I had exactly this interaction with YoungStartups and Alex N.
We went back and forth a few times: I felt that "Over the years, I've learned that paying to present is perceived by
investors as a very poor use of funds, especially early on."
And he disagreed.
But my favourite bit was when Fred Wilson weighed in:
There was another post on hn a while back where some investor justified charging a fee. basically he said you can either be flooded with applications and not have enough time to give each applicant a thorough evaluation, or charge a fee guarantee them their proposal is evaluated properly.
I thought it was a good point. But I guess it depends on how easy it is for a good idea to be found amongst all the noise.
$1500 seems like a lot to charge to filter an application. Let's say it takes an hour to read one application (which seems high to me on average, I suspect the bad ones only take a few minutes to weed out), that's a pretty steep rate!
Jason would probably defend his manner as east coast shoots from the hip, no bullshit. But that's a joke. He's just rude and coasts have nothing to do with.
Passion is a good thing, and Jason's passion here is warranted, but the guy needs a bit of a filter.
are you like a startup? if you are, you're the first one who ever thought exhibiting is worth more than presenting. is hilarious to see you stick up for calicANUS. paying to exhibit is far less valuable then preseting
In the demopit at TC50 for the past three years the people who DIDN'T make it on stage are offered discounted tickets and a table at our costs. This is optional and we do it to give the runners up a chance to draft off the top 50.
If you put someone on stage and say they were one of the "top 100" you really shouldn't charge for that.... unless you're a scam like AlwaysOn, Red Herring or YoungStartups. :)
Reading about that guy who left Mahalo last week made me think that Calcanis was a bit of a jerk. After reading this I have decided that he must just be really intense all the time.
+1 for that. If I were published as much as Calacanis is (on HN, anyway), I would find a way to conduct myself in a manner that displayed at least a hint of tact and professionalism.
That still counts for something, right? There's got to be a way to still make a point and not look crazy.
It's worth noting that some of the other perennial trolls who get their stuff posted endlessly on HN are often just as bad. I think people here and elsewhere actually encourage it, just in order to see a little "drama" in the scene.
IIRC in his Mixergy interview Aaron Wall suggested Calacanis could be doing this simply to rake in "crusader" points because those will come in real handy should Google or anyone else try to step on Jason's controversial business.
In other words it's very handy to be wrapped into a flag, especially when it doesn't cost you all that much.
That is absurd... I've been doing conference since 1996 when I was publishing Silicon Alley Reporter are there are three reasons:
1. I enjoy hosting debates and dialogues with really smart people. I mean, I come in to HN and get my ass kicked by 4/5 posts just to engage the debate.. it's what I do.
2. They make money. Lots of money if you do them right.
3. Open Angel Forum is designed to a) kick the sh@#$%t out of these bastards, b) get me into amazing angel investing deals (i'm doing 10 deals a year.. in fact, I'm almost at 10 deals in 2010 and we're not even half way there... so I might do 15 deals in 2010). c) make modest profit.
Aaron is on a massive jihad against me... which is great. It's only motivated the Mahalo team to get better and better... his attacks on Mahalo got the team focused. At the end of the day the changes he demand we make--and we made--rose revenue 50% while reducing traffic by 15%. That's a deal I would make any day. I'm going to do an epic presentation on Aaron's free advice in another six months. it's going to be sick.
Interesting point, can we really substantiate that if he originally sent that through e-mail? I could see something in his head clicking that it was bullshit but I see more formal, orchestrated evilness would have constructed this in a formal blogpost.
Latent evilness may have realized that he could use this to generate "crusader" points, but he couldn't have thought this really would have built that much steam.
the fact is he's not doing this for the startups. he wants to make a name for himself. he wants people to think he's a superhero, but he's gonna fall on his ass. are you guys aware that you used to charge startups when he was running silicon alley reproter before it failed! ask him about it.
Are you kidding? $1500 probably barely covers their expenses. It might not be the best way to raise money, but it's hard to begrudge the organizers for charging such a nominal amount.
$1500 for what? Renting a conference room and some bad coffee? They're charging the wrong people, the investors should be covering the costs to see the pitches.
Besides, if anyone with $1500 can pitch I'm sure the quality of the companies is poor. Jason is spot on with his crusade against this BS.
1. I paid for it out of my pocket to start. So, I lost money on the event at the start with the hope to start making money off the angel investing I do in the companies. Basically it was my way to get deal flow.
2. We started getting 2-4 lawyers, accountants, etc. to pay $1,500 to come to the event. Each event cost $2-5k to run.. so this made the events breakeven.
3. WE just got two $50,000 a YEAR national partners (sponsors), and that has helped us hire a General Manager that starts on May 1st. IT will help us get to 10 cities in 2010. Up next: Boston, Seattle, Austin, DC, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv and London (five of those).
They are charging service provides (lawyers, recruiters, etc.) $1500 to attend. So why is it wrong to charge startups $1500 for the chance at getting funding, whereas it's perfectly ok to charge lawyers $1500 for the chance of landing a client?
Also, have you ever actually hosted a conference? Getting this many people in a room is a full time job that takes months, in addition to monetary costs. The idea that other people should be obligated to work for you for free is ridiculous.
The point here is that service providers (lawyers, etc...) have money and will profit from connections with entrepreneurs. The startups are trying to raise money so charging them for the privilege is wrong. The organizers of these conferences that charge are exploiting people who desperately want to fulfil their dreams.
exploiting people? r u kidding me? are you a socialist? shoudl lawayers offer their services to startups for free? shoudl a VC offer startups money for no equity? should your landlord offer you free office space?
What a bunch of nonsense! is this Jason CalicANUS?
We went back and forth a few times: I felt that "Over the years, I've learned that paying to present is perceived by investors as a very poor use of funds, especially early on."
And he disagreed.
But my favourite bit was when Fred Wilson weighed in:
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/05/conferences.html#disqus_thre...
If I may quote: "Its nuts to pay to present."
But Alex was persistent: "There's no point of arguing but there's no doubt that he's wrong."
It's good to see the silly fight continue.