A post written by our friend Andrew Davis over at Tipping Point Labs
Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster once gave a talk in which my biggest take away was to “Be Present”. We took this to heart in attending conferences like Disrupt, Launch and DEMO and have gotten our team access to resources that have rocketed the company forward. We wrote this post to share our experiences, both good and bad with each of these major new technology conferences.
We’ve been lucky to have had the opportunity to get in front of people at a bunch of different conferences and share what we’re building. We have not paid to attend any of these events as we’ve always been sponsored. Something we’ve discovered is there are always subsidized or waived fees for everything you do as a startup, you can also always volunteer for a free ticket. By my count, we’ve saved over $25k being sponsored to all these conferences.
In May of 2010 we attended TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC, in February of 2011 we attended Launch, and in September of 2011 we attended DEMO. These conferences were amazing opportunities to share what we were working on with many early adopters, beta users, technologists, press, mentors, and investors. Many of the contacts we’ve met at conferences have provided invaluable feedback that has shaped Zazu into what it is today and have also led to major connections. While we were only chosen to go on stage at DEMO, we still took up the opportunity to pitch thousands of people at Launch and Disrupt — conferences like these make meeting new people like shooting fish in a barrel.
We attended the first TCDisrupt in NYC to a huge crowd, the biggest we’ve seen at any conference. Most of the companies there were heavily focused on consumer web/mobile technology and a majority of the attendees were early adopters. We saw a lot of Press at Disrupt but mixed into the crowd were a lot of smaller bloggers and journalists. Being in NYC there were a lot of attendees from the media industry, definitely great for if you have a media focused element to your company. If you’re not selected to go on stage, it’s a great opportunity to get a Startup Alley cocktail table for $2k to get in front of the attendees who lounge around outside the main hall. Be sure to hustle though, it’s fairly easy to disappear into the crowd and not be noticed.
Following the trend of “firsts” we had a table outside the main hall at the first Launch.is conference run by Jason Calacanis. There was a pretty decent showing, though not as big as the other conferences and since the building was quite large, the crowd was pretty spread out. There were fewer investors than what I had seen at Disrupt and DEMO and the startup founders there were all fairly mellow. Overall, there was far more love for the startups at Launch, Calacanis sat down and coached each of the teams who were presenting; I think that’s a great mentoring opportunity. I didn’t hear of anything like this going on at Disrupt or DEMO.
Demo was in the heart of Silicon Valley and going on it’s 13th year! There were quite a few more enterprise related technologies being presented here and an audience that was clearly looking for such technologies. There were many technologists in the crowd, though most were a bit older than what we’ve seen at Disrupt or Launch where jeans and a t-shirt were appropriate attire. The event was very well planned and executed, but they’ve been doing this for years. Compared to other conferences, there were no “side-dishes”, each company was there to present on stage and the DEMO team definitely worked to get us as much attention as possible. The press folks we saw here were more interested in staying and chatting, not something we’ve seen at most other events. From a partnership perspective, there were many more business development folks from many of the SV companies looking for new technologies and ways to partner up.
Major Complaints
DISRUPT: Disrupt was definitely a “cool-kids” conference, while I made some great connections, it was clearly all koolaid. There were also too many companies at Disrupt between the Disruptors who presented on stage to the 30+ startup alley exhibitors. If you can’t hustle, don’t bother going to Disrupt.
LAUNCH: I don’t have many complaints about Launch, the folks who ran it were awesome, schedule was great and the crowd was good. Room for improvement but I think they’ll do great if they keep it going in future years.
DEMO: All attendees and demonstrators were ordered to leave upon the two-hour mark of the pavilion sessions. While I can see why they want to keep the area secure, we had the lights turned out on us and were approached by members of staff asking us to leave. At one point, a very well respected and highly interested investor was interrupted asked to leave the premises. That’s not conducive to a good pavilion environment.
* calculated based on published rates
In summary, if you’re looking for press, go to DEMO, if you’re looking for a good time, go to Disrupt, and if you’re looking for beta testers, go to Launch. Give us a shout if you have any specific questions or are thinking about attending one of these conferences!
The team at Launch
At TechCrunch Disrupt
Mid-sentence at DEMO
10 things Zazu can do to improve your mornings!
Zazu has evolved from its launch as an alarm clock with a voice. Today Zazu gives a user access to a variety of information that helps them get through their day. Here’s the low-down on a few ways to make Zazu work for you!
- Still groggy from the morning? Shut off the alarm and listen to Zazu, by pressing play at the bottom of the home screen, while shaving or on your way to work.
- Poor Fido! Tasks you don’t want to forget, lest your carpets need to be replaced anyways, put a note into an alarm and have the voice of Zazu remind you to walk the dog!
- Oh, what to wear?! Zazu shows you current and forecasted weather to figure out how to battle the elements of your day! Cold, hot or rainy, you’re prepared.
Quickie or breakfast? Whatever they call it these days, know if you’ve got time. Keeping a location in your calendar events lets Zazu calculate the estimated time of arrival to your next meeting. - In the car and on the run? Stop googling and copy-pasting locations into your maps app. Hit the Location icon next to an appointment to have maps with directions launch for you!
Brazillian Wax? For the deal addict in you, Zazu shows daily deals which are closest to where you are. - Hate the gloomy news? Listen to customized headlines from the feed of your choice by putting in a custom RSS Feed to The Onion!
- OMG I have to tell you… See something you want to share? Tap the Email Icon to email it off to a friend or tap the people icon to share it through Facebook and Twitter.
Heading home? It’s been a long day, the last thing you want to do is sit in traffic. Tap any of your appointments to take a quick peek at traffic in your immediate area.- Not a fan of Zazu’s robotic cousin? Fear not, we found a prettier one you can now upgrade to in the settings menu!
On that note, if sharing is caring, pass this on to anyone you believe would benefit from a better morning with Zazu. Hopefully these quick pointers will help you get something better out of your Zazu Mornings app!
Hanging out with Jodie O’Dell from Mashable at the Startup America HD Lounge at DEMO 2011!
And finally it’s now published online! Our presentation at the Fall 2011 DEMO conference in Santa Clara, CA where we announced Zazu Mornings for Android and iPhone, in addition to our integration with connected devices like your TV and Coffee Maker (We know you want one but its not out just yet!)
Ringing in our 7th week here on the West Coast this year, the Zazu crew is prepping for an exciting presentation this week at the 2011 Fall DEMO conference on Wednesday.
We’re looking forward to sharing some of our most recent work done in the digitally connected space and are very excited to share how we’re helping users make better use of their personal information on stage.
Our demo time slot is at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday the 14th, be sure to tune into the DEMO live stream at www.demo.com.
In the meanwhile, here’s a preview to our first day here setting up. You can find a quick video we shot while we were going through our rehearsal earlier this morning as well.
Zazu started as a fairly balanced team with both developer and business oriented founders. But as we began to bring on more team members, all of them ended up being developers, rightfully so, as we were still in the product construction phase.
In our journey through the last year, we’ve learned a lot while creating different products, networking, and exploring innovative marketing methods. We’ve compiled it all down into the few things we learned that we hope can help others working on early stage technology startups.
From the business and operations perspective
- You’ll never have all the right resources; it’s all about how you get your team to push through with what you’ve got. Be relentlessly resourceful (www.paulgraham.com/essays/relres.html)
- Don’t drink the koolaid. Know what’s happening around you, but focus on what’s important to you and your company.
- Set expectations for yourself and your team. In the end, nothing counts unless the job gets done and your team knows what must be done.
- Strike while the iron is hot. When you get press, planned or unplanned, it creates expectations among the audience. Be ready to capitalize off of this in any way you can, even if your product isn’t ready.
- Partner up. We partnered with PepsiCo and their brands; this subsequently opened up quite a few new opportunities, even the chance to wake up Enrique Iglesias in one of his new music videos.
From the technology and development perspective
- It’s useful to think about scaling, but you really shouldn’t worry about it in the early days. Just get your product to prove it’s worth, only once you’ve shown that people care (or don’t care) should you worry that your servers wont explode when that evil last user
- Don’t spend all of your time trying to fit all of that cool new hotness into your project; nobody cares if your technology is built on top of Web Scale Databases or Javacript-Backed Servers — just friggin’ build it.
Having built our apps in-house, we’ve found:
- Testing is a good thing, brownie points if you can formally prove something but formal proofs are a pain in the tuchus. (There’s nothing wrong with manual testing, but automated tests definitely are much better to create team confidence)
- Monitor all the things! Have a process monitor set up on your machines. Do it now. You don’t want to be stuck at a bar or on a boat in SF Bay, trying to ssh into your servers from your iPhone to restart a process; this actually happened to Marc (what a dolt :-P ).
- Never say never — don’t say “I can’t” but when in doubt, remember not to underestimate the power of self-imposed deadlines. You’re already insane enough to want to start something for yourself, you’ll never know what magic you can come up with until you try.
Ultimately, it all comes down to how you mix and match the resources you have to make something out of nothing. We’ve made some mistakes but focusing on the things that create immediate value has paid off for us as a startup. Don’t stress if you have different levels of work than your partners, focus on the responsibilities you each have individually
From the website of the organization that brought us all together!
A great write up by the folks over at Bostinnovation!
We’re excited to announce that Zazu Mornings is now available on the Apple AppStore! Zazu now provides integrated access to your personal information on any major smartphone device. The technology integrates a user’s calendars, local weather, deals, personalized news, and custom internet content. The recently launched applications include the original Zazu Alarm functionality and a newly released human voice developed by our team over the past few months. 
Zazu is the only technology across Android, Apple, and Blackberry (oh yes, we’re there too!) that can visually and verbally bring you information from your personal data sources to help you make informed decisions.
We live in a world where people are dependent on unintelligent smartphone applications to navigate to different sources of information; anyone who has opened three apps to see what’s in store for their day has experienced this insanity. Zazu’s technology enables your information to interact, like your calendar and location, creating personalized content like the directions and traffic to your next meeting. Zazu also enables intelligent content sharing, like drafting up an email for you to notify meeting attendees if you’ll be running late.
Smartphones should be smarter. We’re building technology that enables your personal information to work together. Zazu’s technology brings important media and content to the forefront of the digital overload we face today and focuses on deepening the interaction between our digital information. It’s time to think less and do more.
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