StartUP conference
March 6, 2008 – 11:15 am
I was invited as a panelist to a “business underground conference”, called StartUP (link in Hungarian). The event was truly grassroots: it was organized in just two weeks and sponsors were not given publicity - despite (or perhaps due to) this it had a great lineup, with fresh startups, marketers, VCs, government represented. The audience was also thoughtful, and had fun with commenting online via the projector. Check out some photos from the conference.
Topics covered an excellent 101 for startups, with a surprisingly good signal-to-bullshit ratio:
- Brief presentations of some startups. I especially liked iGlue, coining buzz-worthy terms such as “information iron curtain”
- APIs and the role of opening data sources. Brief summary: APIs are good for your service. My note: data portability is better for users.
- The role of advertising: how to use it effectively as a startup. Lesson: if you have money to spend on ads, by all means do it. But do your homework and look for the grassroots, guerilla models first, do some basic SEO, and only then consider banners.
- Ad revenue in the business model. As expected, usually not a solid model in itself for small players.
- Investor expectations. It was interesting to hear government representatives talk about the ineffectiveness of government.
- How to get funded: from those who got funded. I was on this panel for some reason - I suspect as the token entrepreneur, who’s actually happy without external funding. Hey, there are so many ways of not obtaining angel or VC money - I was delighted someone actually wanted to hear more about that Luckily for the audience there were also some veteran entrepreneurs on the panel with a background in economy, who could provide very insightful comments.
Thanks to the organizers for such a great, down-to-earth conference (call that “underground” if you will). Looking forward to more!
In the evening we held our monthly Budapest New Technology Meetup. Despite some serious initial challenges with electricity and burning out a projector, we’ve managed to get the presentations under way. An interesting observation from the Meetup was that people presenting agile development methodologies tend not to be agile enough to fit into the five minute timebox. I guess it might be the classic case of “Those that know, do.” 
Update: A video of the session intro is now available.