Marcelo Calbucci

I just announced it today at the Seattle 2.0 site the people who’ll be available at the StartupDay Advisory Room.


Let me tell you how I came up with the idea for the Advisory Room, but first, let me tell what it is: It’s a place, part of the StartupDay conference, where attendees can book private 1:1 meetings with other entrepreneurs, investors and professionals, like lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, etc.

I’ve been planning on something like StartupDay for more than a year, but events are very expensive and very risky. If people and sponsors don’t show up, you might be up for a $20,000 or $30,000 bill.

Over more than a year ago I started to think how I can deliver a ridiculous amount of value to sponsors so that they couldn’t refuse to be part of this conference, and at the same time make it valuable to attendees. On a typical conference, sponsors are invited to be speakers as well. I don’t have a problem with that, I just wish there was more disclosure about it.

However, I didn’t want a lawyer telling attendees how to raise money, or a designer telling about the value of User Experience, or a VC talking about monetization through advertising. I wanted entrepreneurs who been there, done that. I’m not saying the lawyer, designer or VC will not add value, but they have a different lens. They talk a different language. They worry about different things.

Without speaking spots for sponsors, how do I entice them to be part of this conference? A logo on the website was probably not enough. Then a light come over my head. Why not let sponsors talk directly to attendees one-on-one? The sponsors are being part of this because they do add value to startups, so attendees of StartupDay would have questions to those sponsors. When I left Microsoft, I spent quite a bit of time talking to lawyers and accountants, figuring out the office space market, financial planning, etc.

Then the Advisory Room came up to be. About half the people on the Advisory Room are sponsors of StartupDay and paid to be there. There are no hidden elements here, because we list their name and firm just by their logo. The other half are people I invited because they are either successful entrepreneurs, or successful investors.

The Advisory Room – and StartupDay itself – is an experiment. This is the first time we are doing a conference for “pre-entrepreneurs” and we are trying to understand what works, what doesn’t, what attendees/speakers/sponsors like and don’t like about it, but we are not afraid to innovate because we have nothing to lose (except by $30,000 if tickets don’t sell, so please buy a ticket).