The Startup Grind

As a college student, the entrepreneurship road seems extremely sexy and irresistible, but at the same time scary and intimidating. Being a science geek all my life, I never would have thought I would one day be interested in business, let alone wanting to start a company of my own. Anyway, fast forward 5 months after I decided to embarrass my parents and completely changed my study track from becoming an impeccable doctor to a potentially successful tax-machine saleswoman, I came across The Startup Grind.

So, what is Startup Grind? It a global community for entrepreneurs, with chapters in 175 cities and 80 countries around the world. The number of members is 215,000  and counting - a pretty massive group of people. Because of the global network they have, Startup Grind is able to pull off a big conference each year (3000 tickets sold out this February) with a dream team of speakers. Lucky for me, I was able to score a free ticket, because there is no way I could have forked up 600 bucks for a conference no matter how great it is. Additionally, with the school's help with air tickets, a place to stay at a friend's, and my private investors' (a.k.a parents) money for food and traveling, I was able to get to California. As a way to give back, I thought it would be a good idea to write a blog about my experience there. So here goes…

The first impression I got was that the conference venue was very unconventional, but in a good way (which aptly reflects the entrepreneurial spirit in them - do it differently, am I right?).

 Flea market! Just kidding. It's a legit conference with Tim Draper speaking

I cannot really judge and compare, because I don't have that much experience going to business conferences. However, I definitely noticed how open and welcoming the atmosphere was. There was a big open space in front of the Fox Theater, where a lot of the networking and mingling was happening, as well as a tent that allowed a lot of the natural sunlight to get in. Every detail screamed "Come… We welcome you!" .

The tent was used to accommodate registration as well as demonstration booths for selected startups. Everything looked great and exciting. However, one small (not really) negative thing I have to point out here: HUGE LINE for registration. Understandably, there were 3000 of us, so there was no way the process could have been lightning fast. But 45 minutes to an hour of queuing time seems to be a big turn off for many people. Some even missed the first couple of speakers because of the wait (which I feel bad about because they totally missed out on Guy Kawasaki's AMAZING opening, but more on that later). To a certain extent, the event was a bit oversold. Anyway, they sort of compensated the long wait with free delicious Kind bars and friendly volunteers going around offering help. I was a happy camper after 2 amazing blueberry almond breakfast bars!

How KIND of you to be offering us breakfasts! 

Because I was an early bird and got there at 7:45, I had some time to spend after registration and decided to mingle with the startup crowd. As a self-titled "expert" tech user, I was surprised to find myself feeling so overwhelmed and foolish among high-tech, successful businesses whose products I couldn't even begin to understand. However, I did have a good impression of Ideator - a platform where people can capture their business ideas and share them. Conveniently, the Startup Grind conference was used to kick start their Idea Competition, where you can create an idea profile and share it with everybody, including their judges. Everybody can sign up to win $5000 cash, plus access to their Advisory Board and key mentors and investors. I created mine here, so you can check them out, vote for me and maybe collaborate if you are interested!

Each person was given a beautiful Startup Grind bracelet. I was sad to cut this baby up to free my wrist

At 9, I hurried to the main stage to listen to keynote speakers. There were so many awesome people there that it would take me days to write out every wise thing they said! However, the majority of the crowd thought that the opening speaker, Guy Kawasaki, was undoubtedly the best choice to start the show with. If there were a competition, his speech would have gotten the award for most useful advices, as well as the most hilarious content (and the most number of the word "bullshit" mentioned). It was great to start on such a high note, but also kinda sucked because it was hard for anybody after that to live up to the expectation.

His speech was then followed by many short talks over the course of two days. There were many great speakers and contents. My favorite ones were:

• Tim Draper's Where Do Great Ideas come from?: ""
• Steve Blank's Startup Owner Manual: "Fund raising has nothing to do with success. Having your first sale is success."
• Marian Gazdik's A Superconnector's Secret to Building a Great Network: to many great things to list, arguably one of the sessions I learned the most from!
• Clayton Christensen's the Capitalist Dilemma and Silicon Valley and the State of Disruption: I find it much easier to stick to my principles 100% of the time rather than 98% of the time"
• Tracey Young's Startup Advice for Every Entrepreneur: Be a beaver: work hard, don't complain, be creative, learn how to optimize, iterate and improve
• Nir Eyal's Hooked: How to Build a Habit Forming Product: "It's not the best product that win, but the product that captures the monopoly of the mind."

Any many more…

Nir Eyal's Passionate Presentation on "Hooked: How to Build a Habit-Forming Product"

As you can see, my interest lies less in the venture capital part of business, and more in the general advice on how to build a great product and a great team (which was also what most speakers focused on). Some entrepreneurs, including me, now distance ourselves from the notion of treating capital fund as a must, and value bootstrapped businesses more. Overall, the sessions were very informative and the speakers were also very open about sharing their experiences with us, both in failures and successes.

Essentially, the program was a success. But, (there's always a but or two in there isn't it), to be very honest, there were things they could have done better…

Yes. I really enjoyed it, but hey, there's always room for improvement. As a non-biased reviewer, I feel obligated to also mention the cons of the program. Just note that a lot of these points are actually controversial - some people loved them, some people absolutely hated it. You can comment below and let me know what YOUR thoughts are! :)

As I have mentioned above, the first and biggest problem I and many people had was that there were too many people and too little space. During the first day's registration in the tent, we could barely walk around without hitting somebody else. Additionally, both the VC stage and the expert stage were constantly overloaded, with people standing everywhere in the back. Being a short girl, I constantly found myself leaving sessions because I got there late and could not see anything through the wall of tall people before me. Which leads to the next point….

I was always late, and not just me, everybody was! They were running the clock on both days, and so sessions ran over to the next time slots. Also, I am not sure if they took into account the obvious fact that it would take time to walk to the different stages in other buildings. This made it impossible for me to be at all the sessions I wanted and also stay there the whole time. They scheduled it so that one schedule was followed immediately by the next, so I either had to leave early or arrive late. Just to make it worse, since they were running behind, sometimes I would leave one session early just to find myself waiting for the next one to start. If some travel time were added to the schedule, as well as the speakers being more mindful of the schedule, I'm sure the experience could have been smoother for everybody.

They had a nice background to take photos with and also these cute signs!

Speaking of scheduling, a lot of people (including me) had problems with the agenda. The sessions were really short, so sometimes my interest started peaking and BOOM, time was up and the speaker had to leave. There were also three stages running simultaneously, so if two speakers of your interest were talking at the same time, you're out of luck. Either you make up your mind or you spend the rest of the day feeling sad about missing out on your idol (which I did, I wanted to go to Bryan Johnson's session "Ask Me Anything", but then ended up staying for Nir Eyal's one. That one was amazing too though). Ultimately, it boiled down to too many interests, too little time, which seems to be the common theme for many people. Luckily there are online podcasts we can listen to, should we miss the one we wanted to go, it just wasn't going to be the same as sitting in the room with the speaker and asking questions.

Me and my friend Mark

Ironically, as crammed in as the agenda was, there was no time for networking activities during the day. Being entrepreneurs (or any profession, really), networking is really the main goal of many conference-goers. Yet, a lot of people found themselves having to choose between attending speeches or missing them to go out and mingle. The only time we could network was during the after party at night, but to be honest the music was too loud to hear anything (and I wasn't supposed to be there anyway, I was underage…). Many people whose main goal was to meet others felt like their 600 buck ticket wasn't worth it. Especially if you wanted to connect with the speakers, your chances were next to zero. I will forever remember my conversation with Joe, the CEO of brightbod.com about this topic. He was so angry about how the speakers were put on pedestals and treated as rock stars, and how inaccessible they were to the attendees. Understandably, everybody would have wanted to approach Tim Draper or Guy Kawasaki, so it would have been impossible for them to meet and greet with everybody. However, because some of the attendees' main goal was to connect with these people, they were setting themselves up for disappointment, as I don't feel like many of the investors or CEOs were looking for a chance to connect.

Lastly, and I still have to quote Joe from brightbod.com here (man, can I ever come up with anything on my own?), but the biggest problem with this conference was actually NOT Startup Grind's fault, but rather the attending entrepreneurs themselves. Joe and I strongly agreed that not many entrepreneurs here really gave a beep about other entrepreneurs. They were either looking for investors or future customers, so if you didn't fit into those two categories, you weren't worth their time. I honestly felt like I was bothering a lot of people when I tried to connect with them. Even when I told them that because I was interviewing many people, I might run into somebody they were interested in and I would introduce them if they'd like, I did not get very friendly attitudes or responses. Ultimately, even though the conference's noble moto was "Give first, then take", many people still acted very opportunistic and only cared about the ROI of their 600 bucks.

The After Party that I was NOT invited to because I was underage... OBVIOUSLY a big flaw *pouty face*

That's not to say I didn't get to talk to many nice people, like Jo-Anne Reynolds from Spike Bee, John Grillos the angel investor, Tom Chepucavage from ZiaHub, Angel Oakley from Consumer Empowerment, Monica Ochaney from San Jose City College, Pendy Pendyala from Scottish Development International, Sky Dufaux from Woojime and of course, Joe from Brightbod.com.There are so many more lovely people I got to connect with and exchange experiences, but unfortunately my short memory when it comes to name, couples with my lack of organizing skill and losing a lot of the business cards prevent me from naming everyone. Regardless, shout out to all of you who did not ignore me because "She is just a college student" or because "She wouldn't do my business any good". You really lived their mantra of "Give first" by giving me your time, your patience and also your experiences and advices, I really appreciate that! You made my first business conference a very memorable one, and I wish every single one of you good luck with whatever quests you set out to conquer!

Last but not least, thank you, Startup Grind, for organizing this amazing event and also for letting me experience it (for free *smiley face*). I learned so much and am surely looking forward to applying this precious knowledge to my own project! I cannot wait to join you again next year, hopefully with a prototype (or even a beta version!) and to learn more about the next steps of the way. Thank you speakers for being so open and honest, for not sugar coating anything and for taking your time to be there. You all aspired us to be better people and to make the world a better place!

Till the next time we meet again.

If you are interested in watching the talks, you can find them here on Startup Grind's Youtube channel!