What do you get when you take a few thousand wantrepreneurs and cram them into two massive tents to bake in the Las Vegas sun? The second annual Collision Conference of course, a burgeoning schmoozefest of startups, investors, influencers, and next-gen business and technology leaders put on by Cilabs, the same folks who bring us the massive Web Summit in Ireland every year.
The digital ink on my press pass barely had time to dry when the PR pitches started rolling in. But unlike the RSA Conference, where they all used the same dozen words in a different order, this time the name of the game was offbeat and wacky. Everything from computerized sex toys to mobile haircutting apps.
Investors attended in droves looking for that gem in the rough, and gems there were – but boy, was there a lot of rough. It seems that everyone is founding a startup these days, regardless of whether their idea has any merit or their team has any relevant skills.
The first step to filtering the wheat from the chaff: the elevator pitches, handily printed on large information cards dangling over each hopeful startup’s tiny stand. Misspellings and grammar errors provide the first cut. If you can’t get a comma right, how can I trust your software?
And then there were the poorly thought through business models. How about digital annotations for print books? The whole point to reading a paper book is to get away from technology for a while.
Or how about an alternate Internet, more secure than the original. The problem? Nobody is on it. So let’s pay web publishers artificial money to prime the pump – even though there’s nobody there to see any of the sites.
My green media wrist band gave me a unique perspective on the level of desperation, as plaintive founders accosted me for a moment of my time, thrusting books, flyers, or cheap tchotchkes into my hand, hoping I’d mention them in this article. Sorry, folks – the best I can do is to mock a few of you anonymously.
Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2015/05/07/collision-leaves-startups-banged-up-in-las-vegas/.
Intellyx advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, AppDynamics is an Intellyx customer. None of the other organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: Jason Bloomberg.
