TechCrunch20 Agenda
I’m working on the program for the TechCrunch20 conference I’m co-hosting with Mike Arrington in September and I wanted to get a little feedback from you guys.
Oh yeah, we also announced three more experts for our really amazing (if I do so say myself!) panel of judges.
Now, the conference itself is dedicated to the 20 presentations by 20 great startups–that’s the product side of the event (and that will be 50% of the programming). For the other half of the program we’ve been kicking around what I think are the major moments in the lifespan of the company–outside of product creation/evolution.
Lifespan of a company (six panels)
- Raising Seed Capital
- Angels investors (thinking folks like Ron Conway, Mark Pincus, Reid Hoffman, Mark Cuban, etc.) discuss how to land your first round of capital, what they look for, and what the deal terms should be.
- Raising Venture Capital
- A group of seasoned VCs discuss what they are looking for (i.e. Roelof Botha, George Zachary, etc), how to pitch them, when to pitch them, and how they sell deals internally.
- Making Money from Advertising
- Since advertising is the #1 revenue stream on the Internet I think dedicating panel to discussing: how generate advertising when your service is small/medium sized; how to build and scale a sales organization; what cutting edge advertisers like to experiment with (thinking marketing chiefs who did blogs, social news, and video on the Internet early–the risk takers).
- Making Money from Subscriptions
- Getting users to pay is the second most common method of making money for Web 2.0 companies so I think this is a great–and overlooked–panel. Topics including: converting free-to-paid; companies like Flickr and TypePad that have large bases of subscribers; pricing; and maintaining your margins.
- Creating Buzz for your Company
- Getting attention for your ideas is crucial when trying to attract users, employees, advertisers, investors, press, and–eventually–an exit. Thinking about having masters of getting attention for their products (i.e. folks/companies like Kevin Rose, Facebook, Om Malik).
- Selling your Company
- Thinking folks who have had major exits, bankers, lawyers, and buyers (Quincy Smith from CBS, MySpace/Newscorp folks, Toby Coppel from Yahoo, etc).
Any suggestions for questions, topics, speakers, companies, etc. that you would like to see addressed?
Oh yeah… are you coming to the event?! Register here.
