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I agree that a lot of small companies have really unrealistic expectations about these kinds of things, and I cringe whenever I hear about a 3-man shop who drop

I agree that a lot of small companies have really unrealistic expectations about these kinds of things, and I cringe whenever I hear about a 3-man shop who drops $10k so they can get a booth and attend a trade show or something. I just don't see that investment ever being repaid. However, 7.5 "man days" really isn't that much in the whole scheme of things. Most small teams lose that much in a weekend. Plus, if the Singapore government is paying the entire bill then you're not spending your own money. To me it sounds like a (somewhat crappy) paid vacation. There are worse things to do with your time. One final note: I think setting target goals for blog posts, customers, and investors is an excellent idea. It helps to turn very vague "networking" into a goal-oriented task. I have used the same technique in the past to help gauge the value of spending my time and resources at various events.

einhverfr 15y ago
When we went to MYGOSSCON, we didn't expect anything at first. We expected to come back six to eight months later and re-evaluate. We spent about $1.5k (total) on the booth plus the productivity cost. We walked away with leads that turned into $5k in sales right away, and we still aren't into the 6 month timeframe. Moreover, some of our efforts have paid off in the sense of network connections helping us more effectively market LedgerSMB to Malaysian businesses (strange since MYGOSSCON is strictly public sector). We are now three months in and have received occasional boosts from it, but these haven't been quantifiable yet. So while it really helped... it remains too soon to tell how well it will pay off. Only 3x? More?
netvarun 15y ago
Fully agree on your comments regarding tiny startups attending conferences. Thank god we didn't pay for anything. 7.5 days is the actual raw amount of man-days lost. In reality it was much more than then. Each time I wasn't in the office, I couldn't make much progress in some areas (like the content extraction platform, which I am in charge of). That held progress on the API which my teammates @govind201 is working on. So in reality it was close to 2 weeks of productivity that was lost forever. Anyway as one of the commenters mentioned above, 'wasting time' is a lesson every one doing a startup has to learn in some point of their journey.

einhverfr 15y ago

When we went to MYGOSSCON, we didn't expect anything at first. We expected to come back six to eight months later and re-evaluate. We spent about $1.5k (total) on the booth plus the productivity cost. We walked away with leads that turned into $5k in sales right away, and we still aren't into the 6 month timeframe. Moreover, some of our efforts have paid off in the sense of network connections helping us more effectively market LedgerSMB to Malaysian businesses (strange since MYGOSSCON is strictly public sector). We are now three months in and have received occasional boosts from it, but these haven't been quantifiable yet. So while it really helped... it remains too soon to tell how well it will pay off. Only 3x? More?

netvarun 15y ago

Fully agree on your comments regarding tiny startups attending conferences. Thank god we didn't pay for anything. 7.5 days is the actual raw amount of man-days lost. In reality it was much more than then. Each time I wasn't in the office, I couldn't make much progress in some areas (like the content extraction platform, which I am in charge of). That held progress on the API which my teammates @govind201 is working on. So in reality it was close to 2 weeks of productivity that was lost forever. Anyway as one of the commenters mentioned above, 'wasting time' is a lesson every one doing a startup has to learn in some point of their journey.