Copacetic

I attended TechCrunch 50 this year alongside my business partner Eamon Leonard and another presenting company, VidSchool which Sean Fee of Ifoods/LookandTaste fame is involved in.

Pat Phelan originally intended to join and we booked a Monster House on Fillmore and Fulton. Pat (the consummate deal maker) had to pull out at the last moment which left Eamon and I (of CloudSplit) sharing this mansion with Paul, Moneesh and Sean of VidSchool.

As failed entrants to the onstage event we had both been offered slots in the DemoPit. You get one day to showcase your company in a separate area from the stage through which the attendees have to pass to get to the auditorium. We chose Tuesday (as opposed to Monday) this gave us a chance  to attend on Monday and suss the place our prior to our full day.

Tuesday duly arrived and we headed down to the show. Its a brutal schedule with the show opening at 7.00am and running until 7.00pm the following evening. There is lots of advice to absorb on how best to pitch at TC50, but we followed some simple rules,

• Bring a pull up stand and put your message and pitch all in the top third. Nobody can see below this point. Many of the TC50 companies only used the default table logo provided by TC50. I found myself ignoring companies when I could not discern what the offering was.
• We brought along some tic-tacs that happened to be in the company colours. I don’t thing they got people to come up to our stand but being able to give something to people who listened did leave the whole presenting transaction with a nice soft end.
• You need two people. Otherwise food breaks/toilet visits leave the stand unmanned. There is always action in the DemoPit area so someone needs to be on stand at all time.
• Be prepared to get you pitch away in a few minutes

The Good

We went looking for validation of the CloudSplit offering and received that whole heartedly. We met key influencers at the investor, partner and customer level. This level of exposure to people WHO-REALLY-KNOW the software sector was invaluable.

Just the opportunity to present 200 times or more to genuinely insightful individuals who could really grasp what we were doing was a fantastic education. We now have a crystal clear vision of what we need to do in V1.0 and a goto market strategy honed by hours of feedback.

It also helped that the universal feedback was that CloudSplit was genuinely breaking new ground in a valuable and emerging market.

I would definitely target and time the launch of any new company so that it aligned with TC50.

The Bad

The DemoPit works as a competition in which the conference attendees get chips which they donate to the most interesting projects. The two with the most chips on each day get to present the product on stage. Its a nice idea but is open to all sorts of gaming ranging from booth hotties simply trading on their looks and accosting people for chips without pitching to wholesale buying of chips. Basically you can forget getting on stage on merit alone.

I can’t fix the booth hottie problem but it should be easy enough to fix the chip buying problem by making the containers piggy banks rather than jars so that once chips are donated they can’t be retrieved to be resold.

I also think there would be more liquidity in the market if the attending companies were compelled to donate their chips to other companies rather then bunging them into their own jar. This could be achieved by only giving chips to DemoPit companies on the day they are *not* presenting.

On plus side we got our first chip quite early on from Mark Kvamme of Sequoia so we really did care too much about winning or losing the competition after that piece of validation.

The Ugly

The awards ceremony was a shambolic disgrace. Mike Arrington threw all his toys out of the pram and stormed of stage. Why ? Who cares. It was an insult to the winners of the awards and made Arrington the story instead of the winners. It soured the whole event for me.

If I was Mike I’d be keeping a pretty low profile as well.

The HotHouse incubator program are having a reunion at the School House Pub on Northumberland Road. Looks like a good bunch will be attended. I certainly plan to be there.

Full Details on the linkedin event posting.

Details:

Starts:
Wednesday July 22, 2009, 06:00PM

Ends:
Wednesday July 22, 2009, 09:00PM

Event Type:
Networking/Meetup

Location:
School House
Northumberland Road
Dublin, Dublin 4 IE

Price: 0 euro

Website:

Industry:
computer software

Keywords:
Hothouse Schoolhouse

Intended For:
Ex-Hothouse Participants and Team members

Organization:
Hothouse United

This is a business networking event for all current and former participants of the DIT Hothouse programme. Members of your team are welcome to come along to the event. Facilitators of Hothouse training are also welcome.

Complimentary Finger Food will be served.

Come along, it’s an informal occasion and a chance to meet up with your former team members to see how they are all doing.

This event has been sponsored and organised by Box Creative, Razor Coast and Merrion Business Development. It is supported by Bernadette and Sara in Hothouse

Overview

RSVPs

The Hothouse Venture Programme is a year-long comprehensive support and incubation programme for graduate entrepreneurs with industry experience and a technology-based business idea. There are 16 places available on each Programme. Participants must have left full-time employment and be working full-time on developing their new business. The programme offers participants a number of supports including:

Incubation space in the entrepreneurial environment of Docklands Innovation Park on East Wall Road

• Management development training facilitated by industry experts
• Strategic business counselling
• Access to an extensive enterprise and investment network
• Access to the resources of DIT, including technologies to licence, student teams, facilities such as lab space and equipment
• The opportunity to be conferred with a CPD post-graduate diploma in New Business Development
• Access to grant funding through Enterprise Ireland CORD grant which could provide you with up to 50% of your previous year’s salary paid to you on a monthly basis over the course of the Programme.

The guideline requirements for this grant are

• Potential to have turnover of €1million and 10 employees within three years
• Have strong export potential
• Have some new or unique technology

Please click here for further information about the Programme.

Hothouse 18 will commence on Thursday 24th September 2009. The deadline for submission of applications is Friday 31st July. We will be interviewing applicants over the course of July and August and making final decisions before the end of August, in order that those that may need to give notice at a current job have ample time to work out their notice period. If you have any questions or would like to discuss the Programme in more detail please contact Sara at 01 2401 307 or sara.hogan@hothouse.ie.

To apply for the Hothouse Venture programme, click here.

David Concannon has done a great review of the talks at  FOWA Dublin.