connections, identifying opportunities and solving more problems.
Problems are raw materials for entrepreneurs — they love building upon problems through innovative ideas. More than just creating ideas, though, entrepreneurs also love to pitch them. TNW was all about this — our CTO Danny had a chance to deliver an elevator pitch in the intimidating Tower Pitch. Check this out! How many CTOs can pitch like this?
Day 2: Getting inspired by world-class leaders
The back to back networking sessions kept the team really busy through Day 2 of TNW! Aside from making connections, though, we also got a chance to take a good look around the colossal exhibition and listen in on some quite disruptive talks.
- A workshop by Pornhub definitely stood out among all; the team set up a brainstorming session with topics selected randomly by a slot machine (of course, Porn was always one of the topics). For example, one session chanced on topics of Brexit, Virtual Reality and…Porn. Hey hey, let’s get brainstorming!
- A less provocative talk (but no less interesting) was delivered by Hubspot’s CEO & Co-founder Brian Halligan. He cleverly pointed out the difference between how easy it is to start a business compared to how hard it can be to scale one. Scaling up needs deep rethinking of the founders’ and staff’s mindset, as well as the pace of innovation.
“Changing your mind is cheap in a startup. Changing your mind is expensive in a scale up”.
- Pluralsight’s CXO Nate Walkingshaw gave us an effective intro on an Experience Design technique called Directed Discovery. What is it exactly? It’s the process of building a company that works aligned, where marketing, sales, product and dev teams meet once a week in big rooms, feeding back into each other and scaling the company together. At Quiqup, we also went through the challenge of working in silos. That’s why we recently launched an Experience Design team to make sure everyone is on the same page and scale is executed.
So…TNW was a blast! Not to mention — the IBM Watson Bar that offered you beer matched to your personality, the FISSA after party with open bar, and…an incredibly cool digital photo booth (which was also a really clever way to ask for your email address; picture below).
This was Team Quiqup @ TNW2017. Over and out.
Matteo, Marketing Executive
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