This post feels a little weird, because there was some personally relevant and surprising weirdness around Microsoft yesterday, as a quick review of yesterday’s TechCrunch will show. But I don’t want that to detract from something that was a blast yesterday: the TechStars 2009 Reunion in Seattle.
Brad Feld and David Cohen brought the whole gang, including the always entertaining Andrew Hyde, along with a cadre of TechStars graduates from 2007, 2008, and 2009, citing his idea to have the reunion in a town other than Boulder or Boston, the current homes of TechStars programs.
The day started with a loosely defined “unconference” among mentors and mentees, with a manageable group of maybe 50-60, of whom probably 1/3 to 1/2 were startup founders. Three general tracks enabled attendees to pick where they wanted to participate: topics, decided the night before, included “Board and Investor Management,” “Customer Acquisition Strategies,” “Pricing,” and a half dozen more.
I found the “Pricing” session especially interesting: about half a dozen entrepreneurs/TechStars graduates were exploring (read: re-assessing) the Freemium model. The point I tried to make was that, rather than assume (as several of them admitted having originally done) that the Freemium model MUST go hand in glove with Web 2.0, social, SaaS applications, each startup should think about its own product or service and how various business & pricing models might be applied. In one case, a founder had decided to “just charge something” ($8) and found zero resistance. Seattle entrepreneur and investor Andy Sack observed that if you aren’t getting some pushback on your pricing (either directly from customers or visibly in your metrics) then you are clearly undervaluing your service. In many cases, the only “free” component of your business model should be a free trial; in other cases, a true Freemium model may make sense. But getting those confused can leave a lot of money on the table. Buzz Bruggeman from Activewords also offered stories from his company’s several pricing experiments.
Lunch saw about three or four groups self-forming and wandering off to eat around Seattle; after succeeding in getting our group to eat Top Pot doughnuts as an appetizer (!), Brad Feld suggested sushi, so I lead us all over to Wasabi Bistro for some great rolls, including a few more interesting options that Brad ordered just to challenge the mettle of the diners.
Our topic over lunch was “raising the second round of funding.” Kudos to Filtrbox’s Ari Newman for sharing his very current experiences, and for picking up part of the lunch tab along with Brad. After taking down a few boatloads of raw sea creatures, we ambled back to the Palace for an afternoon panel of investors and a series of 10 startup pitches from TechStars graduates, many of whom are raising their next round of funding (and one—Everlater, which didn’t pitch—announcing new funding today on TechCrunch).
I had to leave before the final few pitches and the reception that followed, but it was just amazing to me how a relatively small group of motivated people can create a fun, valuable event with the most minimal of scripts. Kudos to the entire TechStars team—and the entrepreneurs—for bringing a ton of great insights and some great fun to Seattle.