I attended TechCrunch Disrupt in San Fran this month, just wanted to share some quick thoughts about my first experience attending this event. As a start-up, my mission was to obviously get exposure for Tastry, however my main goal was to meet great people, connect and ultimately build mutually beneficial relationships. A bonus for me ended up being the inspiring speakers, very insightful as well.
A few things I loved:
- The quality of the speakers– Laura Deming with the Longevity Fund and Rachel Haurwitz with CRISPR. It was very exciting to hear Laura Deming say there is more capital than people solving longevity problems.
- The size and prestige of the venue– Moscone West is BIG. The event spanned three floors. The showroom on the bottom with company after company. Small stages on the second floor and the giant stage on the third. In terms of sheer size, this may have been the biggest although Shoptalk may have been bigger in terms of floor space.
- The quality of the attendees– The conversations could have been more in-depth. Most of the talks were to general for any experienced entrepreneurs to take anything away from it. There were a lot of prestigious investors and a lot of people scoping out the AI companies from innovation departments.
- Decent exposure for Startups– The types of startups ranged the entire gamut. In addition to AI startups there were also health, mobility, gaming, interior design, business intelligence and more. Seeing the Tesla competitor, Byton, was something else. The full screen dashboard was beautiful. There was an entire section for AI, retail, and AD Tech companies.
- The 90s party was amazing– The pop rock cocktail was fun. We loved the ball pit picture booth. Dancing to throwback music while eating sour warheads was a glimpse back to childhood. We couldn’t leave without getting a picture with the piranha plants in the Mario Lounge.
I wasn’t as impressed with:
- The Women in Tech Events didn’t have any good contacts or investors! Too many lame and boring “Women in Tech” side events. It’s a tired topic and I wasn’t the only one complaining.
- The conversations were very beginner-level and most entrepreneurs wouldn’t learn much. The only exciting part was being in a room with a famous person I guess? Just famous entrepreneurs in general like Doug Leone from Sequoia Capital, Whitney Wolfe Herd from Bumble, Priscilla Chan for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Tess Hatch from Bessemer Venture Partners, Dara Khosrowshahi from Uber, etc…
- The security was fake! The metal detectors were turned off, or if they were turned on it would “beep” and they would still let you through! I didn’t understand the entire point…MY CBO, Charles and I got through with wearing our cell phones and wearing metals.
- The event app was glitchy. The page would time out when you would try to message people at the event to come to your booth
All in all, it was awesome, yes it was totally worth it and I plan on attending more of these events. If you attended, I would love to hear your experiences as well- post away or message me.
– Kat
