In just a few hours, I’ll be on my way to Denver for Denver Startup Week, part one of the fall entrepreneurial mega-trip. This will be my third year attending Denver Startup Week, and the week following will be my second trip to the 1 Million Cups Organizer Summit in Kansas City. My trip to Denver each fall is my favorite trip of the year, because it allows me to immerse myself in an amazing, welcoming startup community for an entire week, and I can go the entire week without having to drive or use a car.
I try to find a different neighborhood to stay in each week, and this year, I found a place in the Lower Highlands neighborhood, just on the other side of Interstate 25 from all of the activity of downtown. It shouldn’t be as chaotic as the Ballpark neighborhood was last year – the noise level really wasn’t bad, but between the Rockies games a couple of blocks over, and Denver Oktoberfest happening around the corner, it was a giant party from early afternoon until the early morning just about every day. Going to the first session each day was about the only time when there weren’t a lot of people out and about. This year’s AirBnB should be far enough removed from the action where I don’t feel like I should be up late every night.
However, with the way my schedule is looking, and the number of cider tasting rooms I want to visit during Denver Startup Week, I doubt I’m going to get too much sleep. I’ve basically finalized my schedule for the week – sessions Monday though Thursday, with a late flight back to eastern Iowa on Friday. I’m also going to work in visits to C Squared Ciders and Infinite Monkey Theorem, both northeast of downtown in the RiNo neighborhood. Monday is full from morning to night, with the kickoff celebration first thing in the morning, sessions all day, block party in the evening, and after party lasting late into the night. I’m planning to attend both Tuesday’s and Thursday’s Startup Crawl if they end up being completely different locations. To finish everything off Thursday evening, I’m going to attend the Closing Party again this year – maybe they’ll have another strange specialty drink this year!
The sessions that I’ve picked are mostly founder and growth-related. Lots of sessions cover legal stuff, marketing, dealing with investors, and optimizing workflow. If you’re going to be around Denver next week, here are the sessions I’ll be attending:
Monday, September 16
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Denver Startup Week Kick-Off Celebration: The last couple of years, Denver Startup Week has had a Kickoff Breakfast featuring an hour of networking and a bunch of speakers to get the week going. This year, the event is going to be in a new location, the Ellie Caukins Opera House. Also, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a breakfast served before the start of the speakers. I’m still going to go for the networking opportunity, and probably grab an early lunch after the end of the program.
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How to Tackle Goal Setting with Matt Mayberry: This session looks like it’s going to dovetail nicely with the Kick-Off Celebration, so I thought I’d check it out. Goal setting might look easy on the surface, but can be tough when you sit down to actually do it. Hopefully I’ll walk away with some tips and tricks on this topic.
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Why It’s Time to Embrace Storytelling as the New Marketing: If you’re like me, you’re tired of the “hard sell” that many marketers use to increase exposure and usage of their brand or product. Storytelling is the preferred way to market yourself and your brand, especially with the focus on utilizing social media to increase brand exposure. I’m looking forward to hearing from marketers who have successfully used storytelling in their work.
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Don’t do THAT! Legal Lessons Learned the Hard Way: A panel of lawyers are going to talk about their experience fixing problems generated by startups in the past. Pen and paper will be at the ready.
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PR 101: Capturing the Right Media Attention to Drive Growth: This session is going to talk about the use of public relations firms with startups – not something I’m planning on using until Cider Finder is significantly more mature, if at all. However, it doesn’t hurt to listen and learn from the experts.
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Denver Startup Week Opening Block Party: Like the Kick-off Celebration, the Opening Block Party will be at a different location this year: DSW Basecamp. Also, Basecamp is at a different location this year than it was the past two years, moving this year to the center of downtown near the 16th Street Mall. I’m looking forward to running into people who I’ve met over the past two years and making some new friends.
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Designer Track Afterparty: An afterparty with creatives in a converted warehouse in RiNo. If it’s anything like the Designer Track Nightcap Party at the Pon Pon a couple of years ago, it should be a blast.
Tuesday, September 17
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You Formed Your Company, Now What? Nuts and Bolts for Startups: We run a decent number of panels in eastern Iowa focusing on this topic. It’s never terribly clear what you have to do to get things off the ground once you’ve finished a Startup Weekend, filed your incorporation paperwork, and opened your bank account. I’m hoping this session could be a good model for future 1MC panels.
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Speed Legal: Starting, Growing, and Funding Your Business: Again with the lawyers! I’m guessing that I’ve heard a good chunk of the information before that will be presented at this session, but there will probably be a few knowledge gaps filled in during the presentation.
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Speed Dating – VCs and Founders: I’ve put this session in the “maybe” column to attend – I’m not looking for funding or to enter an accelerator at the moment, but it doesn’t hurt to make connections for the future.
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Startup Crawl, Night 1: I can’t pass up a good Startup Crawl. Just ask the folks in Des Moines.
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Pioneering Denver with Rachio: A fireside chat with a leader in the Denver startup community. Hopefully, there will be some time for Q&A during the session.
Wednesday, September 18
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CCPA Compliance for Startups: When I registered for this session, I first had to figure out what CCPA is – essentially, it’s California’s version of the European Union’s GDPR. As someone building an app, I need to stay on top of privacy regulations in the markets I’m in. Since we’re starting Cider Finder in the United States, I suppose we have to know about CCPA.
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Net Promoter Score: What is it exactly and how does it affect growth?: I don’t know what it is exactly, and I don’t know if it affects growth. Therefore, I’m going to this session.
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Measure What Matters: An Introduction to Utilizing KPIs: To follow up the net promoter score session, I thought I’d attend a session on key performance indicators. It’s something not well taught, and perhaps I’ll take away a decent amount of information to help as I mentor other entrepreneurs here at home.
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Building Brands from the Journey Up: Experiences are critical to modern consumers – something emphasized in a book review I did on The Experience Economy. This session should be a good lesson on how to build your brand around your customers’ experiences.
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Boss or Babysitter? Why startup cultures fail: I don’t want to babysit my future employees – I want to hire and manage self-directed people. I’m looking forward to this session, and I’m sure I’ll take a lot away from it.
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Startup Grind Fireside Chat: Brianna Borin, Senior VP of People Resources, Snooze, an AM Eatery: I’m making an effort this year to make it to as many fireside chat-type sessions as possible. You can learn a lot from the experiences of others, and the reach of Denver Startup Week allows the opportunity to learn to “bigger” voices than we tend to have at events in Iowa. Like the evening prior, I’m hoping for Q&A time during this session as well.
Thursday, September 19
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How CEOs Build High-Performing Sales Teams: At some point, I’ll need to build out a sales team for Cider Finder. I currently have no idea how to do this. I’m going to be taking a lot of notes at this session.
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Scoring Big in Business: This is the big non-Monday keynote event this year, featuring John Elway. I was lucky enough to grab a ticket to this event, and should be a major highlight of this year’s trip!
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One Day Design Sprint: An Innovation Game Changer: I have a working knowledge of Agile and Scrum, having used a 2-week design sprint in the past. Google Ventures has condensed it into a 5-day version, and this presentation will discuss how to compress that further into a single day, so a team performs 5 sprints in one week. Intriguing!
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Startup Crawl, Night 2: Much crawl. Such startup. Wow!
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Denver Startup Week Bash Closing Party: To finish out Denver Startup Week, I’m planning to go to this year’s Closing Party, also in a different location than last year. We’ll see if they deploy the strange blue drinks again. Either way, it’s yet another great opportunity to connect (and reconnect) with people and have some fun to celebrate going at full steam the entire week.
On Friday, after I leave the AirBnB, I’ll probably head over to Union Station for some coffee and to get some work done before I take the train to the airport. I’ll probably get home around midnight or so, and have the whole day Saturday at home before leaving for Kansas City by car Sunday morning. 1MCOS was an amazing experience last year, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what the summit organizers have put together for this year’s event. We made a lot of improvements to 1 Million Cups Iowa City based on things learned last year – it’s why we reduced the number of speakers each week from 2 to 1, why we livestream our event each week, and why we occasionally have panel discussions, like our entrepreneurial event panel back in April, and the business resource panel we just had this week. It’s going to be tough to top last year’s event, but I’m sure they will.
From the itinerary I’ve seen, it looks like we have a dinner event on Sunday, have educational sessions all day Monday and Tuesday, and finish things out by attending Kansas City’s 1MC on Wednesday morning before leaving the city. I’m not sure if they still have the “expert interview” segment between the presentation and the audience questions – I’m not a huge fan of that format, and I know it wouldn’t work in Iowa City. Cedar Rapids does something similar to it since their format reconfiguration at the beginning of 2019, and I’ve heard mixed reviews from attendees who also attend Iowa City’s event.
Most importantly, I’m hoping to have a ton of barbecue while I’m in Kansas City, and I hope that they allow all of us attendees enough time to have some fun. I don’t know if we’ll walk to Kansas again this year, but there will probably be other shenanigans during the down time. There are a ton of fun places to check out all over Kansas City – breweries, distilleries, and night spots with great food and drink. It will be fun, regardless.
To round off two weeks of entrepreneurial fun, I’ll be attending the Cedar Rapids Tech Crawl on September 26. It will be nice to see some folks who I don’t see much anymore, since the 1MC chapter split-up – I’m going more for the people than I am the stops, since two of the stops are in the Geonetric building. We’ll see how things stack up against the Des Moines Tech Crawl, which was a great event. I’d like to have the guys from Clay & Milk run a Tech Crawl in Iowa City next summer the week before Startup Weekend Iowa City, hopefully part of a bigger project that I’ll talk about in later blog posts.
It’s going to be an exciting two weeks coming up. I usually post a lot on my Twitter feed during events like Denver Startup Week and the 1 Million Cups Organizer Summit – you should give it a follow if you’d like to keep up. Otherwise, I’ll be posting a recap here on the blog in three or four weeks. In the meantime, I’ll be posting another book review in a couple of weeks, and the monthly Freelance Media Newsletter will be coming out here in the next few days, while I’m on the road.
I hope to see many of you at Denver Startup Week, 1MCOS, or the CR Tech Crawl over the next couple of weeks!