Consumer Electronics Show
Setting the global stage for innovation and entrepreneurship.
CES will always have a special place in my heart.
I’ve produced multiple projects there (every year from 2015-2019), and was able to develop close partnerships with the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) to produce the Startup Stage in Eureka Park 4 years in a row.
When I landed at UP Global (later acquired by Techstars in 2015), CES Startup Stage was my first solo project, and I also had the opportunity to return to Eureka Park with Samsung NEXT as well.
99 problems, but a pitch ain’t one.
The Startup Stage was conceived to highlight the startup community by featuring prominent entrepreneurs, investors and startups. UP Global, and then Techstars, were uniquely positioned to bring this type of content to CES since they had years of experience running one of the best accelerator networks around the world.
Throughout the conference we brought in top speakers and partners to discuss the latest topics in startups and consumer electronics, from finding your path to market to fundraising your Series A round.
We also would run a pitch competition at the end of every day around a technology vertical that was a target industry for our accelerators so that we could generate leads that we could vet afterwards. Since the pitch competition was our most popular session, we would involve our corporate partners as judges and some of them would have the opportunity to provide prizes, which would increase the appeal in applying to the contest.
When I returned to CES in 2018 with Samsung NEXT, we partnered with Entrepreneur Magazine to bring high profile investor like Gary Vaynerchuck and Baron Davis to our space. Needless to say, we packed the house with people that wanted to listen to their stories. CES was also the beginning of my partnership with Mr. Davis, whom I later brought to selected activations, like SXSW.
Setting the stage.
The year before I joined UP Global, the production of the stage went $30K over budget and no one wanted to see that happen again. I threw myself into cutting costs since day one and I centralized all of the logistics down to just one production company instead of the many legacy vendors we were dealing with, minimizing the labour and time fees - just by doing that I was able to bring the price significantly down. Next, I worked on our partnership with CES and negotiated with them to cover some big ticket items as part of our agreement.
Content was the most important part of our offering so I managed to work with our leadership and Ventures team to bring high caliber speakers and corporate partners from our accelerators. One year we had President Obama’s first CTO, Aneesh Chopra on stage to talk about patents and laws that can have an impact when creating a startup, executives from Target and Ford would talk about creating a path to market for products or we would bring African American, Latinx and women in venture capital to discuss funding and hiring underrepresented groups.
Another year, the newly appointed CTO of the US, Megan Smith, hosted a closed door private meeting with a selected group of Techstars startups and team members to discuss immigration and HB1 visas. We wanted to find a way to have strategic meetings with startups and our partners, so we set up office hours for startups and we would work before the event to match them with our partners.
The results.
Indiegogo noticed that our office hours were one of the main attractions to the space and we built a partnership with them to host office hours for startups at our booth for the next 3 years. They provided experts from their team to advice startups around fundraising and product development. Our pitch competition became our signature session, and in future years, we had to open an online platform for people to apply to participate and we would have to work over the holidays to pick the final 10 participants and work with them on the materials that they would bring. These sessions would be standing room only and people would block the alley paths around our booth to try and watch the competition. Participants were able to pitch their product, receive feedback, and win prizes while showcasing their product to a global crowd.
In 2015, after a successful CES, it was time to regroup with CTA and present our results. I knew I needed to show the value of the investment they made because they were on the fence about renewing our partnership for the upcoming year. I gathered as much data as I could find for the key metrics that they were interested in: social media engagement, media mentions, lead gen and brand perception. We had a 9 million reach on Twitter which was more than 50% than the previous year and our mentions had also increased dramatically. Our pitch competition was so popular that we went from having to find people to pitch to having a long waiting list. CES also posted a person at our booth to monitor the amount of people that would attend the sessions and their reaction to content and booth, and even though they didn’t provide specifics, they did mention a big increase in traffic and positive feedback.
CTA was really pleased with the results I presented and I was able not only to renew our partnership, but to increase our budget by $40K. This was the beginning of a great partnership between our organizations and over the years, we increased the quality of content and built additional areas to our booth such as a business lounge, green room and private meeting space.
