internet world - a story of courage and failure
So we were at the internet world fair yesterday. “Business for the digital age”. And business it was. In fact, there was so much business and suits it was creepy and we completely out of place.
Hansjörg came all the way from Vienna to check out the Seminars and probably talk to a few people. Did not happen. Why? Read on.
The sessions would suggest that there is a lot around entrepreneurship, starting up, running and improving your company, exploring new ventures and areas and plain simply just learn a lot from a lot of smart people.
We’ve sat through an awful presentation of Sun NetBeans. The app is interesting to quickly build all kinds of apps (desktop, mobile, web), but well.. I’ve seen better.
The “How to attract VC” seminar was interesting, but lasted on 30 mins. After each session, everyone had to leave, there was no time for talks, discussions, questions or any other kind of conversation. Pissed us off big time.
Firsttuesday, at least, will host an “afterparty” on the 6th of may which I’ll probably attend.
They hosted an “award show” with 3 finalist startups pitching for the award in front of a jury of 3, consisting of James Gray (just sold Getmein.com), an editor from FT.com and the director of the London Business School.
I will not name the Startups, but the one claiming “there is no way to send money over the internet yet” was plain awful and actually the FINALIST of a 150 companies. The other one who was asked by the jury how their traffic figures were wouldn’t give a straight answer to the question, even after 6 months in operation, stating that since they’ve introduced a “photo feature” churn has gone down a couple of percent. Wow. Naturally, the 3rd one with the better presentation and the better prepared guy won.
To sum it up, the internet world is a sales party, not a meeting place for entrepreneurs or startuppers. The sessions are way too short to get something valuable out of it, there was never time for Q&A and pretty much everyone ran off right after they’ve finished.
We did however manage to grab hold of James Gray, the founder of getmein.com which he sold to ticketmaster, asking for advice on how to create momentum for a small startup with a (naturally) great idea. We had a brief chat, he was very friendly, and gave us our business card, promising to be happy to discuss matters further via e-mail. Let’s see how that goes, but that was the only thing where we really felt we had gotten something out of that timewaster of a conference.
So, what’s the learnings:
- Don’t ever go there again if you don’t want to end up getting spammed with direct mail and e-mail crap from several companies trying to sell you their stuff
- Don’t ever go there if you want to learn something
- Don’t ever go there if you actually want to meet people
- We will be more careful in selecting the stuff we go to
Waste of time and money for the plane ticket, but a good hit on the head with the bat of frustration. Keeps one focussed. Hansjörg is probably now out in London kicking someone’s arse to blow some steam off. Just kidding.
Well, at least we got admitted into the startup2.0 competition and will produce a video about tunesbag.
3 months ago