JumpStart: IdeaExchange Blog

Have you heard about 3 Rivers Venture Fair? The venture fair where past featured companies have gone on to raise over $292 million dollars? The one where last year, 44% of the presenting companies raised capital as a result of the fair?

Whether you have or haven’t, I’m guessing that if you are looking for funding for your high growth company, you are intrigued. Good! Now turn that interest into action today by applying to present. While applications are being accepted on a rolling basis, we have heard that they’re pouring in and 30% of the spots are already taken! If you want to be considered to present your company to more than 500 A-list venture capitalists, private investors, I-bankers, and other business leaders, I’d be sure to fill out the application online no later than Friday May 29. I think after that, there will be very few (if any) spots left.

A few other things to note:

• If accepted, you’ll need to attend a mandatory Bootcamp from 12 - 5 pm on Thurs Aug. 13 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.
• Also, you’ll need to pay ~$600 for your attendance, which gives you the chance to exhibit for the entire conference. (Remember, last year, at least 44% of companies got a payback on those investments!)
• The fair itself is Sept. 15 and 16, also at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

Finding out more about 3 Rivers Venture Fair is easy, so put this on your list of things to do today.

Cathy Belk is the Chief Marketing Officer of JumpStart. She specializes in branding, marketing communications, and business management. She brings 16+ years of experience in a variety of marketing and business roles, but gets her energy from working daily with entrepreneurs and their growing companies.

Most marketers dream about having oodles of market research to direct their activities, and most of us (probably all of us) get used to not having it — or at least, not oodles. But one of the best things about blogs and other Web 2.0 communities is that you can get feedback — directional, for sure — quickly and easily. A dream come true! So I’ve been thinking about one of JumpStart’s opportunities lately and could really use your help and feedback to shape it.

Last year, JumpStart kicked off a new series of lunch seminars, called Growing Bright Ideas, focused on topics relevant for early-stage technology entrepreneurs leading high growth companies. As a quick recap, here were the topics:

1. Technology Marketing: Crossing the Chasm (June 2008)
2. New Media: Tricks of the Trade (August 2008)
3. Founder Frustrations, CEO Mistakes (November 2008)
4. Hiring Smart: Advice for Hiring Top Talent (December 2008)
5. Fundraising: What you Must Know (March 2009)
6. The Term Sheet: What you Must Know (April 2009)

Sound familiar? I hope so. Some of my personal highlights from the seminars include: enjoying HBS Professor Noam Wasserman’s slides with super-hero characters as the proxy for entrepreneurs (yeah!), laughing at Bonnie Gwin’s stories about interviewing candidates for positions, learning the “real deal” on negotiating term sheets from Steve Lindseth and John Saada, and getting to meet new folks joining our Northeast Ohio entrepreneurial community in every seminar.

We are in the process of planning for next fall’s seminars, and this is where I start dreaming about getting some feedback on where to take the series. There are three questions that your answers to would be really helpful:

1. What topics would be most interesting to you that we cover next year (and aren’t being offered elsewhere?)
2. Are you interested in a “101″ level program, or something more advanced?
3. What else should we be considering? (bigger venue, more podcasting of the seminar topics, having the seminars over breakfast, etc)

If you are an entrepreneur leading, or interested in leading, a high growth early-stage technology company, please let me know how we can evolve this series to meet your needs.

Cathy Belk is the Chief Marketing Officer of JumpStart. She specializes in branding, marketing communications, and business management. She brings 16+ years of experience in a variety of marketing and business roles, but gets her energy from working daily with entrepreneurs and their growing companies.

In this age of Twitter, Facebook, et al, you must be thinking it’s crazy to bring up the “old-school” approach of getting to a particular audience through participating in a trade show (presuming you have a B2B offering). While avoiding trade shows in these lean times can seem really smart, I’d like to propose a contrarian view.

It’s certainly true that trade shows can be frustratingly inefficient sometimes (and certainly time consuming), yet there are cases where attending and even exhibiting at certain events can make a lot of sense.

I have experienced several scenarios where spending the time, effort and money on attending or exhibiting at a trade show was worthwhile. The first scenario: conferences that offer the right audience, but no booth space. Sometimes these can be prohibitively expensive. However, let’s take an example where you are trying to meet with well-healed corporate buyers whom you KNOW will be there and reaching out to set up meeting times around the conference can be really efficient and could, in fact, be the ONLY way to get to them. You don’t have to be attending the $2,500 conference to meet in a coffee shop at a hotel where the conference is taking place - and in fact this might have been where you would be meeting with them even if you DID pay the fee!

A second scenario: you simply walk a trade show where you’ve secured a visitor’s badge (read = > cheap!), scouting out badges of likely prospects and looking over the competition. Again, not too expensive, and an efficient way of gaining some market knowledge really quickly. And, don’t forget to try and get into the press room to meet up with reporters that follow your business and see if you can gain any insights into the “buzz” in your industry.

The last one, which I have personally had a lot of luck with, are trade shows where the booth setup is reasonable (i.e. the cost of the booth plus the space cost is relatively inexpensive) and where you can get direct access to your key audience, including customers, press, analysts and investors. If you’ve never planned and executed a trade show firsthand - find a friend who has! Doing your homework ahead of time can make this experience incredibly more successful. Trade-Show-Advisor offers the basics, to get you started at least.

In addition, if the timing is right, consider using a show where you are an exhibitor to introduce your product to the press who follow your industry - many if not all of whom should be in attendance. Advatum offers some good advice on that front.

So, what does participation in these trade shows do for an emerging company?

• You are forced to plan, practice and deliver your “pitch”. You may find it doesn’t work quite as well in public as it did in the office. Perfect — simply adjust and try it a few more times – in the next 15 minutes at a show! The net is, by the time the show has ended, you will have practiced and delivered your value proposition to perfection. Use this knowledge afterwards to refine all of your marketing touch points.
• I used to have a goal of “paying for the show” by securing enough deals to cover all the costs, including travel. In almost all instances we were able to do more than this. In one case, we changed the entire direction a product was headed in and the company had an exit based on that new strategy. Without the knowledge gained at that show, we may have never chosen to take that very successful path. Now THAT’s a useful trade show!
• Trade shows can help “build your buzz” within a well-defined market. By networking with press, analysts, customers and others at these events, it will also greatly assist you in forming a better picture of your market and all the players.

Don’t get me wrong — I am not advocating this for everyone, nor am I suggesting huge investments in trade show booths and giveaways. I do, however, believe that when done properly, there can be great benefits derived from this kind of activity, for the short and long-term benefit of your company.

John Dearborn is the Chief Development Officer of JumpStart and brings experience as an entrepreneur, founder and CEO at companies across the US and Europe over the last 25 years to the pursuit of economic transformation in Northeast Ohio.