Today we hear from the attendee of a tech startup’s customer summit and the profound disconnect between who showed up and what they wanted.

The question is not just, will people attend? You can always sell tickets. It is, will they find other people there who make that visit valuable? Everyone has a long ballot of ulterior motives stated or unstated and when you invite a horde of builders, as today’s attendee considers themself, you’d better also bring buyers. Krish found this out the hard way.

Look around the room, everyone’s the mark

Krish: It felt off-putting right from the start. People at the welcome desk asked for my ID and no one else’s, and their boss scolded them and said, “You don’t have to do that.” We were in a rush to get to our friend’s talk and asked where it was. They asked what the session was called and I didn’t know, just his name, and they wouldn’t look it up, I had to look at my email.

We rushed to the session, which was a workshop all about finding new clients, and it was also filled with other freelancers and young entrepreneurs like us. It was clear people wanted to share and we weren’t sure when we could, and some people kept raising their hands and the speaker said they would take questions soon but it went on and on and time almost ran out. When someone asked a question, the teacher went back into lecture mode for a while and it was nearly over. 

One person asked about marketing and said they bought a list and the speaker said, “Never ever do that,” and I could see her squirming; she was embarrassed. At the end, we all waited around to talk to the speaker and she told him she only uses the list as a starting point, and he was like, “Okay,” and it seemed sort of dismissive. 

Anyway, it wasn’t really a workshop, just a talk.

The rest of the conference was filled with entrepreneurs like me but no customers; I don’t think I expected many customers, but I thought there might be some. 

The design of the space was fine, but they had these blue neon lights everywhere in keeping with the company’s brand, only they were distracting, arranged around the speaker. My friend pointed out that instead of the fancy neon lighting and TV screens with logos, they should have put up websites people built with their software. That would’ve been cool.  

Maybe one of the highlights was the snacks? After a few sessions, I just sat in the open area and worked, trying to drown out the noise by eating jerky and fruit rollups. I did attend the closing Q&A and it was strange because they asked the executives things nobody cared about like, “What’s your favorite color?” The one difficult question about the product roadmap, the executives got really defensive about and talked on and on. One founder seemed calm. The rest sounded like robots. It was deeply uninteresting. 

Not sure I would ever go to something they plan again unless it was a way to meet customers. I only went to support my friend, and the ticket was steep.