Learning from the Launch Festival

Two weeks ago I shook Peter Thiel’s hand, said hello to Chris Sacca, ran into some old friends and got about 25k steps per day going for beautiful runs and walks around the Marina area of San Francisco.  Those are only four of the fifty or so awesome things that happened in a three day span at the Launch Festival.

Each day, there are a bunch of Startups that “launch” their companies on stage. As a Product Manager, you can learn a lot from watching tons of pitches. You will see common patterns, demo techniques and recognize the difference between a clear value prop and a rambling one.

Getting Demos and Talking Product

At every conference I like to walk around and get demos. I’ve been in those shoes, standing for 2-3 days in a row on booth duty talking to tons and tons of people. Try and help each person demoing to you. Give them honest feedback, tell stories about how you would use the product and tell them what you understood about the pitch and where you got confused. The best conferences have either the Founder or Product people at the demo pod.

Great People Watching

I like the contrast between early stage companies looking for their first round of funding and the incredibly successful fireside chat speakers. It’s interesting to listen to the fireside chat macro views then walk over to the demo pit trenches and think about how truly hard it is to get a Startup to go big.  And of course, there’s always a wonderful mix of eccentrics, startup t-shirts and tech fashion to observe.

During Launch, I spend a lot of time half listening and half writing blog posts or working on wireframes. Being surrounded by tons of cool features, products, apps, designs and ideas is a good influence on my projects.  Sometimes being away from the office is more important than being there for creativity and productivity.

You can see some of the themes merge together in companies like Etch (wearables, messaging)….and a few themes talked about on stage but not well represented in the demo pit:

Checkout the full list of companies that launched at Launch Festival and I’ll see you there next year!