People in PropTech
Who are we missing?
Maybe my favorite part of every year is conference season.
To be candid, I hate Vegas (or The Strip, specifically) . . . but I love catching up with my PropTech friends/family at the conferences in the Fall and Spring. It’s the best part of my working year.
Still, I do notice as I go to CES or SXSW or other more mainstream conferences that they are much larger, more robust, and have broader reach. I was amazed how many young people were at CES simply for the joy of discovering new technology.
We don’t have that in our corner of the world.
So, we (meaning the Foundation) decided to start spending some time and money trying to figure out how we could harness some of that. Namely -
How do we get more interesting and impactful people to our PropTech events?
I use the word impactful so that we can avoid the trappings of inclusivity theater. For example, if you said we need more young people at an event I could simply take a bus to a local high school and grab a bunch of teenagers to bus over to the event. Then I could say “Look! We got so many young people! Here is my back so you can pat it!”
That’s theater to make people feel/look better.
I don’t have time for that.
Those teenagers would be lost and no one would gain much from meeting with them.
We want to focus on Who should be there that is not there?
For example, we paid for several CTOs to come to Blueprint last year because we noticed that no one ever brought their CTO. It’s always the CEO and Head of Sales. Seems to me that having the person responsible for the tech build speaking to actual customers (gasp!) could be some great feedback!
Now, I don’t know if I’m actually correct.
But you guys do.
So you tell me - Who should we invite to these events?
It can be a group of people (“European Founders”) or a person (Carrot Top). Whatever. You tell me.
I created a survey where you can leave generic feedback for all events. It’s here.
I also created individual surveys for
(Note - Those are just the events we have partnerships with. If you have other can’t-miss events I should partner with, let me know.)
Let me know who you wish was at these events and we’ll start working on it.
If you are a startup, I’m pretty sure you are going to say “more buyers.” In PropTech, that means owners, builders, managers, etc.
Fair enough, but what kind?
Homebuilders in Arkansas? Hotel REITs in Miami? Office Developers in LA?
Give me some direction on who and we’ll do our best to build that prospect list.
A couple more caveats -
First, you can’t nominate yourself. This is just to help other people.
Similarly, we are not interested in paying for people who could otherwise afford to go and are being frugal (I didn’t say “cheap”). We aren’t here to subsidize attendance for deep-pocketed firms. These event organizers are our friends and we do not want to harm their profits. We are trying to expand their outreach and top-of-funnel prospects for future attendees.
So keep that in mind as you fill out these questions.
That’s it for now.
I’ll send a follow up once we organize all of these responses to see if we notice any trends.