Come on people, these event/forum producers are marketers and so are you. Your job is to ask the right questions and decide whether it's worth the ROI. Break it

Come on people, these event/forum producers are marketers and so are you. Your job is to ask the right questions and decide whether it's worth the ROI. Break it down; 1) Speaking? Who/how many in the audience - press? 2) Exhibiting? Who/how many attendees 3) Networking? Who is going to be there and can you hustle relevant meetings in advance/on-site? 4) Cost= Start with your CPM for #1/#2 just like any ad spend, then calculate what the # of quality meetings from all of the above could mean to your ROI at the event. If you converted only 1 client, 1 decent press report, or 1 great investor follow up--is that enough ROI for time/$$? I bit the bullet on Collision, and can't say whether we'll get ROI from #2 or #3 - but I will say they teased and totally f'ed us out of our #1. I still give them credit for being awesome marketers, and love that they give you the quantifiable metrics you need since they published every speaker, investor and media attendee which I've never seen done at any event in the past. Completely agree with others on Kereitsu - I can't believe they charge startups what they do and have done so for so long. It's really sad not just for startups, but for the novice investors who believe they need Kereitsu for dealflow/co-investments. Really hope platforms like Angelist and new ones following RegA implementation (May 25th!) will change this.