Ten Things I Learned At MicroConf 2011

by irms

Firstly, how about a big fat round of applause for the likes of Rob Walling and Mike Taber? They put on one rockin’ conference for self-funded startups. If you didn’t go, that was a bad decision. Don’t make that mistake next year.

For, like, the amount you spend on bottled water each year, you could have listened to and learned from ONE-JILLION smart people talking about startups and what to do/not do with them. How’s that for value? (Seriously: 11 speakers, and 105 interesting attendees. Andrew Warner, Hiten Shah, Ramit Sethi, and Patrick McKenzie among them.)

Here’s some stuff I learned that you would have learned if you had gone to Vegas instead of playing with Instagram filters at work:

  1. Test your stuff, but don’t waste your time testing.
  2. Email is not dead. Don’t let TechCrunch fool you.
  3. Investment, booooo. Bootstap, yay!
  4. Tomato juice and video poker make a good time in Vegas.
  5. Noah Kagan is kind of an ass. But he likes it that way.
  6. “Hope is not a strategy.”
  7. Always ask yourself, “If my product were built today, how would I market it?”…before you start building.
  8. If you write desktop apps…stop building desktop apps.
  9. Thongs made of candy look like fun on the shelf in the gift shop, but one uncomfortable conversation with a nerd reveals their impracticability.
  10. Don’t throw bottles of Sriracha to the audience if you plan on saying offensive things onstage. They get thrown back.

In addition to learning a ton, I also had a blast. Put me on the list for MicroConf 2012. I’ll drive if you buy the food.