L-R: CEO David White, CDO Andrew Fogg, Marketing Associate Sally Hadidi and Angel Investor Emmanuel Javal celebrating winning Audience and Judges’ Choice at GigaOm Structure: Europe
TechCrunch Disrupt
Last week we were in San Francisco for TechCrunch Disrupt, one of the most anticipated technology conferences of the year.
Monday was our official launch into Beta, and when we woke up we were greeted by our beautiful new website and data browser. We couldn’t wait to hit the ground running and show it to as many people as possible. Most of that day was spent exploring the conference and generating hype for the stand we would have the following day. Playing off the fact that we were the only British company in the Startup Alley, we printed out flyers with “Keep Calm and Get Data” to encourage people to come by and see us.
It was really fun to wander around the Startup Alley and see all the different companies exhibiting there. There was everything from collaboration apps to soil readers. One of the most fun ones we got to try was a weight-sensing electric skateboard that is fast, easy to ride and more portable than a bike!
Tuesday was our time to shine at our own stand in the Startup Alley. A six am start to the day required lots of caffeine as we prepared for a full day of demoing. It was great! We were one of the most popular stands of the day and Andrew was constantly surrounded by people. Towards the end of the day TechCrunch came by to interview Andrew.
Things finally calmed down a bit on Wednesday and we were able to take advantage of all the other awesome things Disrupt has to offer. We spent most of the day listening to the speeches and interviews in the main hall. Some of the highlights included Marissa Mayer from Yahoo! and Mark Zuckerburg from Facebook, who talked a lot about the importance of a company’s mission statement. But it was the interviewer, Michael Arrington, who stole the show with his quick wit and hard questioning! It was also amazing to be able to hear from the legendary founders of Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins.
Mark Zuckerburg Founder and CEO of Facebook
Marissa Mayer CEO of Yahoo!
Sir Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital
The day ended with a much needed group meal at a delicious Mexican restaurant before heading to the after party to dance away the tiredness!
GigaOm Structure: Europe
Pretty much as soon as we got back from Disrupt – before the jet lag had even subsided – we had to turn around and get ready for GigaOm’s Structure: Europe.
In the afternoon Andrew participated on a Data Gurus panel with John Foreman, the CEO of MailChimp, and Sam Hamilton, VP of Data Technology from PayPal. They talked a lot about the rise of the data scientist and what that really means for companies. John made a good point about how it is important for companies to look at their internal data first before they jump on the bandwagon of analyzing social media data, which often isn’t actually that useful to the company bottom line.
L-R: Sam Hamilton (PayPal), John Foreman (MailChimp), Andrew Fogg (import.io) and moderator Derrick Harris (GigaOm)
At 5pm it was time for the main event…the LaunchPad! There were 10 startups who each had 4 minutes to pitch their company to the audience and a panel of three judges who then gave each pitch a score out of 10. The judges were heavy hitters in the data industry and included Kevin Brown, General Partner of Reed Elsevier Ventures; Joe Weinman, SVP Cloud Services and Strategy at Telxand; and Paul Papadimitriou founder of Digital Intelligence. Andrew did his infamous 80 slides in 4 minutes which he perfected out in San Francisco. The judges must have liked it because we got 9’s across the board! It was a nail biter all the way to the last pitch, but in the end we won the judges choice! The icing on the cake was that we also won the audience vote as well!
From L-R: Joe Weinman, SVP of Cloud Services and Strategy at Telx; Paul Papadimitriou, founder of Digital Intelligence; and Kevin Brown, General Partner of Reed
Elsevier Ventures
Judges’ and Audieance Choice award at GigaOm Structure: Europe