Likes & Launch

Community: Scale to Serve your Startup - Slush Conference, Helsinki, Finland: November 2015

In November I attended Slush Conference in Helsinki, Finland. It’s the leading tech conference in Europe and probably the coolest venue I’ve ever seen.

I shared some of the lessons I’ve learned by running the Union Square Ventures Network, including how companies in our portfolio have leveraged community to scale their product, attract new customers and hire great talent.

I met many incredible founders from all over Europe at the event and I hope to attend in the future as it was a fantastic event. Extra points for the moat they build around this main stage.

Thank you to Slush.org, the 1,500 volunteers who made the event possible, and the Finnish community for teaching me more about tech in the Nordics.

Small props to this dress too, it’s my favorite one to wear when I take the stage.

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Make your fundraising announcement count

When I was building gtrot in 2010, I read TechCrunch funding announcements like they were gospel. There were numerous companies that made it and we wanted to be one of the. So when we did finally close our round, a funding announcement in TechCrunch was high on the wishlist.

We hired a PR firm, talked to a number of reporters and held our embargo until 9am to grab a prime spot for East Coast and West Coast readers. We were so excited about the big announcement.

Looking back, man did we get it wrong.

We viewed getting published in a tech publication as arriving and external proof that “we are a legit -company- startup.” We thought that the launch announcement would serve as a powerful user acquisition channel that would drive thousands of new customers. We also assumed that by adding that TechCrunch logo onto our website homepage would further convince new customers to give our product a shot. We tied up a lot of energy, time and excitement to something that wasn’t a game-changer for our business.

Thankfully, there are companies who’ve avoided these mistakes of ego and unrealistic expectations. Last week, VHX announced their fundraising the right way. (PS - Welcome to the USV Network!)

Let’s take a closer look at what they did well:

scaling