Stage Two's blog

Being a PR and Marketing firm, we typically don’t “fly under the radar.” Our goal is to make a lot of noise (at the right time, and in the right way) and get the word out about our clients’ great products and services. However, today we did fly under the radar. By which I mean, we attended Dealmaker Media’s Under The Radar conference in Mountain View, CA. :)

The conference was great – the folks at DM have got it down to a science. Speakers, moderators, and judges showed up on time (unless their cars broke down) and all the presenting companies had interesting ideas to pitch. We had several different reasons for attending:

• Two of our clients (DeviceVM and kwiry) presented at UTR
• Jeremy moderated two of the panels (and treated the speakers kindly for the most part)
• networking, networking, networking

We are big advocates of industry networking, and conferences like this one are great for that purpose. Founders and employees from dozens of different startup and large companies were in attendance, all with something new to pitch. Some are great, some are terrible, but it’s good to know what’s new and who’s doing it. There’s a great opportunity for business development at these events, and also a great chance to play matchmaker and connect two people that really ought to talk to one another. We like to help out where we can.

In addition to the presenters and attendees, there were also a good swath of media folk in attendance. Rafe Needleman from Webware was there, though he had some car trouble on the way down (bummer Rafe, that really sucks.) Kara Swisher from the WSJ (and other pubs) was there, judging for Jeremy’s panel. And Brad Stone from the NY Times was there as well, helping to judge some of the other presenters.

Last night Dealmaker Media threw a little party in Palo Alto at a restaurant called Zibibbo. We snapped a couple of pics while we were there.

Here’s a picture of Sol from DeviceVM, Cliff from DocSyncer, and some of our friends from Dealmaker Media:

Here’s a self portrait of Sol and myself:

And this is a picture of Ron from kwiry, hanging out with the lovely ladies of Dealmaker Media:

Under The Radar was a great conference because it had just the right combination of factors.  There was a variety of interesting startups, a good supply of industry leaders and important members of the media in attendance.  The presentations were generally engaging, and fomented lively discussions with both the judges and the audience.

Events like this are both fun and educationall, and can represent a great opportunity for business networking and business development – especially if you pick the right conference.

There’s a big discussion across numerous tech blogs regarding how to run a startup on the cheap (written by Jason Calacanis).  One of his suggestions (echoed by Fred Wilson and Pat Phelan) has to do with spending money on PR firms:

Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm. Perhaps you can get a PR consultant to work on 2-3 projects a year for $10-15k each and save 75%. More PR firms are wasted half the year while you build up your product anyway.

While there’s certainly a lot of truth in this statement, I feel the opening part is being too heavily glossed over, the “really think about” part.  Other suggestions, such as “start a blog” or “hire an evangelist” have come up, and while these tactics are certainly important, they are by no means surefire tactics.  In fact, treating a marketing plan so lightly is probably a worse course of action than overpaying for lousy PR.

Most PR firms are overpriced, and per Jason’s point, are being paid even when out of action.  For a startup, this can be a devastating expense.  The smarter thing to do than just writing off PR as a justifiable expense is to spend the money more strategically.  For example, you can work with a PR firm on a fixed-time project to help you with your launch, then re-assess your needs.

At Stage Two we offer strategic planning services where we specifically help give companies a marketing plan that they are able to execute upon. This lets some of our clients hire internally more junior-level marketing folks, and we help give them guidance on how to do things right.  At the end of the day, it’s far more expensive to make easily avoidable mistakes than it is to “overspend” on PR.  The savings you get by bringing on a self-titled expert with no real-world experience will quickly be lost when they mishandle your launch or some other key activity.

No intelligent CEO would staff the engineering department full of junior people who have never built a product before.  Why would you do the same thing with your marketing?  Don’t overspend, but most importantly don’t underspend either!  Make a budget, make a plan, and go do it right.