Tradeshow
For the last month or so, I’ve been busy at a class in Atlanta called CapVenture.
We had panels, speakers and discussions about the capitalization landscape and how to raise money in Atlanta. We also learned how to best position and pitch our companies, culminating in a 3 minute presentation in front of local investors. I’m proud to say CrowdMind came in 2nd place, thanks to help from my advisor, Lance Weatherby, and some coaching from Mike Schinkel.
Not us, but you get the idea
The result of coming in 2nd was an invitation to present at Venture Atlanta and FutureMediaGA. Both events provided a tradeshow-table-top experience to pitch CrowdMind for 3 hour sessions. It was a good learning experience – you rarely get to absorb so many perspectives and potential misunderstandings of what you’re doing. For instance, when you say the word “meeting”, as in “CrowdMind helps you gather insights to support decision making without the negatives of in-person meetings“, people immediately assume some sort of web conferencing video tool (like a webex).
The other big lesson learned was that there are 2 main types of entrepreneurs in technology – there are teams led by Marketing guys, and teams led by Engineering guys. The tradeshow seems to be the sweet spot for the marketing guys, listening to them describe how many of these things they go to (and pay tremendous amounts of money for)… all to constantly seek funding and customers.
I’ve heard that you need to have both types of people to run a successful startup, and seeing how these guys operate, I can see why.
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