Early Stage Startup Founders Should Probably Not Attend SXSW

http://refer.ly/early-stage-startup-founders-should-reconsider-attending-sxsw-this-year/c/fe11402e869411e2bfbf22000a1db8fa

by dmor • 13 years ago

46 28 13 years ago

refer.ly

marcosdumay• 13 years ago

No. We should either get our heads down and code or get our feet dirty and go find some customers.

As a side note, we shouldn't be reading Hacker News either. Much less commenting.

yukoncornelius2• 13 years ago

How does this self-righteous non-sense make the front page, again. Just because Danielle was a "conference ho" doesn't mean everyone falls into the trap.

kdsudac• 13 years ago

Troll much?

I'd assume it got on the front page because people thought it was good advice and/or interesting. I've been told that's how HN works (snark).

dmor3• 13 years ago

1. I was a conference ho when I was an employee of a startup with product market fit and substantial revenue.

2. I was running a test to see why we are getting modded of the front page - this post made the front page without a single vote from friends, coworkers, etc. before getting bumped.

3. There are tons of entrepreneurs falling into this trap - they are all packing for their flights right now, hopefully they saw this post while there is still time.

philco• 13 years ago

I've been suffering from the same thing. The posts that make the front page stay on for a while, then get modded off without notice.

yukoncornelius2• 13 years ago

I appreciate your response, but I disagree with your normative advice.

kevinelliott2• 13 years ago

Hell yes! Well said. This makes me feel much less jealous of all the conference hoes running around acting like you need to be at a conference to get great things done.

orangethirty2• 13 years ago

Interesting. You openly admit to gaming HN by having people on you team vote on your submissions. Though I think it might not benefit you because this site has voting ring protections. Not knockin on you, because I do enjoy discovering about your posts on Twitter. Just making an observation.

Also, few people here have as much game as she does.

bluehat2• 13 years ago

Don't you diss Danielle. I'll have you know she is a remarkably effective conference ho.

Also nonsense is one word.

kevinelliott2• 13 years ago

The simple fact that if your startup has minimal capital (if any at all) and no revenue should indicate that spending a small fortune (potentially $2,500-10,000) to travel to a week long party (that's what SXSW is anyway) will only put you further into the debt hole that you need to make up for later. Who cares if you make $5,000 later on, because you're effectively still negative.

Some of these ego-whores are at every meetup, conference, mixer, breakfast, etc. Imagine how much of the startup's capital they are effectively wasting. All in the favor of "networking" --- 90% of which never pans out because most people at these events are all talk.

Sure, the events are fun, but they're not as productive as hunkering down and writing some code, reaching out to a potential customer, showing off a demo, or reviewing some feedback.

ryguytilidie• 13 years ago

But I thought the reason you become a founder is week-long parties? :(

thisischris• 13 years ago

SXSW should never cost you that much, ever.

Flying from any hub will be <$200 round trip. Book in advance and you can find cheap rooms (or share a room with other starving founders) and you can do it for <$80/night.

Food is free. There are enough companies sponsoring events with food that you should never, ever have to purchase food- unless you're having a lunch meeting with a potential partner, client, investor, etc.

Booze are free. If you're paying for drinks anywhere- you're wrong.

The people I've met at SXSW have opened doors, landed contracts, moved investment talks forward, and have generally helped more than I could have ever imagined.

inthewoods2• 13 years ago

What happened to Refer.ly? When did they pivot to being some sort of magazine?

brianbreslin• 13 years ago

Wasn't refer ly some affiliate marketing system for startups before? http://www.crunchbase.com/company/refer-ly

joelrunyon• 13 years ago

It seems to have been turned into an affiliate marketing driven blog?

(someone please correct me if I'm wrong)

inthewoods2• 13 years ago

Yes, that was their prior model - a very difficult one to scale, so not exactly shocked at a pivot.

anemitz• 13 years ago

It's worthwhile to point out many people don't attend SXSW sessions but instead go to Austin during a combination of either Interactive or Music and just bum around the city, meet new people, and hack on their own projects. IMHO, the value of SXSW is not the conference sessions, but the change of environment.

If you're resourceful, you can do Austin during SXSW on a very tight budget (< $500 including airfare) and get a lot of value out of it by not being sucked into the conference mentality. My recommendation is to hack during the day while sessions are going on and go out and have fun at night.

If you're careful with your time and energy, traveling to Austin during SXSW can be a big productivity and morale boost.

bredren• 13 years ago

This. SXSW can be an incredible time. Even if you're promoting a startup, music and film are great.

Austin is gorgeous this time of year. (except last year for the several days) You can wake up and sit in the yard at 9am in shorts and a t-shirt.

I've done SXSW by sleeping on floors, having a company pay for expensive dinners and lodgings and using startup capital to cooperatively rent a house as well.

You can learn a lot of great tricks there, such as how to get into events without a ticket. For example, last year I was able to quickly meet and join some vip's to catch A$AP Rocky on the spotify roof party. That won't happen again.

Also, they are kind of tired now but Fun. played the relatively small icanhaz party months before they were on repeat on the radio. Reptar did a tiny free show they only announced on their FB page behind a bar in the sun. You can feel the energy in crowds at shows at SXSW and they are very cool and tuned in.

You can also make key introductions. We learned about an event critical to our startup that ultimately led to a pitch competition and an award and publicity. We also met the fellow who helped us with our banking partner there.

The press from this year about how startups aren't putting capital there is good. If you don't have the traction already, you're unlikely to get it out there. And if you haven't raised a solid amount of money yet, you should be making it last. But people should still go!

Notice, I haven't said anything about actually attending the conference.

Sitting at home working on code, going over customer feedback is no substitute, nor necessarily a better use of time and money.

nameiscarl• 13 years ago

> traveling to Austin during SXSW can be a big productivity and morale boost.

I like that you are including morale. I'm fed up with productivity gurus, GTD peddlers and existence hackers.

Being transformed into a list crossing drone is not my shtick.

Being a clone of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Jack Welch (<insert your favorite prick>) is not what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Remember folks, you can end up dead well before your 100 millions yacht is finished. That has been seen before.

Thanks for your tips anemtiz !

pseut• 13 years ago

Double-check your code for the stalker social networking buttons; they're about mid-screen on my ipad. Even if they were well-positioned they'd be annoying, but as it is they're super annoying.

chunknug• 13 years ago

first magazine banned on Pinterest? lol http://pinterest.com/source/refer.ly/

rms• 13 years ago

I would definitely recommend going to SXSW for the music instead of the networking, as a vacation.

codex• 13 years ago

I think this an example of the typical maturation process of a young entrepreneur, which is characterized by initial focus on cargo-cult superficialities and glam, optimism born of naiveté, and Dunning–Kruger-like and overconfidence in one's own abilities.

This is typically followed by the realization that business is tough, the failure rate is high, and you are probably lucky enough or special enough to be the exception.

But this experience is still valuable; in many cases, success comes from experience, but experience comes from failure. And until YC eventually saturates the planet with 10,000 ex-founders, it looks good on the resume (for now).

Early Stage Startup Founders Should Probably Not Attend SXSW

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