#mobicamp

As Summer is quietly over, the season of startup conferences is starting again. Of course, as an entrepreneur, you cannot go to every conference and you have to select carefully where you would like to invest your time. Because as well as you can do (extremely) interesting contacts for the future of your business, most of the time, you don't get any direct return on investment at startup conferences (of course, it's completely different when you are attending an industry conference directly related to your core business). And nobody is preparing this urgent customer proposal or is developing your product when you're "off* to conferences. You should know that time spent at conferences is a mid-/long-term investment.

I'm not telling startup conferences are a waste of time. NOT AT ALL! But you have to select carefully…

As you've read 2 weeks ago, a new startup conference is happening in Lyon beginning of October. And then, you've 3 interesting conference end of October. All on the same time (30-31.10.2013). Too bad, nobody has - yet - invented the ubiquity gift!

Here are these conferences (in no particular order):

Dublin Web Summit: this conference happening is the biggest in Europe, with more than 7'000 (8'000?) people attending. Speakers' panel is amazing… so do the number of startups exhibiting their concept and pitching. I've been there last year (please read "Ireland - a European startup eldorado?") and the least I can say was that it was pretty good. Lot of interesting companies and people I've met there. The key question is how to approach the big guys in such a big conference? With so many people attending, you'll get a lot more competition to go talk to famous investors (and don't dream too much: even if you have 30 seconds to pitch them, except if they don't know you already, it's pretty hard to get attention or that they remember you afterwards). You can still book your ticket for EUR 595.- until September 27th (it's still affordable, in comparison to other big startup conferences)

mobicamp: the third edition of this interactive one-day conference (mixing workshops, keynotes and personal advices), organized by Martin Coul, will happen on 31st of October in Bern. As the unique conference with mobile at its center, it's a must-attend conference for people of the mobile industry based in Switzerland (well, if you're not abroad!). You can register for CHF 349.- if you're a startup… UPDATE: use the code "Startupolic" to get a 10% discount on every ticket (startup and corporate). And I also have ONE massively discounted ticket (half price) for you! Seize the opportunity and participate to the following competition:

tweet why you'd like to attend mobicamp with the hashtag #mobicamp and #startupolic

send me the link of your tweet (from twitter directly) at seb (at) startupolic.com

the one with the biggest numbers of "favorited" and RT until September 29th (at 23:59:59) get the discount!

Pioneers Festival, Vienna: this festival is gathering more than 2'500 people from whole DACH (Deutschland / Austria / Switzerland) and from Eastern European countries. There is a number of interesting people attending, like Christophe Maire, Dave McClure or Sean Seton-Rogers, among many more. There's also a startup competition. You can get your ticket for EUR 301.- if you're a startup! ICT Investors Day: the second edition of Western Switzerland (which I'm organizing) is happening in Lausanne on November 4th. Seize the opportunity to take part at this competition, where 8 startups will pitch their business in 90 seconds (and one slide) and the audience will select the 4 ones it would like to learn more about (the 4 selected will have a 10-minutes pitch + 10 minutes Q&A)! Application deadline for startups is October 6th, at 23:59:59. For investors, registration deadline is on 1st of November at 17:00 (CET). Don't wait, register!

Personally, I have quite a luxury problem: I'm invited to Dublin Web Summit, Pioneers Festival and mobicamp.

Which one should I attend? Who can help me?

Like so many British folks waking up this Monday, Martin Coul the founder and energy behind the Swiss Mobicamp (read my previous post) initiative is incredibly proud of the fantastic achievement London has reached over these past few weeks in delivering what is mostly recognized as the "best Olympic games and Paralympics ever"...

Even though Switzerland is now his home (for our great pleasure!), Martin wanted to celebrate this London pride.

He'll offer 10 x discounted tickets to Swiss Mobicamp (taking place in Bern on 1st November). The Olympic inspired discounts will vary each day from between 14%-29% and will only be available in limited quantities and on a first come, first served basis.

This Monday was the first discount, and you could have saved 21%... Not bad!

First mobile base camp took place on Wednesday at Swisscom office. Around 100 people, from which a good 80% were working in startups, attended the event.

Morten Grauballe explained the story and challenges faced by his company, Red Bend. An interesting point was when he discussed about standards and recommended not to reinvent the wheel. Standards have the advantages to allow for a conversation, create market categories, foster competition, allow to reuse some technology. He also warned entrepreneurs: not everything is a platform (as lot of founders talk about their product as such). Another worthful quote was that " software is universal, people no", supporting that team is everything!

Martin Tannerfors from Kumquat Labs talked about his start-up experience oversea (in the Bay area) and in Europe. He described 5 personal observations about Bay area, as  "don'ts", that is... don't:

Spend for smooth talking biz dev person: your counterpart wnat to discuss with CEO and CTO (people who really matter in startup)

Leave unprepared: use what exists

Waste time: you could spend all your time at events, party, etc., as there is always something going on there... But in the end, attending all event don't foster your business.

Waste equity: just because an investor promises to introduce you to someone important for your business, you don't have to give too many shares.

Assume: that everything happens.

This was a great opportunity to meet people who matters in swiss mobile industry, without being overcrowded by consultants. International speakers gave some keynote talks, some were really interesting, some... less! Some speakers were unfortunately too much keen to promote their own company, rather than true valuable learnings.

Nevertheless, such an event displays something that insiders of swiss startup ecosystem already know: there's something happening here and we don't have to be shy in regards to UK, German or US startups!