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What a Startup Riot 2009

Feb 19, 09 in Startups   11 Comments

Yesterday was the second rev of Startup Riot.  Forty nine companies and one make believe company gave three minute pitches on their startup.  Once again, it was a fantastic event.  Improved in every way from last year. 

WifiCat was a highlight.  WifiCat is in integrated cat collar and Wifi access point.  It's a joke. The parody that Scott Burkett presented on everything not to say and do in a presentation was laugh out loud funny.  Even more so because some of the morning presenters had violated the unwritten rules of pitching.  




Paul Freet gave the best presentation of the day.  Three slides.  Three pictures.  You had to listen to him to understand.  It forced people to look up from their laptop and phones.  While not the most technology driven company in the bunch Offload.me's value proposition is clear and compelling.  They provide remote personal assistants for busy executives. Eight words.  Use that many to describe your company.

There were three Atlanta Startup Weekend companies in the bunch.  Kidkey, Jumbis, and Twitpay.  I got a shoutout from the latter with a Madoff comparison. We used my business PayPal account to alpha test the Twitpay service during Startup Weekend.  I can assure you, all funds have been returned.

I believe for the first time we had companies traveling from out of state to attend Startup Riot.  ShoutNow (another Startup Weekend company) made its way from Indy and Kansas City, while WOMBeat! traveled from Tampa.

Somehow or the other the keynote speaker Chris Wanstrath, the founder of GitHub, joined our lunch party late and squeezed in next to me. He was late to lunch because he had to go take a shower after his presentation.  Puts Melanie Brandt's comment about the desire to wash his hair in perspective. Overslept it seems.  Both a nice and witty guy. Had our end of the table rolling.

Kudos again to Sanjay Parekh.  Too many good companies to mention.  More investors in the audience.  Companies traveling from afar.  Great networking between sessions.  Better in every way.

Two suggestions to make it better.  The Wifi failed before the show started.  We need more IP addresses available.  Get that and make folks pay for their own coffee.  As for the community.  Everyone, including me, needs to treat the presenting companies with more respect.  These folks are trying hard.  I feel sorry for the guy that was on stage when someone in the audience got rickrolled.  And some of the comments on BackNoise were down right mean spirited.  Sanjay started Startup Riot to help entrepreneurs and startups.  We all need to act in a way to further his mission.

One more thing: Stop with the walking down to Publix and buying six packs of beer.  There is a time and place for everything.  There are professional investors in the room that are starting to take an interest in concept and seed stage startups.  The after party starts at 5:00. Show a little restraint.

Doing those two things will make Startup Riot 2010 the best yet.  Even better then the fantastic 2009 version.

Update:  More coverage on Startup Riot by Paul Stamatiou, TechDrawl, and AtlanTech.

Comments

Lance,

Like you said it was a great event.

I want to talk about this part of your post:
“As for the community. Everyone, including me, needs to treat the presenting companies with more respect. These folks are trying hard. I feel sorry for the guy that was on stage when someone in the audience got rickrolled. And some of the comments on BackNoise were downright mean spirited. Sanjay started Startup Riot to help entrepreneurs and startups. We all need to act in a way to further his mission.”

As you may remember from the work you did in the GivingTi.me room at startup weekend I am not someone who offends easily. However yesterday when someone would ask I said very much the same thing. It is good to know that I am not the only person that thinks there is a bit of a disconnect. I imagine once more folks get going for the day you are going to start taking flack for this comment. People will say things like “startups should be willing to take criticism.”

Obviously constructive criticism is always good regardless of what channel it arrives in. Obviously things like BackNoise add to the conversation. Obviously having a diverse population of people makes a community stronger.

On the other hand, one of the things I enjoy about Startup Riot is that you see companies in all different stages, all different levels of preparation and all different levels of opportunity. The reality is what you really experience is your perception of those companies. I hope that every company that presented yesterday has things they need to do to improve, I know I do.

As a participant at the event yesterday, it is likely that the people on stage are often taking extreme risks to contribute in a major way to the startup community. Obviously you can’t have a startup community without startups. If someone is working a 9-5 or has already had their big one and they feel it is constructive for the community to take pot shots at those risk takers, I am comfortable saying it is a “bad look”. I think at this point in particular people are watching the community come alive and wondering what it will become and if it is sustainable.

Chris Morris  |  Feb 19, 09 at 09:21 AM

Thanks so much for this post, Lance. I think you're spot-on with your comments. I'm as snarky as the next guy in the right situation (probably more so) and I firmly believe in the benefit of constructive criticism, but making anonymous comments about some presenter's hair or Rickrolling people when someone is on stage is disrespectful and certainly not productive in any way. My rule of thumb is: If I'm not willing to put my name on it and say it publicly on Twitter, a blog, etc, then it's probably not something I ought to be saying publicly at all.

As a startup founder, I know how much work, energy, money, and devotion every single presenter has put into their business. There were some amazing ideas and some pretty hopeless ones, but we should respect every single person who got up there and tried to share something they're doing--at least they're being creative and taking risks.

That said, that was a very small part of what was going on there yesterday, and overall the event was fantastic--well organized with a great mix of people and a lineup that made the day fly by. Kudos to Sanjay for this one!

Kimberly  |  Feb 19, 09 at 09:54 AM

Backnoise is a valuable part of the experience for startups. For some reason, people are more honest when they're anonymous. Presenters that look at backnoise can get a lot of honest feedback from people they may not have run into otherwise.

That said, there's a difference in "Man this guy talks to fast" or "Those colors make that slide looks horrible" and "THIS COMPANY SUCKS" - Even snarkiness has appropriate and inappropriate levels. Everyone needs to remember they should be working to further the community, not detract from it by being a jerk - be it funny or not.

Great event yesterday - I had a ton of fun listening and enjoyed hanging out with everyone that was there.

Cheers!

Colin

Colin Ake  |  Feb 19, 09 at 11:34 AM

I actually like the anonymity option for commenting on BackNoise because the politics and power plays in every community have people reluctant to criticize the popular. I say if you wouldn't want your comment read aloud (though anonymously) at a business meeting of mixed genders and ethnicities, you probably shouldn't say it on BackNoise. And Lance is right about being disruptive and brown-baggin' from Publix, although the audience was generally very quiet and attentive.


Celia Dyer  |  Feb 19, 09 at 11:39 AM

The beer purchase was run by Sanjay, who said he had no rules against or for it and that he didn't care. Just for the record.

Colin Ake  |  Feb 19, 09 at 11:58 AM

I found out about StartuRiot the day it happened. I was able to follow the #startupriot tweets a bit and see a bit of the video. It looked like a great conference. I look forward to attending and possibly even presenting in 2010.

dabent  |  Feb 19, 09 at 12:46 PM

Quick comment on the beer drinking. Like Colin said, I was asked about this and never thought about this beforehand so I really couldn't come up with a reason to say no. In retrospect though, Lance and Celia make good points. Just from a perception standpoint, no one should want to come across as only being there to party. It's about building startups and if you seem to care about other things more - people won't think you seriously care about your business. So it probably makes sense to skip doing that next year and instead go to the after-party in full force. Heck, why pay for drinks when I'm willing to pay for them? :-)

Sanjay Parekh  |  Feb 19, 09 at 01:14 PM

Backnoise got out of hand. It started out silly, then there were on-topic snarky comments about business models, etc. and absurd off topic comments. That was ok, other than making people laugh.

Then things got mean, obscenities were hurled back and forth and every company got trashed simply because people were tired of watching pitches. It was unfortunate.

Russell Jurney  |  Feb 19, 09 at 01:50 PM

Thanks for the shoutout Lance. Our PageRank just tripled!

Paul Freet  |  Feb 19, 09 at 06:34 PM

I'm in agreement about the beer runs. We're talking about companies looking for serious money and investors looking to provide it. It doesn't help the perception of our community when investors see immature behavior in the corner. I kept my disruptiveness to Backnoise. At least that way it's not detracting from the presentations or the community appearance.

Tim Dorr  |  Feb 20, 09 at 02:01 AM

I watched Backnoise for the few minutes I was able to tether my Blackberry. Honestly, I don't see the value of it at all. The comments were either pointless, chest-bumping high-fives for "friendlies" (rarely based on the quality of presentation) or outright nasty comments about others ("outsiders", I guess) - easy when you hide behind a curtain of anonymity. Even if there was valid criticism, it's gone from the cue long before a presenter could even see it.

Let's leave the back-biting cliques in high school. Honestly, I couldn't give a damn what the local blog pool thinks about someone's company name or haircut, etc. We're not supposed to be picking out the cool kids - we're supposed to be helping each other people. If you have a valid criticism, think of a constructive way to share it with the presenter. That's the whole spirit with which Sanjay created this thing - who BTW did another exception job this year.

David Jones  |  Feb 20, 09 at 04:25 PM

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