That’s still short term thinking. What you put into it today may show its results in maybe 2 or 3 years from now on. And the effort today is rather limited. How much of an effort is it to talk to the founders of this event about a possible partnership or send one of the nearby German Storjlings over to participate once and report back?
This is not just an idea. The founders today are the CEOs, CTOs, COOs and CFOs of potentially successful and large enterprises in the future. There is simply no better way to get in touch with them personally and create relationships than such an event.
But there’re additional benefits of such an event: Storj might get in touch with startups that are beneficial to partner with for their own business model. Maybe a candidate for a future acquisition like they did with Valdi, Petagene or CrowdStorage. Or maybe they can be a door opener for the US market for some startup and get in return some doors opened by them for the German and EU market? On a personal level a lot is possible.
The big picture is certainly not that Storj has already enough customers.
The big picture is
that there is this company Flixbus that was founded around the same time like Storj and their turnover per year is around 2 Mrd. Euros today. Compare that to Storj. A startup as client is like running a node: Set it up and grow with and on their success.
that Storj was given the opportunity to a unique and exclusive personal contact to the founders of that particular event. But they are leaving the opportunities of this event to Google and Microsoft.
that of course you don’t get to see and experience the Oktoberfest if you’re not there
Funny enough there was just a live coverage from Bits & Pretzels on German national news station Ntv and that made me aware that I had never checked if there is a something like a youtube channel from them.
Well, there is. So maybe that gives more ideas about the nature of that event:
There is no sales person around here. Ok so lets say storj forces me to go there. How many times do you think storj can try that before I am going to say “no thanks”? This is not my job so please don’t try to send me.
Our big picture is media and entertainment. Turns out these customers have a need for a premium product that they can’t get from other cheap storage providers. We are able to deliver them a premium product for a higher price. We can’t just go to any event. That would be a waste of money. We need to watch out for events that are dominated by customers that have no better option than buying our product. Most startups can start with cheap storage and we welcome them the moment they have scaled up to the point that the cheap storage gets too slow for them.
The idea was to send somebody nearby to attend as visitor first for a day or so to get a first hand impression of the event and if it would be a fit.
If you wouldn’t do it, others have already expressed interest.
Through that personal contact offered, maybe even a free or discounted one-time visit might would have been possible, who knows?
Nobody is suggesting that Storj should go to any event. But this one seems (I have not been there and am not affiliated with it) not to be just any event. It appears to be one of the if not the largest event of this kind at least in Germany if not in Europe. I mean look at the list of previous speakers (unfortunately I couldn’t find a complete list since its beginning, but one can get an idea from Wikipedia and their website). And as said previously what this event seems to offer and maybe that’s why it is so highly ranked is that it is not only about presenting a product for selling, it is also for investing and get in touch with potential investors and much of it seems to be networking with the people who are actually running the companies.
Look, I don’t even know if it is a good fit for Storj. But that’s just something that should’ve been worked out by visiting there for a first hand impression and talking to the founders about the potential and available options.
At least it seems that renowned partners of this event such as Google or Microsoft have recognized the value of it.
Which is basically saying Storj is leaving them to Google and Microsoft. While this is a business decision that can be made I think it’s not the wisest one. I see the chances rather slim for a startup that has been growing in the locked ecosystems of Google and Microsoft to migrate to the media and entertainment centric Storj company they never heard of before. It just does not sound plausible.
