TECH cocktail Conference Lands in Chicago

The TECH cocktail team of Frank Gruber and Eric Olson recently added a conference to their already popular mixer series.  Held at Loyola University’s downtown campus in Chicago, the conference featured a day of panel discussions with representatives from technology companies including FeedBurner, Lijit, Google, Threadless, and Adaptive Blue.   You can see a complete speaker list here.  

Jumping from panel-to-panel, I noticed a recurring theme best summarized as “quick iterations for the long term thinker.”   The theme is particularly relevant in a city like Chicago, where raising capital and growing a business can provide different challenges than those endured by coastal entrepreneurs.  Talk to any Midwest entrepreneur: revenue models and longevity are surprisingly important considerations.  But enough comparisons between the investment and innovation culture of different tech centers are already written, so I will avoid further details.  For the curious, I recommend Paul Graham’s "How To Be Silicon Valley."

Squidoo’s Corey Brown covered “9 Tips to Profitability” with Brian Williams of Viget Labs and offered expected advice like “monitor metrics” and “communicate authentically.”  More interesting, however, was the importance placed on appreciating small successes in a world of well-publicized smash hits.  Squidoo launched with the intent to allow passionate users to share expertise with others, circumventing the noise presented by search engines.  Two years later, Squidoo has not toppled Google or been acquired for billions.  The company also faces competition from alt. search engines like Mahalo and Kosmix.  But Brown emphasized the team’s patience and their ability to recognize the value of small achievements like 0.02% increase in pageviews or CPM. 

Miniscule gains are not the typical conception of progress, but a small agile team can quickly compound a respectable list of accomplishments.  Brown used the term “perpetual beta” to describe the mentality required to collect enough molehills to actually make a mountain over time.

Below are some additional take-aways connected to the same theme:

• Planning six months out is pointless.  Week long iterations moving toward a constant theme can prove more successful
• Use your beta test to build an lasting evangelist network and reward these patrons accordingly
• Facebook apps often have a short lifetime.  Try to transition your audience to your next quickly produced project

This column was provided by Andy Angelos who is a young startup veteran critiquing the tech world from his home in Chicago, IL. Read more at www.webforchange.org.