Slashdot Mirror
Why CES Is a Bad Scene For Startups
Nerval's Lobster writes "If you're a small-to-midsize tech company, CES isn't exactly the best place to get noticed. Every January, thousands of developers and startup executives flood Vegas with dreams of a big score. But they're not headed to the poker and blackjack tables in pursuit of that filthy lucre—instead, many of them have dropped thousands of dollars on a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), arguably the highest-profile technology conference of the year. (In addition to the tens of thousands of dollars it costs to reserve a space on the convention-hall floor, that money goes to demo units, flying employees to Vegas, and much, much more.) If they haven't managed to secure a spot in one of the Convention Center's massive halls, they've set up a demonstration area in a suite at some hotel on the Strip. And if they're too under-capitalized or unprepared for a hotel, they're lurking in the Convention Center parking lot. Seriously. It's a little insane. But in a certain way, you can't blame the startups: at some point, someone told them that CES is the best way to get their company noticed, even if it means blowing the equivalent of three employees' yearly salaries. On paper, the get-a-booth strategy makes sense—aside from SXSW, CES hosts possibly the greatest concentration of tech journalists in a relatively small space. What many first-timers don't realize (until it's too late) is that startups have a hard time standing out amidst the chaos: there are too many companies at too many booths attempting to sell (at top volume) too many variations of the same core ideas. If that wasn't bad enough, a fair portion of those companies are trying to draw attention with flashing screens, giveaways, music pumping at top volume, and other gimmicks. (Hey, it's Vegas.) So not only does your Nike FuelBand knockoff need to compete against a hundred other 'smart bracelets' on display, but you somehow need to make yourself visible despite the plus-size Elvis impersonator belting out 'Don't Be Cruel' in front of that chip-vendor's booth a few steps away. That's just the sort of quixotic endeavor that would drive even the most stalwart startup founder to drinking before 9 A.M."
Back in the day Macworld used to have a small company area ("ghetto") so the public and press could easily find them. Was it in the south convention center?
They should do the same thing for any of the big tech trade shows.
Sometimes startups have to go, because one of their investors forced them to. When they money man insists, you go. The above idea should make it a bit more practical...though a targeted show is probably a much better use of your startup's money.
Why do people pay for booths at trade shows?
Because sometimes they actually work. They attract customers and investors. They put you in front of people who might not otherwise see you.
They aren't trying to sell to you personally, Mr. alphatel. They are trying to sell to 1% of the people who will walk past their booth. Or maybe they are going after the 0.01% of people walking past their booth who are looking to invest.
Advertising doesn't have to be on target to 100% of the people out there. It just has to get enough of the message to enough of the right people, at the right time. Trade shows put two out of three of those within the grasp of anyone who can afford to present at one.
John
But it sure is a great place to get laid. And since men go into business to make money so that they can get laid I think disintermediating the process and jumping right to the 'get laid' part is a better business decision.
Right, and it's a demonstration of how poisonous innovative culture in the US is. Everything is about being noticed and spectacle, not about useful ideas, even when targeting so-called experts. Marketing permeates American culture and destroys everyone that doesn't buy into the catastrophic tragedy of the commons it creates.
CES has a "New and innovative Technology" section (not the actual name I think), in the Venetian (the main show is in the convention center). It's where a lot of smaller and more interesting companies hang out.
CES has done what they can to separate smaller companies with new stuff from the establishes behemoths of the show that have blocks of display space. The real question is, what value can a company gain even if they are noticeable there? For the money you spend going to CES you could reach so many more people in other ways I think, virtual and physical...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Judging from what Scoble has done for (or to) Glass, why would you pay for that exactly?
Scoble should start a racket where you have to pay him monthly not to publish pictures of him and your product in an illicit shower encounter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We live in a world of constant information flow. Betting anything on one big discrete burst of information is an anachronism. Trade shows are just one example. The other one that always leaps to mind is quarterly releases of financial information such as employment or sales for corporations. Sales data are being aggregated every second. You know that there is something to be gained from jumping the gun on quarterly releases, and you know somebody is doing that.
Anyway, trade shows are an anachronism. There's no reason to--what? Vegas? Holy crap. Forget everything I just said. Vegas, Baby!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
CES is just the physical manifestation of the market in general, which is tough to crack wherever you go. If you think CES is noisy, try hanging out a shingle on the WWW, or hawking your stuff on ebay. The economy is a big casino with not that many big winners.
At least from a marketing point of view they are poison. Unless you happen to be the best, cheapest and most innovative around. And nobody is all three.
These shows have two key drawbacks for you as a presenter. One, they are at a certain moment in time. And as Murphy's Law has it, either your Next Big Thing (tm) is not done yet or it was done 8 months ago and nobody gives a shit anymore. And second, you're not alone there, everyone you are competing with is there and your customer can compare trivially easily how you fare against your competitor.
Now why the heck would I want that?
You are paying an insane amount of money to put yourself into the shark pit. Instead, if you're a big company, you can easily launch your own private "we have done it" party and invite a ton of journalists where they may report about you, and only you, where you can bombard them with the awesome new features of your gadget without them being able to see that your competitor has all that and more. And if you're small, well, the last thing you need in the first place is to be put next to a monster gorilla who outshines you in every aspect. It's like trying to get noticed with your hot dog booth next to the worlds biggest food court.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's exactly why a startup should be at CES.
And thats exactly why if your business model relies on being a copycat product, you should probably rethink your startup. If CES is truly your wakeup call in this regard, well, at least you found out before shipping a product...
The important thing (for any conference) is to realize why you specifically are there, and what you specifically want to get out of it. If you're going just because it's your industry and you think you should be there, then your priorities are messed up and you're wasting your money.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I can say that I've never had a single sale at a tradeshow
Our company has never closed a sale at a show, but we've certainly come back from many shows with leads that translate into business. I staffed a show last year that resulted in one $60K sale alone... Assuming our cost to attend was $20K, that's $40K that wouldn't have been in our pocket otherwise - And that's just one example of many.
But it's not really about publicity - I know when I've been to the show myself, there's basically loads of people wandering aroudn just trying to get as much free stuff as they can. Possibly only 1% of people you turn up to your booth actually wants to know about your product and most of them won't actually generate any business.
The reason why? Easy - if I want to know about your product, I'll go Google it, see if your company/product turns up, then maybe call you up if I want/need more information about it.
Trade shows are a vestige of the pre-Internet age. They formed at a time when getting info on new and upcoming tech was actual work, or involved slogging through phonebook-thick magazines containing up to 80% ads, 15% fluff, and 5% actual useful information.
Back in the day, you went to COMDEX, NetWorld, and all those shows because that was the only way you were going to learn jack about the products. You also got something the trade pubs and (at the time) embryonic web could not provide you at the time: a working demo of the damned thing. Even on a non-generic level, you didn't go to Novell's Brainshare to take in the party atmosphere of Salt Lake City in Winter - you went so you could learn something, and to test out the new bits before you committed a purchase order to it.
COMDEX and NetWorld died a long time ago. CES is IMHO an anomaly - a holdover from that era.
Some hybrid trade shows cropped up (see also VMWorld), but the trade-show aspect is secondary to the goal of testing/teaching/advertising by the primary sponsor (VMWorld also had a neat trick of allowing selected customers to speak directly with various developer teams, so that you could suggest features, bitch about stuff that didn't work so hot, and show off tricks and tips you learned independently of them. In return, they got feedback on potential products they were building in pre-Alpha stage.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
And no "dry hustle" booth babes; they are, basically, prostitutes.
What kind of rule could you possibly make to get rid of these metaphorical prostitutes?
1. No hot girls at booths?
2. Only allow smart/talented people at booths?
3. No slutty outfits?
These are all pretty subjective judgements. I am not saying it can't be done. I just have no idea how.
I think the booth babes will disappear when they are no longer profitable and when this fact is clear to the companies that currently hire them.
Given that CES happens in Vegas at almost the same time as the pron trade show, and that there is a lot of overlap between pron and electronics, a lot of the same people attend both shows. I can imagine this skewing CES to be more erotic and AEE to be more technology oriented.
I've never been to either CES or AEE. I have been to E3 once back when they still had booth babes. I found it to be pretty dumb, but a lot of the people there seemed to be really into it. I guess that's changed since I went.
I think the booth babes will disappear when they are no longer profitable and when this fact is clear to the companies that currently hire them.
You thought wrong. Both women and men like looking at women's hips and breasts. Youth and beauty are signals for fertility. Advertising leverages this innate human response to associate products with desirability. When you've undone millions of years of instinctual evolution and sexual selection pressure, there won't be any "booth babes", because there won't be any damn booths.
The reason why? Easy - if I want to know about your product, I'll go Google it,
And how are you going to Google for "the latest, greatest, newest product that I don't know about yet"? Google is great to get more information about stuff you heard about already. These fairs are meant to find stuff you don't know about yet.
Being investing in many start-ups for 2 decades or so, and been couple of times played that wide-eye start-up entrepreneur role, I really pity the current crop of entrepreneurs.
There have been too many con-artists in the investment scene.
Yes, many of us are there to invest our real money for those with solid ideas - but there are those who went in, pretending to be interested in investing, but some how, for whatever reason they pulled out at the last moment, carry with them great ideas that they often transformed into a sell-out end product.
I know few of them, and I also met with some of their victims.
I count myself very lucky that when I *was* starting up there wasn't so many con-artists rubbing shoulders with us who were looking for funding.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !