After the videos comes the recap.
I think it was a great idea to invite Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK to Switzerland and make it a semi-public event. That gave a stage to many startups. Some used it, others didn’t. We really should now think about doing more events like that, but in a more informal way, less suites and more fun.
First, I was very pleased to see that Switzerland actually has startups. Some are well known (Wuala, doodle, Zattoo, trigami). And then there are others (almost) nobody has heard of – if you do not “life startups”. And that I think is the big problem of Swiss startups. They do way to much stuff in the hidden.
Some tips
- Release Early, Release Often
- The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn
- Don’t wait for people to come to you. Go to them and ask “Can I demo you our product”. Dominik from wuala did there a great job. He traveled the world and demonstrated wuala. The same thing did Luca with dixero and the amazee folks. Why can’t you?
- At such an event, why on earth are you leaving early? You are there for publicity.
- Print your logo on your t-shirt like doodle or Starfruit did. It is very hard to find you if you look like an investor.
- Announce new stuff or features at such an event. There is no better place!
In general I think Swiss startups are way to passive. Of course there are exceptions but in general startups have the attitude of “You should come to me”. This is not going to work! Invest some time in building relationships with bloggers (and not only TechCrunch) and journalists.
And do not think you will be successful just because you are featured on TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, CenterNetworks or any other blog. Some of the startups we saw have a product that is not for techies, geeks or early adopters.
The general feedback on the Internet was more than disappointing. No media covered it, almost nobody blogged about it. And I really doubt if it was a good idea to “share” photos and videos with wuala.
Bluewin (daughter company of Swisscom, the venue sponsor) has some video interviews.
And last, I reward Yes AG with the coolest domain name: yes.com. They are located right on the other side of the Obersee. Maybe I will pay them a visit đŸ™‚
Well, thats absolutely true if you focus on the coverage of specific startups. But that doesnt mean, that they didnt got recognised by bloggers. I can just speak for myself, and i have a list here with startups i saw at the meet-up, which i want to cover (after some testing) on my blog.
Not specific on focus. More in general. Except for the attendees (you, me, the startups itself) nobody seems to care about this. Initiatives like IFJ don’t mention the event although some employees where there.