To attract investments to finance the project and, at the same time, to promote thoroughly - these are the goals pursued by startups, participating in various events. Conferences, seminars and various expert meetings are considered to be a mandatory item in startup circles. Sales? - What are you speaking about? - We are a startup! We need growth hack , networking , newsjacking , coworking , scaling and more pitches for a snack!

Seminars and business training

Let's start with the most useless and most obvious way to get into your pants pocket. These are business trainings and various thematic seminars with sensational “gurus” in the field. As a rule, such enlightenment meetings are held in the strongholds of laziness, hypocrisy, first-class visibility of work, procrastination, smoothies and an infinite number of unreasonable Ponts - coworking. Why do people go there besides attending these same seminars? After all, the house works much better and also for free - no one distracts, and even if it distracts, so the interior doors have been invented for a long time. Work there go only to find the reason not to work, but also to brag about your new MacBook and do selfies in the style of “# work_on_work”. How can you take selfies while working or, say, playing sports? You either work or not; or play sports, or come to take a selfie, so everyone thinks how good you are. And in general, how can you look beautiful in the gym? Wet armpits, greasy hair and a red, puffed face are very sexy. Although if you did not do anything there ... Something we moved away from the topic.
')


Go ahead. Most gusto, when the theme of such training is “ Achievement of the goal ”, “ Motivation ” and other trends for lazy people who need a magic Pendel. I will tell you a secret on these two issues so that you no longer spend your money. Just do not tell anyone. To achieve the goal, you need to work long and hard, and to find motivation, then you either have it or it does not. Everything. I don’t even take money from you. It’s not a place for start-ups, because when they’ve already gone there, they’ll still fail if they are looking for motivation. And professionals can come only with the purpose of having fun from these wonderful speeches.

Not once have I seen these gurus, who talked about the importance of dreams and goals, while the hands themselves were blacker than the fertile land, and the network card badge was some kind of bargain.

Startup Conference

Here the audience will be more impressive. The spectators at such conferences know what they need to do and when, but how - after that they go to the conference to the experts, having opt out a little of their savings, which were intended for the development of their own startup. A start-up conference is a storehouse of knowledge ... for regular visitors to self-development trainings. If you are a little on the subject and come for secret information from the “myth-gatherers”, then I hurry to disappoint you: “experts” come to the conference with the same purpose as you come to them as speakers: for PR. Remember when you were asked to tell the audience about your methods of increasing sales, or maybe you yourself asked to speak, what was your first thought? “This is a great opportunity for PR!” And now let's turn on logic and elementary arithmetic: How many visitors listened to you? About 50 people, about 200 at best, if the organizers know their business. But start-ups as speakers rarely come to such names. Usually, those who have previously had experience in failing business are invited. But you are just starting. And so, the coverage is 100 people. Costs - gasoline or a train ticket (provided that you did not pay for the participation, which is not a fact), as well as a lot of time on the road, preparing performances and the event itself. But for comparison, how many views would your post on Megamind generate? - On average - 3,000 (from the experience of 2Polyglot , the blog of the international freelance platform for language professionals), while the coverage of the resource is more than 1 million! Costs - only time and payment for the Internet. In addition, the result of your work can be checked. How do you evaluate the real effectiveness of the conference? The number of experts with whom you drank coffee at the same table on the coffee break?



One more thing. Real professionals have no free time for such conferences. They either raise their business, or spend time with the family, for which they already lack this precious resource, and Facebook commentators give speeches at conferences. With few exceptions, giants who have created a steady passive income come from idleness to such conferences, but you cannot get to them from your bottom: their real advice is too expensive.

Well, exactly the last. Some startups even go to special conferences to build connections, study psychology and NLP to learn how to properly lick the asses of a limp. Even the term for this special came up with - networking. This is just some kind of fashion that has gone - to come up with clever names for elementary concepts, for example, as a cleaner today - this is already the manager of a cleaning campaign. Of course, the conference on the technique of sycophancy - sounds undignified.

Startups contests

By participating in any battles, contests and tournaments for startups, you can kill 3 birds at once: PR, attracting investments and your own hopes for PR and attracting investments at such events.

And we will get all this if we give light to the party conferences of startups and experts in the industry. But how! Let's go see and show others. More show yourself, of course, but it does not matter. But few people think that all the other “experts” came for the same.

At competitions for startups there are 3 types of participants:

1. The organizers
2. Jury experts
3. Startup teams

And now let's understand, to which of these 3 categories you are going to promote.

Organizers They are just on that and earn that you come to them, and conversations with you, what your company does and what your unique product is - it is deeply on the drum. I hope you were not going to be remembered by them, so that the next time they invited you themselves, for this is a silly idea.

Experts on the jury . It implies, or at least you really hope so, that real investors are sitting on the jury, who have come to choose a worthy startup and invest a million dollars in it. Do not amuse yourself with vain hopes. Real investors just at this time help startups in which they have already invested. Let me tell you a secret ( for free ): investors need startups just as much as startups need investments. This is their bread and investors also have competition: who is the first to invest in a promising startup. Each round of investment implies its own approximate percentage of the company. In the first round, the amount of investment is the smallest, but at the same time the proportion is very attractive, respectively - the highest percentage of future profits. As the saying goes: “Who is the first, he and the father” - but in this case it is an advantage for investors.



We have already written , in the autumn of 2015, an international competition of start-ups Venture Days was held in Prague, at which 50 investors were announced, but in fact there were 4! The organizers ran with wheelchairs and changed diapers to their children, and the organization itself was at such a level that the presentations of the speakers were confused as the wires of the headphones in my pocket. But startups were dark, only to whom they told about themselves is unclear. Each other, I guess. But Ponte was ... and the price was broken: € 350 for two team members for 2 days.



In December 2015, in Ukraine, Get in the Ring , where startups competed for the opportunity to reach the final in Amsterdam, was held. The competition was held in several stages in the regions, and the final of the country was held in Kiev. And do you think at least one finalist received the investment? And just do not say that, apparently, startups were unworthy, etc. If there were no worthy, the jury would not choose anyone to defend the honor of the country in the international arena. So that's not the point.

And what is most overwhelming, some participants directly stated: “We do not need investments. We are here for PR ”. For PR? Which of these 3 groups will potentially buy something from them? At such bazaars, only sellers gather: the organizers sell their services, startups try to sell themselves, and experts sell their personalities. And where are the buyers? - Yes, they are not there at all.



Startup teams . Find partners? Potential mutually beneficial cooperation? Drop it, nobody cares. People are struggling to go further, and they will crush you with pleasure. There you can only make enemies, not partners. All the participants are so focused on themselves that they only think about how to make their pitch on the go even better, so that everyone has their jaws open. No one really remembers what you do. All are interested only in themselves.



And finally, another free, but very valuable advice. If you want to attract investments , then you need to go directly to investors. This will give you the opportunity to bank the person you really want to see as your investor. Since attracting investments is not only money, but long-term cooperation with a person who not only gives you money on human terms, but also helps you with connections, tells you what to do, as he is an expert who has passed the fire , and water, and copper pipes. And he is interested in you acting correctly, because your business is his money. But the best thing is not to look for investors at all, but to make a self-sufficient product, and as soon as you start generating a good income, believe me, they will come running to you. Many investors are afraid to invest in startups that do not earn anything yet, so they are often slow with the round “A”. And you can not even dream about attracting investments without MVP at the idea stage. So only persistent and long work without spending time on all sorts of shows will help you get a real PR, increase sales, and finally investments, if you cannot do without them.