CES 2018 Review – A Startup in a Land of Corporations

Sitting here on the airplane flying back from Las Vegas, all I can think; am I dreaming? I just had a crazy week in Vegas.  Not the kind of crazy you see in movies, with all the gambling, drinking, and shows, but with insane meetings with multi-billion dollar corporations, press from the show organizers, and interest from around the world.

A few months ago, a global semi-conductor company, whose technology we are using for our product, asked us if we were interested in showcasing our product at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. This offer came out of nowhere and knocked me off my feet with excitement. For years, I have looked forward to this time of the year; when CES occurs. I would always follow the big blogs like TechCrunch and CNET as well as surf Twitter for the latest and greatest technology products, services, and innovation. (For those of you who don’t know, CES is the epicenter of consumer technology from around the world. With over 170,000 people over 4,000 exhibitors flocking to Vegas, it is the largest Consumer Electronics show in the world.) Thus, you can imagine my expression getting the email asking us to join this year for the show. A dream come true!

As I have before for other conferences, I started my preparations with scouring the conference website, reading articles about the conference, and reaching out to veterans who have been to the conference before. The one thing I kept hearing was “Good Luck, its crazy” and “CES show is different than anything else.” What I came to quickly understand was that the pure size of the attendance and scope of the technology showcased delivered leads itself to an overwhelming experience to anyone who attends. Luckily from my interest in CES, I knew that there were certain groups of people who go to the show every year. These people are journalists, market analyst, and even owners of companies looking for innovation or to source new products. From my conversations and research, below is a list of the key advice and takeaways in preparation of CES:

• Wear comfortable shoes, you will be walking A LOT
• Bring plenty of business cards
• The best Cold Email advice (which ended up leading to 3 BIG meetings) – http://www.mediasurvey.com/pdf/ces33.pdf
• Try to get in on the private dinners or other gatherings in the evenings. This is where the real networking happens and can lead to easy fundraising.
• The showrooms are huge. Keep a map on hand as you sweep the aisles. Don’t feel like you have to stop to talk to every table, just the ones that really catch your eye.
• Don’t waste time at talks unless you really admire the speaker or topic.
• Wear something recognizable to draw people out from the crowd. A friend said, for example, I wore an MIT backpack last year and other alumni whom I never would have met came up to me.

 

Without knowing too much about how my product demo would turn out, I started the week on Monday flying to Vegas to meet a few other people from my team. Tuesday morning came very quick, felt like I didn’t get too much sleep because I was so excited for the day to begin. We set up our demo at the Venetian in the global semiconductor demo suite as well as on the exhibition floor in the Westgate. My impression of the pre-conference calls was that there were going to be other similar companies demoing and showcasing technology, yet once we were there I realized we were unique in the size of our company and uniqueness of our product offering versus the others who were asked to showcase their technology. Once we were set up, we stood at the booth and awaited the traffic. As a side note, I was just excited to be there, yet for the other sales people there, it didn’t phase them because they had been to CES many times before, but for me, this was the coolest thing in the entire world. As the day started, the foot traffic was pretty slow. About mid-day, it started to pick up and continued throughout the week.

All in all, we must have had a few thousand people stop by the booth to chat, see our technology and the other demos. With this being a global conference, we had interesting conversations with people from Belgium, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, UK, and other countries. The crazy part was that after our quick pitch, everyone picked up the device and start thinking about how it could be of value to them. We heard use cases and applications around smart factories, tracking school kids, smart hotels, and patients in hospitals. It was beyond exciting to hear about all the ideas and feedback people had as well as the positive interest from each person.

It’s one thing to build the product in our lab, it’s another to show it off in a real-time demo to thousands of people from around the world. It was a pretty incredible opportunity to be there and an unforgettable experience!

 

In terms of takeaways for next year (if I ever get the opportunity to go back), there are 3 major sections below with tips:

Take Care of Yourself

• Bring water bottles. I would go as far as buy a pack and put them in your room to take to the show each day with you. You don’t realize it because of the adrenalin, but I was extremely dehydrated the first few days. Between standing and walking miles each data to talking to hundreds of people, it is crucial to stay hydrated.
• Park in the free self-parking garages. We parked each day in the Planet Hollywood, but other hotels also have free self-parking as we learned later in the week.
• Take uber or lyft everywhere. Do not go to the monorail or get a taxi, if you need to get anywhere timely, use rideshare. Pro tip: don’t call for a ride right in front of the big hotels. Walk behind the hotel or to a side street and pick up there. The prices are geo-fenced and increase in high volume areas, so go where no one goes.
• Bring a backup battery charger for your phone. Between the 200,000 people there and the spotty coverage, your phone dies much quicker than usual. Your phone is your lifeline for meetings, so keep it charged.
• Wear comfortable shoes. After walking more than 6 miles each day, your feet, back, neck, well whole body tend to feel sore. With this, there are multiple smart, all-inclusive massage chairs around, use them to your advantage.

Networking

• Stay organized. Debrief every day with your team. Use an app like CamCard, to keep track of your business cards. Take notes somewhere of your conversations. You forget things pretty easily after 24 hours.
• Be a frog. One of the tactics we used for the best networking was to be intentional about who we talked to and jump from one person to the next. In the bigger booths, there is a literal front desk where secretary like people sit. Go to them do your pitch and be specific in your ask. It is their job to find the right person related to your inquiry to connect you.
• Another great tactic, once we were in, was to ask for a referral. Simple stating, is there anyone else at the show who you think could benefit from our product? Usually, they would name a few companies, if you were lucky they would have a personal contact to share with you or introduce you to the show floor.

A Startup in a Land of Corporations

• If you have a small product, bring it with you on your walks through exhibitions. For us, the greatest conversations happened at random times because we were wearing the device and everyone was so observant and curious to know what every gadget was. We had conversations in elevators, uber pools, other company exhibits, as well as at private parties.
• Follow Twitter, as a startup you don’t have a full marketing team. But Twitter can be your best friend. Search for CES and a keyword to find relevant tweets. We had a lot of success by replying to these.
• You have status. Just for being a startup showcasing your product at CES, you are given a level of “status” also known as legitimacy. Take advantage of this and show your confidence when going to the bigger corporations and media outlets. Remember, CES is the largest Consumer Electronics show in the world, that’s a big deal.

 

Lastly, if you ever get the chance to go to CES, I strongly recommend it! I can only explain so much on here. I can assure you the experience is unlike any other in the world.