CES 2007 Observations

I'll leave it to the thousands of experts out there to give you booth by booth coverage on all the latest gadgets and such.  I'd like to offer up some start up, future, VC things for you.

Booth Space

As many of you might recall during the days of COMDEX, PC-Expo, Networld, etc, there was always a pile of 10x10 booths lining the trade show floors. It was these minimalist booths, tables really, where you found all the new stuff.  With CES taking a lead spot in these geekfest trade shows,  it has become super hard for the little guy to get any notice.  This year it was the SANDS expo center and I suspect it will be even more so next year.  The difference between the Las
Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) and the SANDS Expo center was striking.  The LVCC was all about taking orders.  20,000 square foot booths with massive 108 inch LCD TVs and huge meeting room areas all designed for buyers to place orders.

The SANDS on the other hand, was all about new stuff and technology.  The really fun guys showing off the fashionable Tazors to the different types of flexible tri-pods being released.  In general, if you are new and tech, go for the SANDS and don't get lulled into siren song of gotta be in the main hall with the big boys.  You don't.  The quality and quantity of crowds in the SANDS was excellent.

What do you do?

Memorize the 15 second drill.  It should be obvious from your booth signage or what is happening on the screens showing whatever demo, but the key is making sure every person in the booth can answer the question. Sounds obvious but in the 170 booths I went into with "So, what do you do?" there was a surprising number of people who stuttered, stammered, and simply didn't really get it.  If you are hiring booth bodies, risky, but if you are, they should get that practice and never be allowed off script.

Give Aways

Brace yourself, people though this stuff away. I know, shocking.  Even more insulting is these people who troll the entire floor and simply add to the collection of stuff they keep in the basement. Where they live. With Mom. Yeah, it's spooky.  For all the hard work you've done on that flyer, well, sorry.  The best advice here?  Keep it short, have a tight message and have some type of offer to get the person to head to your website with you can get em going.  If you can make it past that evening trash dump and get em to your website, that give away will have faithfully done the job.

Get a daughter

Having a really really smart daughter of yours manning the booth is a key competitive advantage, trust me on this. 

 

See all of you tomorrow at the TVG breakfast.

Comments

[Adam Bullied]

So true about the SANDS.

We've been there for two days, and were talking about the ratio of just "interested" folks wandering in and the number of actual, qualified leads. We figure over 50% of the folks coming in are actual qualified leads.

Another key is making sure (if possible) have the right people from the company there to direct to properly. I qualified two VC's that come into the booth today and then could pass them right on to our CEO knowing they weren't looking for Biotech opps or something unrelated. Same with our consumer electronics -- many different people came by, and I qualified with specific questions and small talk ("do you know so-and-so," etc...) and then passed on to our consumer electronics guru.

This is the frist time I've done CES, but all in all the SANDS rocks.