5 Ways Events Help Startups Grow
With the rise of megaconferences in Europe like Web Summit, Slush and The Next Web gathering over 20,000 attendees each, tech event organizers are facing a critical challenge to remain relevant in such a competitive landscape.
Some entrepreneurs consider there are too many conferences already. What can event organizers do to better help them grow their business?
In the present post, we’ll be looking into the top 5 strategies applied by events to bring value to entrepreneurs and infuse growth to their companies. We’ll be focusing on Europe and most specifically on the founding partner events of Startup Sesame, the first European event accelerator program.
These strategies can be useful for any organizer, small or big, in and out of the technology world.
1. Differentiation is Value
The best way to stand out from a crowded market is to be different and tap into a smaller, unstructured segment of the market.
“Internet lets weird people find other weird people, which amplifies their weirdness”, according to Seth Godin. Events are here to help you live with your weirdness.
Conferences are like the Internet in the way they can tap into a specific niche and address customers who are looking for a community, a place and a message that resonate with their own life or business.
An important way for tech events to differentiate themselves is to cover a new topic or an emerging trend. Anybody starting a conference on Drones orArtificial Intelligence will be able to serve several industries at the same time and bring value to a community that still needs guidance on what its weirdness is about.
This is the role of Field Configuring Events as defined by Lampel and Meyer:
Field-Configuring Events (FCEs) are temporary social organizations such as tradeshows, professional gatherings, technology contests, and business ceremonies that encapsulate and shape the development of professions, technologies, markets, and industries. They are settings in which people from diverse organizations and with diverse purposes assemble periodically, or on a one-time basis, to announce new products, develop industry standards, construct social networks, recognize accomplishments, share and interpret information, and transact business.
Conferences like Arctic15 or Pioneers Festival have understood that it is critical to cover specific topics to remain relevant. If you’re into growth, and ready to exit… Arctic15 in Helsinki is made for you. And if you work with science and R&D based innovation, you’ll have to travel to Vienna in May for Pioneers. It’s a given. These guys were smart enough to find their own mojo early, get clients and their money.
A tech event is also poised to be different by its content and its format. It is a fact for anybody who has attended enough conferences to get bored and tired by the repetition of panels and fireside chat overdose. If you want to provide value to entrepreneurs, you’ll have to challenge yourself with what you’re delivering and the way you do it. No more sales pitch. Kill the unrehearsed keynote presentation.
LeWeb has been really good at curating content (disclosure: I was responsible of part of the program in 2014), but the format is still quite traditional. Challengers have tried to break some of the standards and established rules in its latest edition. And by doing so, the event was able to provide a different value to its attendees. Maybe it’s not good for everybody, but outstanding experiences are always memorable and talkative.