A look at Startonomics LA on February 6th

I’ve had a few people ask me about the Startonomics workshop on February 6th. “Who’s it for?” “What will I learn that I haven’t picked up at other startup events?” “Why would I go when I know some of the speakers already?”

All good questions so I asked Jasmine Antonick over at Dealmaker Media to answer some for me. After hearing her responses and looking at the agenda I can see how this event differs from the others out there geared towards start-ups and entrepreneurs

Most “start-up” oriented events I’ve heard about or attended feature blow-hard panelists that end up saying a whole lot without saying anything. At Startonomics the schedule’s broken up into digestible chunks and address a good majority of the stumbling blocks start-ups encounter. And it’s all taught by tried and true entrepreneurs.

Let’s take a closer look…

So what exactly is Startonomics?
“Basically it’s a one-day workshop designed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. The focus is on creating simple, actionable metrics to ensure a solid product and marketing foundation for long-term growth “and start-up” success. The agenda is broken up nicely with half hour presentations. Speakers are all founders who will pass on the knowledge gained from winning and losing.”

Who should go to something like this?
This seems a pretty standard list. I would think LA entrepreneurs would like this. They’re a pretty boot-scrappy bunch and well versed in the ways of friends and family money as their only source of funding.

Entrepreneurs of all levels, executives (C-level/VP/Director,) Investors (VCs/Angels,) Developers, Students

There’s a boon of conferences, un-conferences, mixers, panels and God knows what else out there. Why throw another one in the mix? What do you offer that’s different?

“Conversations with startups, industry execs and VCs led us to realize there was a need for a full-day event catered towards how to define, set and measure goals related to “starting up.” We decided to create an event that debunked the myth, “if you build it, they will come” and have experts explain HOW THEY built it, then teach the members of the audience (step-by-step) how they can, too.

“Startonomics aims to deliver meaningful content – in a way that’s not just about presenting TO the audience, but involving everyone in a conversation – we have side rooms set up for “Office Hours” with startup experts — attendees sign-up for set timeframes where they can ask direct questions related to their own needs. We partnered with Dave McClure to create the event in San Francisco (he’s a metrics guru) to try it there first. For LA we worked with a team of advisors to tailor the event for this market. A big thanks to Andrew Warner, Jason Nazar, Mike Jones, Dan Gould for being part of the first brainstorm.

“We had a few takeaways from that first one. A resounding one is that Startonomics isn’t just for Startups. The lessons and strategies shared by speakers resonated with more than first-time entrepreneurs. It’s about “starting” anything, really. We had a lot of attendees who were marketing execs, CTOs, VCs, analysts, etc come up to us following the event telling us how valuable the content was to them as well. The best comment we overheard from an attendee was, “this is the first conference where I’ve felt there’s real value IN the auditorium, not just in the lobby!”

Check out a couple sessions for a taste test:
• Ted Rheingold (who will be back for the LA event)
• Andrew Chen

Why make LA the next spot to host this? Why not NY?
We were asked by our VC partners as well as a lot of startup entrepreneurs in our network to produce a larger-scale educational event in LA. The scene is super vibrant in LA – with so many creative young companies emerging, there’s no better time than now to bring them all together (including media companies, VCs, etc) to learn from each other and find ways to partner.

Check out the schedule. Great speaker line up. Smart folks.
9:00 - 9:30 Morning Keynote Address: David O. Sacks, Yammer

9:30 - 10:00 Building on the Cheap: Starting Up When the Economy is Down: Bootstrapping strategies for agile development (Mike Jones, Tsavo Media)

10:00 - 10:30 Product Development 101: Designing & Prototyping The DNA of a Killer App: How to do research, develop, and build products; how to set goals & success metrics; and how to develop an iterative process to improve performance (Mark Jeffrey, Mahalo)

10:30 - 11:00: Morning Break

11:00 - 11:30 Scalability for Startups: How to Grow Up without Blowing Up: Scaling for the masses, startup-style (Jim Benedetto, MySpace)

11:30 - 12:00 7 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website: How to design an analytical marketing plan for acquiring users from multiple marketing channels (Jason Nazar, DocStoc)

12:00 - 12:30 Searching For Users: SEO as an Engine for Customer Acquisition: Organic & paid strategies for acquiring users from search engines, links & blogging (Neil Patel, ACS)

12:30 - 1:30: Lunch Break

1:30 - 2:00 Afternoon Keynote Address: Richard Rosenblatt, Demand Media
(Startup Claim to Fame: Sold 4 Startups for Over $1.3 Billion)

2:00 - 2:30 DIY Social Media Marketing: Word of mouth has never been sexier. Learn how to use social media & social bookmarking to spread the word to your mother. (Sean Percival, Tsavo Media)

2:30 - 3:00 How to Create a Website that Users Eat Up & Beg for More: How to get users to engage with your website & keep coming back (Ted Rheingold, Dogster, Inc.)

3:00 - 3:30: Afternoon Break

3:30 - 4:00 Pitching & Packaging for Partnerships: How to score winning partnerships, and how to measure their success (Peter Pham, BillShrink)

4:00 - 4:30 The Internet Wants to Be Free, but You Need to Get Paid: How to generate (profitable) revenue via multiple monetization strategies (TBA)

4:30 - 5:00 Team Building for Entrepreneurs: Strategies and measurement tools for building - and keeping - a winning team (Frank Addante, the Rubicon Project)

5:00 - 5:30 From A- Z: Idea to Advisors to Angel Funding to Series A: The entrepreneur’s overview for early-stage funding strategies (Dan Gould, Fox Interactive)

5:30 - 6:00 The Metrics of Early Stage Funding: The numbers that make VC funding a good (or bad) idea
Mark Suster, GRP Partners
Brian Garrett, Crosscut Ventures
David Travers, Rustic Canon Ventures

6:00 - 9:00 After Party Hosted by MediaTemple

If you’re interested, get tickets now because they’re only $195, ultimately going up to $295 the closer it gets to the event.