Startups companies in “flyover” country have to do more with less. It’s a fact.
We’re in Ames, Iowa. It is a great college town, but it is not Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, or even New York.
It is harder for us to find access to capital, talent, and resources than it is for companies in some of the places mentioned before.
We accept that. It can be a bigger mountain to climb to get to unicorn status, and we’re okay with that.
What you get with unicorns are “growth at all costs” companies striving for inflated valuations in place of profit. These companies look at headcount growth as a measurement of their success.
As Alex Lazarow said in his entrepreneur.com article “entrepreneurs working in tougher, less-developed markets don’t share Silicon Valley’s obsession with offering free or subsidized products in service of growth. They charge their customers for their products.”
Lazarow says companies like us, in the “frontier”, should liken our mascot to that of a camel. Because the camel is adaptable, it survives without food or water for months, and when the time is right, can sprint rapidly for sustained periods of time.
That sounds about right. We’ve had to adapt and, while we aren’t starving, we have learned to sprint from time to time. We know what it means to wear many hats and what hard work is.
As Mike Evans, a co-founder at Grubhub said, “I am building a business, not a hobby. Businesses make revenues, hobbies don’t.”
We hear you, Mike, we’re not working this hard for hobbies either.
Why should you book a place at the FlyOver Tech Fest?
As we’ve done the past few weeks, we want to provide a few reasons why you should book your place at the FlyOver Tech Fest. Below are the speakers we announced last week and a few takeaways you could learn when listening to their sessions.
Ross Simmonds - The coolest cool, as his Twitter handle states. Ross is the CEO of Foundation Marketing, a company that works with many top brands to tell great stories through content. He quite literally built his brand, and that of Foundation, through building great content and finding unique ways to distribute it.
Takeaway - Ways to leverage your content to widen your net and build your business.
Amanda Goetz - Amanda is the Vice President of Marketing for The Knot Worldwide and one who holds nothing back building her personal brand. She recently said in a Tweet ‘the world can be lonely and we all want connection.” Her holding nothing back approach to life has opened doors for her and helped her build many influential relationships.
Takeaway - Leveraging your personal brand to build your business
Erin Rollenhagen - As the CEO of Entrepreneurial Technologies, Erin works with her clients to scale with technology, meaning planning their software package to deliver MVP’s upfront to build out revenue, but also road-mapping to keep churning out advancements along the way.
Takeaway - Tangible lessons learned from her time spent helping their clients build
We know there will be other things you walk away from after hearing these fantastic speakers. But, in case you were unaware of their backgrounds, hopefully, these few examples will motivate you to book your place now.
Did you see our two previous posts featuring our other FlyOver Tech Fest speakers?
The FlyOver Perception + Why You Should Book Your Place Now
👉 Book Your Place Now www.flyovertechfest.com
