I first started this blog post as a recap of the PSL Expo night and then decided... if you want to read about the expo, go check out their site! In short, the expo was awesome. There were a lot of great projects and it was cool to think that they're all budding in and around the Philadelphia area. And with that, let me move on to my personal experiences of the expo night.
For some background, this was only my second PSL event. I attended my first one when Jameson Detweiler (konnect.me) convinced me to tag along with him. Let me tell you, that day was one of the most inspiring days I've had as an entrepreneur. I met the guys at Morgan Lewis in the morning, saw Josh Kopelman speak in the afternoon, and then finished it off with a PSL Social. At the social, I was fortunate enough to meet up with Pete Groverman (Tapinko) who I had spoken with a few times on the phone, but who I hadn't met before that day. And in between Jameson and Pete I met a slew of others that helped revive my entrepreneural spirits.
So that brings is up to the PSL Expo. There were over 50 projects on display and a few hundred people roaming around between them. While there were some great projects on display, I have to admit that I was there for a more selfish reason: I wanted to listen to and learn from the various pitches by these people. You see, I find myself in an interesting situatuation. I've got a few startup ideas, one of which -- Daily Mission --is already off the ground. But if you go back and read my blog post on being an engineur you'll see that in the past I've been more engineer than entrepreneur. Well Daily Mission doesn't need an engineer anymore. Phil and I have worked hard to engineering what Daily Mission needs in terms of technology. What it needs now is an entrepreneur! It needs a business leader and I've been working hard to step up to the plate and learn how to do that. The PSL events so far have been the single most valuable resources that I've had to do this.
Ok, so what did I learn? Well most importantly, I learned that everyone had their pitch down to a science. There wasn't fumbling. There was a lot of confidence in the air about their projects and how they were going to change the world. Ok, so I probably didn't need the Expo to tell me that I need to be confident in my pitch, but it was still useful to see that no matter how many people came to a given booth, the presenters weren't making up their elevator pitch on the fly -- it was practiced and well understood. At my first PSL event I got the opportunity to refine my pitch. It started off terribly (just ask anyone that had to endure my rambling while I tried to piece it together) but I will say that by the end of the night I had a pretty good understanding of what was working in my pitch and what was not.
After I made my rounds and heard a few pitches, I parked myself with Pete at the Tapinko station. I got to hear him give a few pitches. It was unfortunate that the internet wasn't working because his entire presentation revolved around being able to show off his product. But that didn't stop him from engaging anyone that was willing to even stutter step in front of his table. I was impressed with his confidence and I took some mental notes on how to engage people.
After Tapinko I, of course, made my way over to Jameson at konnect.me to check out his pitch. He was fortunate enough to have internet and it really helped his presentation. I watched him run through konnect.me about 4 or 5 times and everytime was the same runthrough. It was interesting to watch the people being presented to. You could see when they had that "aha" moment -- when they truly understood what Jameson was going for. In the matter of 30-60 seconds he was able to run through the main features of the site and highlight a lot of what makes konnect.me different, expandable to other verticles, and even what makes it unique and useful today even with a small market. Between me and you, I think he's done this before.
Those were the only two booths that I knew people at, so after overstaying my welcome there I headed down to the floor to mingle with some of the fellas I met at the previous PSL. I ran into the guys at Morgan Lewis again. They were nice enough to suffermy seemingly endless tirade about how draining a newborn baby can be (sorry!). I also ran into Ben Kessler who I apparently wrote up while I was an RA at Drexel. He's off doing a really funny and interesting new website called unbreaded.com -- a website devoted to reviewing sandwiches. I got another chance to chat with Bart from IndyHall which I think is one of the coolest things I've learned about through PSL. (A small aside: IndyHall is a big shared office space where different companies can rent out space and essentially be a part of a larger community. Everyone interacts and bounces ideas off each other, and while they all may freelance and work for different companies, they thrive as a community. If I lived and worked in the city this is something I would definitely be a part of.)
I see I've written a lot already so I'll wrap it up in a few sentences. PSL and their sponsors are incredibly generous. They've offered up their time and resources to bring local entrepreneurs together in hopes to make Philadelphia an east coast stronghold for technology. I'll say that I've always wanted to stay in the area because I'm a bit of a homebody and I like being around my family, but over the past few years I was starting to wonder if I could actually launch a big project successfully in this area. Well after seeing what others are doing and after seeing how willing everyone at PSL events has been, my impressions have changed. I do feel confident that I can make my projects work in this area and I look forward to growing alongside organizations like PSL. Who knows, maybe one day I'll be a sponsor at one of the events, not just a mooch. It could happen... right?
Cheers
-eli
P.S. My newborn is kicking my butt! I didn't have time to proof read this blog post and it took me 3 days of here-and-there typing to actually finish it. So please excuse any typos.