Tech Cocktail’s Celebrate 2014 Conference in Las Vegas Recap

While there was a lot of celebration at Tech Cocktail’s annual conference and startup showcase, aptly named ‘Celebrate’, there was even more inspiration, also aptly housed within the Inspire Theater in Downtown Las Vegas. You might think that for illustrious keynote speakers like David Copperfield or Tony Hsieh, it would be easy to inspire audiences, however in the own words of the down-to-earth grand illusionist, “it never gets easier”. Inspiration is certainly not easy but the formula is fairly simple — learn from failure, give before you get, and bring delight to people.

In Copperfield’s case, he listened to no after no until finding the one person who would give him his breakthrough, who recognized the value in his story telling approach to magic. Up until this point he would perform for little to no money. The one thing that has always helped him was how in tune to his audience he was. Bringing delight to people by evoking memories they may not have even known they had was one of the key strategies for Copperfield’s continued success. The tiniest details were extremely important for everything to culminate in a successful show. To this day he stands by this mantra. His main concern these days is creating a similar kind of illusion for tycoons to retreat to a place filled with wonder. The Copperfield Islands incorporate pieces of sensation and stories that are a natural progression from his magic tricks.

Tony Hsieh learned the hard way to value company culture. When a dull office environment eventually led to the collapse of his first company, Tony later assured himself he would not let that happen at Zappos. Tony has now moved beyond selling apparel and talks about creating “collisionable cities”. Realizing that a city is not so different than a startup, he has been investing in local restaurant owners, parks, as well events like Celebrate and Life is Beautiful throughout downtown Vegas. Though not every investment has paid off, the risk he says is worth taking. The idea that the number of social, intellectual and spiritual collisions can be a metric to facilitate the growth of communities has led to experiments like Downtown Project. Delighting people with the surprise of new businesses, unexpected art, and chance pockets of retreat is quite familiar for any entrepreneur whose reward is as much seeing the smile on customers’ faces as it is the money in your hand.

Waveborn has acquired a similar mix of wisdom when it comes to building a business from the ground up. From the beginning we came at the problem without any significant experience in the eyewear industry. While that meant lots of mistakes were inevitably made, it was also a gift because it allowed us to think creatively about how to make customers happy. Giving is at the core to our business as evidenced by our social mission to give sight to the world. Sometimes people have asked why our donations don't just focus on helping our hometown or only residents of the United States. Even in this 21 century it might be difficult to see the direct consequence of helping someone half a world away. We stand by our conviction that the global community will benefit economically and socially if more people are able to see. On a related note, we built our business on word of mouth marketing. Although it has taken four years to get to this point, we know that the loyalty of our customers will be much stronger because of our long-term approach. The Tech Cocktail community is one that is intimately familiar with helping other entrepreneurs. Feedback in many ways is the most valuable currency. During the competition we had multiple judges say either that we were their personal favorite company or provide useful criticism of our pitch. The more we talk about Waveborn to customers, mentors, and investors the more we craft and refine the pitch. We know that giving sunglasses to people who attended the conference will pay itself back multiple times because of the excitement and the sense of community we are nurturing. It creates buzz and intrigue that once it gains momentum, has the potential to be unstoppable.