Another sub-species is the organization that does nothing but get inactive VCs/Angels to small events and charge founders $20-$50 to attend and $100-$500 for 'a table' for the company Names like Lifograph (aka Cofounder Club) or FundingPost come to mind- They seem not to do anything except these crappy events constantly with the same 6-7 tired VCs year-round. Great way to charge for tickets, for 'tables' for companies to display, and sponsor fees.
Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
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Re: Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
#32This reminds me a whole lot of those "modeling agencies" that charge reasonably attractive young women with no hope of making it as a model for photo shoots.
There are also writing "competitions" that accept everything and anything, put all entries into some crappy "anthology" and then try to sell copies to everyone who entered.
Re: Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
#33I went to Collision (Las Vegas) last year, and it was a waste of time and money. Same startups, same VCs, same bloggers, etc, repeating the same stuff they said in a similar conference the week before i.e. loads of words are spoken, but no real content. Add to that the junk food they served, no seating (seriously, no seating through out the event for all the attendees), loud fans made it impossible to have a proper c…
>The only tech event I strongly recommend attending is LAUNCH Festival by Jason Calacanis.
Agreed. It's very well done. Also note that Jason has been very critical of the "pay to pitch" phenomenon: http://www.businessinsider.com/my-latest-war-angels-who-char...
Re: Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
#34Yeah, we had the same thing with the web summit run by the same people who run Collision. "Hey, we think you've got a great startup, and we'd love to talk to you to see if you qualify for our start-up track." After the interview, of course, they follow up with the exact same sort of line: "As you know, we can't invite everyone. However, I'm happy to say that it seems XXX is doing great things in an exciting space and…
> the package includes 3 attendee tickets, plus a complimentary exhibition stand
This is the kind of wording that drives me insane. If I'm paying for a thing, then anything that comes with that thing is by definition NOT complimentary.
Re: Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
#35We're attending Collision this May, and were offered the deal the article mentions. I wasn't cold called, but applied on their site directly for their startup offer. We saw it as a fair good deal, and didn't feel scammed at all. It took us one 10 minute phone call, and then we got offered the tickets for $1,500. It's our first conference, other ones we've looked at cost far more. So for a first one, we thought the ev…
I'll be there as well.. Hope we have a good time! Vegas for 3 days with hotel included isn't a bad deal..
Re: Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, we survived a couple of years on these kind of investments. It was a fulltime job for one founder; he burned out. But it kept us going.
It's weird to see you casually describing and justifying the deteriorating mental health of a person who was important to you. I don't think you'd do the same for, for example, RSI. "Hey, we survived a couple of years with a bad keyboard desk combination. Typing on that was a full time job for someone; they got RSI. But it kept us going".
I don't think it's a topic we need to tiptoe around. This is one of the few places where it should be normal to write about it casually. Describing it as 'deteriorating mental health' makes it sound like something to be ashamed of. Like burning out means you've gone bonkers. That attitude probably deters many founders from wanting to talk about it.
Re: Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
#37With this thread + yesterday's about WWDC being so "oversold" and people lamenting their desire to go back to the 500-person meetups of yore I thought I'd share a tip. I've found it helpful to purposely target the smaller, industry-specific or location-specific conferences. While you don't necessarily meet the "super angels" or luminary press figures, I almost always come away glad that I went. Two recent examples wa…
Check out Compute Midwest this fall. Previous speakers include founders/leaders from iRobot, reddit, Shapeways, D-wave, DARPA, interaXon, singularity, NASA Mars Rover project and so many more
Re: Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
#38Hey guys, Paddy G (@thepadman) from Collision here. Probably best for me to chip in and clarify the situation. We do get thousands of applications and make time to hop on calls to make sure the companies are viable and have cool teams. We end up choosing around 10%-15% of those who apply. Regarding registration; Physical space at any conference would come at a premium. As advertised, we're removing this element of th…
Thank you for taking the time to comment. As I make clear in the post, it's not the fact that you charge that is the problem. It's the misleading tactic of calling startups, making us present, asking us questions, then e-mailing us "Congratulations! Your company is great and we are selecting you after screening. You can now pay us $1,400." If you are not explicit when you reach out by e-mail in the first place about…
Thanks for your note. Paddy G here again.
The team are really sorry that there was a misunderstanding between us and the author of the blog article Lenny Teytelman over the cost of coming to Collision and taking part in our Collide track for startups.
We really try to be as transparent as possible about the costs of attending our events. We believe that we offer great value for money for all attendees, whether they are startups, investors, speakers or general attendees. At our flagship event, Web Summit in Dublin, the numbers of those attending have doubled every year - which we feel shows that many people agree that we provide a great networking experience. Some on this thread have mentioned this.
To be clear, in our call with Lenny there seems to have been a misunderstanding over costs. We followed up the conversation a week later with an extensive email setting out the costs and the benefits of attending in the hope that he and his exciting startup could come along.
I've checked with the team here and from the email correspondence he told us: “I misunderstood you during the Skype call. I thought you are waving the attendance fee of $1450, instead of reducing the price to that.” Which is fair enough and we apologise if we were unclear on the call in any way. He then declined to take us up on the offer and we left it there.
As I have mentioned earlier, our Startups page on the website collisionconf.com clearly states that while exhibiting for selected startups is free, there is a cost for attending. To quote:
'Each week we selected 25 early stage startups from around the world to exhibit for free as part of our Collide Program. The bigger tech companies pay $9,950 to exhibit, meaning exciting, disruptive, early-stage startups can afford to attend no matter what. All they will pay is a discounted price for tickets and Collide registration, and we’ll give them a free exhibition stand.'
Really sorry if Lenny feels we wasted his time. We were genuinely excited about the possibility of him attending Collision but as mentioned previously, we do need to make the effort to screen applications so that we present the very best experience for startups and investors at our events.
We are a technology startup ourselves and of course we can always improve what we do. We are working hard right now to make Collision in Las Vegas on May 5-6 a success for the hundreds of startups across 14 industry areas who are attending. The networking at our events has been called “legendary” and we try hard to live up to that tag.
We are reaching out to Lenny to offer our apologies for any misunderstanding and we hope that those on this thread who are attending Collision will report back on their experience.
Happy to answer any more questions. Feel free to drop me a line at Patrick.griffith@collisionconf.com.
Re: Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's weird to see you casually describing and justifying the deteriorating mental health of a person who was important to you. I don't think you'd do the same for, for example, RSI. "Hey, we survived a couple of years with a bad keyboard desk combination. Typing on that was a full time job for someone; they got RSI. But it kept us going".
I don't think it's a topic we need to tiptoe around. This is one of the few places where it should be normal to write about it casually. Describing it as 'deteriorating mental health' makes it sound like something to be ashamed of. Like burning out means you've gone bonkers. That attitude probably deters many founders from wanting to talk about it.
Maybe deteriorating mental health shouldn't be equated to "going bonkers", and then we won't be discouraging people from talking about something so common.
Re: Hey startup parasites: We don't have time for you
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for taking the time to comment. As I make clear in the post, it's not the fact that you charge that is the problem. It's the misleading tactic of calling startups, making us present, asking us questions, then e-mailing us "Congratulations! Your company is great and we are selecting you after screening. You can now pay us $1,400." If you are not explicit when you reach out by e-mail in the first place about…
Thanks for your note. Paddy G here again. The team are really sorry that there was a misunderstanding between us and the author of the blog article Lenny Teytelman over the cost of coming to Collision and taking part in our Collide track for startups. We really try to be as transparent as possible about the costs of attending our events. We believe that we offer great value for money for all attendees, whether they a…
Also, more than happy to meet up with anyone in person at Collision. I'll be off my feet during the day time but will be floating around Downtown/Fremont in the evening so just ping me on twitter.