HOW STARTUPS ARE BUILDING BUZZ AT SXSW
Fest draws thousands of entrepreneurs, techies and investors.
For Austin startup Roikoi, the timing of South by Southwest Interactive couldn’t be any better.
The company recently launched its first app — a game that lets people anonymously rate people they have worked with — and now it wants to get the word out.
So Roikoi (pronounced roykoy) plans to leverage the fiveday SXSW Interactive festival and the thousands of entrepreneurs, techies and investors it attracts through sponsorships, parties and employees fanning the streets.
“We’re thinking of it as an activation event, and we want to reach everybody who’s there,” said CEO Andy Wolfe. “You’ve got this event, all these people coming in from out of town, people looking for jobs, people hiring, what a great way for us to reach them.”
The challenge for Roikoi and other Austin companies trying to get their name out at SXSW, which starts on Friday, is how to be heard above the din.
“We’ve got a few different plans on how to break
through the noise by being part of smaller events that are designed to attract the press, entrepreneurs, VCs, speakers and bloggers,” Wolfe said.
To that end, Roikoi is the title sponsor of the Entrepreneur Lounge at Fogo de Chao restaurant in downtown Austin. The five-night, invitation-only happy hour is limited to 300 people, who fit the profile Wolfe is seeking.
In addition, the company’s name will be advertised on more than a dozen pedicabs, and the drivers will encourage riders to download the app and try it. Meanwhile, Roikoi is wrapping its name around the Chi’Lantro food truck, where employees be on hand to talk about the app.
Free tacos will be given to those who try the app, which scans users’ Facebook friends and work history to identify people they’ve worked with and lets users rate them with a hire or fire vote. Roikoi calculates a score that ranks users compared with others, and displays the best performers in categories such as company, geography and industry.
Roikoi, which has raised $950,000 from a group of Austin tech veterans including Bazaarvoice founder Brett Hurt, entrepreneur Andrew Busey and Mass Relevance CEO Sam Decker, declined to say how much it’s spending on the effort.
Wolfe said the company “is doing some innovative things to stretch our budget as far as we can — we really just wanted to take advantage of our target market being in town.”
For Austin companies that want to showcase their products without making a sizable investment, Capital Factory is organizing its third annual startup crawl. This year, more than 50 companies will open their doors on Thursday night to visitors who want to meet their employees and test out their products.
Capital Factory founder Joshua Baer said the idea is to let visitors see what’s happening in Austin, and for companies to be part of the buzz for a few hundred dollars. (The event is open to anyone who registers at crawl.capitalfactory.com.)
Other startups are hoping to raise their profiles by participating in pitch competitions. Austin life sciences startup ePatientFinder and intellectual property broker idealAsset were chosen to go before judges at the Hatch Pitch. At the event, four early-stage tech companies will go before a crowd and judges to give four-minute demos.
“We see this as a great way to explain who we are to a great audience and possibly meet new investors,” said Tom Dorsett, CEO of ePatientFinder, which operates a Webbased platform that connects pharmaceutical companies carrying out clinical trials with eligible patients.