I attended Startup Idol, a Webguild event down in Redwood City, CA, yesterday. In all, I thought it was a successful event. I didn’t take a headcount, but there must have been a few hundred attendees. The speakers gave a good synopsis of the state of the startup market relative to the overall, struggling market and provided valuable advice to those getting started as entrepreneurs. On top of that, we were able to hear from a few of the up and coming startups themselves… I would go again.
Here’s a recap:
Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Ventures, pointed out that there has been an up-tick in first time financing for Q1 09. This is the first increase in first time financing in 9 quarters. Positive sign!
He also listed markets vulnerable to disruption (i.e., markets where startups can do well):
• Web video
• Social gaming
• SaaS
• Mobile
• Security
• Energy
• Internet
• Stem Cells
• Virtualization
No real shockers there…
Ethan also stated that the cheapest way to determine if you have a viable product/service is to put it out there and see if anyone wants it. This is due to the fact that putting something out there is becoming cheaper and cheaper as technology advances. Ethan provides Twitter as an example of this concept.
Additional tips from Ethan:
1. New sales force = your web page
2. Design: less is more
3. Find ways to customize your product to your different customer sets
4. Offices are overrated
Jeremy Toeman, Stage Two Consulting, also spoke.
He started out by defining ‘marketing,’ an oft misunderstood term. According to Jeremy, marketing is all activities involved in getting your product/service to customers.
Jeremy recommended using sites like getsatisfaction.com and usertesting.com to stay in touch with your customers and be informed about what’s working, what’s not, and possible ways to improve your product. Feedback from your customers is the most valuable type and sites such as these are making it much easier to obtain.
Regarding blogs, stay consistent and be transparent. I am in total agreement. To me, anything that feels like a sales pitch will do more harm than good.
Adeo Ressi, founder of TheFunded.com, gave a spirited presentation about common start-up issues and his recommendations. Adeo has an in-your-face style and exuberance that will keep you on the edge of your seat waiting to see what comes out of his mouth next. Some tips from him:
• Talk to 30 people a week about your startup/product
• Ideas don’t matter … passion matters!
• Hire slow and fire fast
• Fake it till you make it
Dharmesh Shah, from Hubspot.com and the Onstartups blog, was up next. Dharmesh had a lot of points similar to the previous presenters.
• Feedback from customers and potential customers is key
• Mine all the data you can get your hands on in order to identify the metrics that can help your business grow (e.g., what functionality do returning, paying customers use that one-time customers do not use, then move that key functionality to a prominent spot on your website’s landing page)
• Your idea is not perfect, get it out to customers as soon as possible so they can help you perfect it via their feedback
• Do not solve a problem before you have one (i.e., keep it simple)
• Experiment cheaply; no non-linear event is ever planned for, so don’t spend any money trying to plan for one
I like what Dharmesh has to say. You can check out a video of him speaking here. If you are an entrepreneur and/or are involved in a startup, I highly recommend checking this out.
The Q&A session from successful entrepreneurs was not very engaging. These guys might be great at getting VC’s to give them money, but engaging a live audience was not their strong suit. Not surprisingly, I don’t seem to have taken any notes from this part of the conference.
The final part of the conference was the startup idol ‘competition’ itself. Five startups presented their pitches and were judged by:
• Jonathan Abrams from Socializr and Friendster
• Philip Kaplan from F’ed Company
• Daya Bara, Webguild president
Startups presenting were:
• Pixelpipe
• Indinero
• MReplay
• Jibe
• Feedback Jar
Indinero was the first runner up and Pixelpipe took first place (largely, I believe, due to their rapping capabilities).
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