There are a lot of startup conferences happening. From Next Berlin to Web Summit, from LeWeb to Pioneers Festival, you could spend almost all of your time at conferences. How do select the ones to attend as an entrepreneur?
It’s hard, really hard. And I’d argue that if you’re an entrepreneur who want to make real business, you’d better go to conferences related to your industry, where you can find customers. But you still have to attend startup conferences to meet potential investors and partners.
Most events are open to anyone, but a few are invitation-only, like DLD Conference and NOAH Conference. I’ve attended the former earlier this year (which was pretty good) and NOAH Conference is happening next week in London (13-14th of November).
Having a look on the program and the list of attendees, it really seems to be a must-attend for internet entrepreneurs! The theme of this year is “How big can it get?”… and that’s a question that you’re constantly answering (or trying to) as an entrepreneur. It sometimes hard to admit for an entrepreneur, but what matters most for investors is the scalability of the business, not the margins, at least at first (if you have extraordinary margins but a low automatization potential (on the production as well as the sales process), it means that you’ll probably have trouble raising big money to grow big). Chicken-an-egg problem? Yes, part of. The current market reality is that you have no more to “only” show market proof, but also strong growth/scalable metrics to raise a significant amount of funding.
But back to the conference. More than 80 speakers, among other ones investment and entrepreneur superstars like Klaus Hommels, Oliver Samwer, Oleg Tscheltzoff (Fotolia) or Jean-Baptiste Rudelle (Criteo), will debate about the state of European internet during 2 days.
How do you get in? As an invitation-only conference, you either need to be invited directly… or you can request an invitation to attend NOAH Conference! If you do, please check “Other” and specify that you’ve heard about NOAH through startupolic.com! Of course, it’s no endorsment from me and it doesn’t guarantee you an invitation (I don’t know the exact selection criteria, but I assume that you need to be either a startup founder or an investors – pretty hard for consultants to get in!). Let’s try it! Good luck!