How One Tech Startup Prepares for Vegas Conference

For the past year, Tech Cocktail has been scouring the nation for America’s best startups, and over 40 of their favorites will vie for the Tech Cocktail Chalice at Celebrate. Celebrate is expecting over 500 attendees and will feature pitches, a hackathon, and some great keynotes, and one of the highlights will be the opportunity for a few Midwest startups to shine.

We got to catch up with Danny Wajcman of Lucky Orange from Overland Park, Kansas, who will be pitching their complete suite of tools for total website optimization and usability analysis. You can read more about the company on Tech Cocktail. Here are some of Danny’s key steps to prepare for the conference:

Out of the Basement into the Spotlight

“Our efforts have been primarily in strengthening our product, trying to keep it very cost effective. The crowd at Tech cocktail will range from business owners, to agencies, media buyers, and beyond.” Said Danny.

Brian Gruber, one of the founders, started building the Lucky Orange set of tools in his basement while holding down a certified dog training gig. Danny joined the team to help market and grow the business–and, other than the Tech Cocktail Chalice, that’s what the team is looking to gain from Celebrate.

Don’t get Thrown for a Feedback Loop-the-Loop

Danny explained that users of Lucky Orange tend to gravitate toward one or two of the product’s features, and it will be interesting to learn from a lot of face-to-face feedback about the product.

Conferences are an excellent opportunity to test how well you really know what your customers or the marketplace think. Hearing how attendees react to certain features is good input, and understanding their questions and uncertainties helps you prepare for next time.

But without documenting all of that feedback, it’s hard to put it to good use! Be sure to capture feedback–event input you don’t particularly care or feel strongly about. In addition to documenting product or market feedback to share it with the team, you may notice patterns emerging over time that you wouldn’t otherwise.