BizTechDay San Francisco a Hit

BizTechDay was once again a success, with Edith Yeung managing to attract some of the brightest and most interesting entrepreneurs to her San Francisco event.

This past weekend, hundreds gathered at the Metreon along Mission Street, for a series of panels and demos. Infusionsoft founder Clate Mask addressed the value proposition when launching companies, in other words, you have to build capital that matters.

Too often, entrepreneurs spend too much time on raising capital before they really think about the emotional capital that's necessary to create with the people in your solution's community around you. THIS my friends is what builds a sustainable business and all too often companies try to bypass the emotional value and just focus on the money.

Your customers buy from you because the way your brand makes them feel, not just for the product features and low price. Interesting how many times I have given companies this message over the years and how little they execute that promise over the long haul.

Many are in 'it' for the short win but customers and partners keep your business going past the initial hype. Your partners work with you because they trust you are good with to work with, not just for the commissions you give them. Your investors give you money because they trust you can make it happen, not purely for the ROI.

A number of start-ups hit the BizTechDay stage, including :

Wildfire, which has an app-like widget that gives people a reason to interact with your page and engage with your brand. They offer tools to help you engage the 100s of millions of users of social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Their app can help you create branded interactive campaigns like sweepstakes, contests and give-aways with added viral features to increase your followers and your level of engagement with those followers.

Adroll's head of Sales James Cavalier pitches their service. He says, "Adroll's main focus is to have a positive ROI for your display advertising for both small and large brands." They place a pixel on your site - if people leave without purchasing something from their site, Adroll will show them ads throughout the web. You can choose how long your campaign runs, so you can measure success and failures and refine from there. They have a free two week trial.

Brian Zisk showed a demo of Collecta, which is set of personalized news feeds aimed at increasing engagement on a user's site. They'll streamline the world of interests and news for you, showing you what's hot right now.

Some random shots from the day's event below:

The Vendor Area - emerging & SMB companies set up booths along the main strip

Media Luncheon - our table just happened to be all women :-)

Mashable's Ben Parr on the Social Factor: It's About People, Not Tools

 Nicholas Gammell of Gain Fitness and David Blumberg of Blumberg Capital

Robert Scoble

Founder and Producer Edith Yeung

 

Megan Casey of Squidoo

Clara Shih on the Facebook Era

A dozen tables at the Media Luncheon (L to R: Renee Warren, Sue Kwon, CBS)

Still and Video were going all day

The Main Floor

The below four shots taken by Michael O'Donnell.

Karen Hartline, Ben Parr, Renee Blodgett