The start-ups and expensive conferences paradox, here’s a solution

Written on 15th September 2008                                                                                                              0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Ok, so conferences are really important if you want to get the word out about your start-up. Meeting people face to face and getting a chance to pitch your start-up to an influential via a different way than his overloaded inbox is just priceless. Unfortunately, the conference ticket fee isn’t. 750 euros 1250 euros, it’s too pricey for most start-ups either way. Let alone the flight and a place to stay.

My dear colleagues at The Next Web found a solution for that by starting their own conference three years ago, but something tells me there must be more simple way. Michael Arrington gave it a try by organizing TechCrunch 50. But the tough selection and weird ways of communicating with start-ups (more on that later) have turned that event into a fortress as well.

Find some part-time angels

Earlier this year, a few weeks before the Next Web conference took place, the no. 1 Twitter user from Holland Erwin Blom started an initiative that helped start-ups to see our keynote speakers like Scoble and Werner Vogels, but most of all, to meet other attendees. Blom decided to start a pool where people can drop in some money to buy a ticket for some of the starting entrepreneurs. Some part-time angels did this and we decided to double every euro collected. All a start-up had to do to get a ticket was sending in a three minute video pitch.

Get them to Picnic

In the end, 16 start-ups got a free ticket for the Next Web conference. A great result, if you ask me. For the second best web conference of Holland (biased opinion, I know :-)), Picnic, Blom is doing the same thing – though with a different format. Now he wants start-ups to show the public a week of their start-up life on Seesmic. Here’s an example by John Nota from Zideo (Dutch only, sorry):

Dag 3

This turned out to be a bit too much to ask, so now Blom just wants coverage of three days. I would’ve ignored the comments, as we’re talking about a ticket of 1250 euros here (!!). Anyhow, I figured I share this original way of getting start-ups at conferences. Some might not have the money, but they sure have an interesting story! How about starting a similar initiative in your own country?

erwin blom, Inspiration, picnic, Start-ups, thenextweb2008

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Meet Shakespeare and his billion monkeys on Twitter

Written on 17th February 2008                                                                                                              10 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Are you a Twitter-user and fond of Shakespeare? Start following @billionmonkeys . Behind this account, @bopp and @jadwigo have instructed a monkey to post an update every once in a while. What does the monkey say? So far it has mentioned 14,481 lines from almost three Shakespeare books. The little creature has just finished @Romeo’s and @Juliet’s love story. Its instructors were inspired by the famous quote:

“Given enough time, an infinite amount of monkeys will reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare”

It’s not right there yet, but @billionmonkeys has already surpassed some of the most famous twitter-users in the number of updates. That makes you think about the value of this number. In the lively Dutch Twitter scene it’s pretty important how much you’ve updated. When Hollands no 1 Twitter-user @erwblo reached his 20,000th update, it was a really big thing.

I think it’s better to focus on quality instead of quantity. I’m not saying that Erwin Blom aims for updating as much as possible, he has just started early. No, I’m talking about people who mention they just ‘finished first cup of coffee’ or ‘waiting in line for the ATM’.

In an email conversation I had with Reinier Ladan from Digital Energy, we discussed this phenomenon. . Reinier came up with the following calculation:

Let’s say you start ‘twittering’ today in order to reach the magical 20k as well. Imagine you’re updating every minute. That’s pretty fast, I know, but it’s worth trying. It will cost you 320 hours of twittering, that’s 40 working days. Yeah, you’ve read it right, this comes down to 8 weeks of working. Think about that, next time you want to aim for that update no 20,000.

erwin blom, microblogging, shakespeare, twitter, updates

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