It is hard to argue with a platform that offers global visibility wrapped in a very polished and professional production. The benefits touted by DEMO’s produce

It is hard to argue with a platform that offers global visibility wrapped in a very polished and professional production. The benefits touted by DEMO’s producers are top-tier media exposure, boost in sales, landing valuable partnerships and securing funding. Having attended several DEMO conferences and other similar conferences, there are plenty of startups that have managed to come away with positive results. While I would not take away from the obvious value of DEMO and similar launch conferences, early stage start-ups need to think long and hard whether they are even ready to launch. In lean start-up parlance, most early stage start-ups are still in Customer Discovery and Validation. If you have not locked down what your market type is, what problem you are solving and what customers would buy from you, making a big splash could be a very costly mistake. I have seen too many start-ups go to these events and come away poorer without any results to show for it. All that being said, like with many decisions, it is the execution that counts. You were going for free, so you had a huge opportunity to make the most of the time. To simply expect to show up however and get attention is naive. The press want interesting stories and you are competing with 50 other companies, all vying for attention. You could have built up interest in numerous ways by being proactive and creative to build up interest. For example, you could have pulled together a Social Media SWAT team of friends/family/business partners to tweet, Like, and push your story out there. Instead, you simply showed up, which is kind of like building a web app and simply expecting people to visit. As with anything, it was a learning experience, but I would not use this experience to color your views on conferences. You just need to understand how best to utilize these tools to your advantage.