Our Startup Story

I got a message from Val yesterday on facebook. I had posted some info about 360|Flex Indy, and stuff. She saw our press release or the post we wrote about our changing how we do sponsorships, and wanted to let me know that Tom and I aren’t alone. When I sent Tom a copy of the message, his first thoughts were “It’s nice to know someone actually noticed and cared.” I have to agree, it feels good when people notice what you’re doing.

Val’s message really brightened our day. Val runs Flashpitt with her pal Joe, and they’ve been trying to figure out how to change things up as well. They came to the same conclusions as Tom and I, change sponsorships, make them easier to understand, and custom to each sponsor. Val you’re on the exact same page as us!

The Press release mentioned is here if you’re curious. It’s our first!

It’s nice to know the things we do get noticed. Sure there’s a bit of ego there, but hey, humans do most of what we do, so that it’s noticed (at least IMO, don’t lie to yourself). There’s so many other events around us, big and small, that we sometimes feel lost in the sea of them, even though few if any are direct competitors. We’re definitely in the David class right now and the Goliaths don’t notice us much.

Tom and I have almost no marketing budget. For each event we spend, maybe on the upside, $4,000. That’s it, and that’s the upper boundary of our spend. That’s not counting shirts and stuff, I’m only thinking pre event stuff; stickers, fliers, etc.

Typically our marketing money goes towards fliers. Fliers that we send to Adobe Flex User Group Managers to hand out, when they raffle off a free pass to 360|Flex. For 360|iDev, there aren’t as many User Groups, and really there’s no official groups, just meet ups.

So we did a little guerrilla marketing, we went to Macworld.

Other than actual event days, the day spent at Macworld was the first day Tom and I have spent doing physical, 360Conferences, work. It was quite exhilarating.

We went to every booth that looked like it was iPhone software related, spoke to the folks at each, invited them to speak/sponsor.

We dropped fliers on tables, every table we saw actually, LOL.

It was pretty sweet! Once we’re full time, i can imagine a lot more guerilla warefare taking place.

It’s pretty nice to be doing something like that and knowing it can have an impact on your business.