Launched at Industry Conference

When we found out the largest conference for our industry was about a month shy of our MVP date, we decided to cut scope and launch at the conference (Podcast Movement 21)...versus waiting til the next industry conference.

The second big decision we needed to make was to launch as a conference sponsor with a booth, or just as an attendee. Tough choice, cause being a sponsor wasn't cheap.

But, we made the decision to get a booth, cause of 3 things...

1. You only get to launch once.
   I didn't want to squander the opportunity to make some kind of splash with our launch...so wanted to maximize budget spend on this occasion. I learned this doing PR for my previous startup, where you get 1 opportunity to tell the press who you are for the first time.

2. Our goal was for max exposure.
   Our primary goal wasn't sales. Our primary goal was to tell the industry, "Hey, we're here!". We didn't think we'd accomplish this as an attendee, no matter how much guerilla marketing we'd do at the event. We wanted a place for people to come to us, so we can maximize the feedback we'd receive from the industry. We also wanted to meet other vendors as a peer...something that would be a lot more difficult to do as an attendee.

3. We got a startup discount.
   Having done conferences for previous startups, I knew that in year 1, most conferences will offer you some kind of a startup discount for their "startup area". Podcast Movement didn't have such a thing, so I just had to negotiate it. Fortunately, figured something out that worked for both of us.