Hustle Con-nections: A Day of Hustling, Skee Balling, & Networking

Brought to you by cred...connecting thought leaders through speaking & creating environments that inspire.

“What does it mean to hustle?”
We all know & love The Hustle as the daily email with the latest updates on tech, business, and deals deals deals. Yet, very few are aware that Hustle Con, the annual conference, is what started it all back in 2014 to answer the question: what does it mean to hustle?

Hustle & Flow (through the Paramount Theatre)
Last Friday, 2,000 hustling entrepreneurs—non-technical and technical enthusiasts alike—gathered in Oakland’s historic Paramount Theatre to see speakers from companies like BARK, Instacart, Ellevest, MVMT, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK discuss how they got started, how they grew, and what they learned along the way. Mixing old with new, interactive booths from Microsoft, WeWork, Premier Talent, and Salesforce stood throughout the 1930s art-deco halls of the theatre.

Attendees were greeted with breakfast, coffee served by Algorithm Coffee Co., and lively music blaring in the background, packing the theatre with exciting energy. Opening remarks were made by Sam Parr, CEO & Founder of The Hustle, asking everyone to “be kind to each other,” and Lindsey “always rockin’ that amazing orange blazer” Quinn, The Hustle’s Managing Editor.

“How much does it cost to buy an entire Trader Joe’s?” $22,000.
Max Mullen, Co-Founder of Instacart and cred client, shared his hustle story during a fireside chat interview with Sam Parr—like that time he bought every item in Trader Joe’s to create the very first grocery store inventory for the Instacart app. Free samples and coffee never sounded more desirable.  

This isn’t the first Hustle event where a cred speaker has brought their insight to the stage. Other cred speakers including Edith Yeung (500 Startups), Anneka Gupta, (LiveRamp), Tara-Nicholle Nelson (SoulTour), and Sree Menon (Tophatter), have spoken at The Hustle’s 2X programs earlier this year in San Francisco. Tara-Nicholle Nelson is a top 50 finalist for The Hustle’s Woman of the Year.

friday shower thoughts from the stage:

“If you’re passionate about what you do, you’ll push through and be tenacious. If you’re not passionate, you’ll give up.”
-Max Mullen, Co-Founder, Instacart

“I couldn’t get to that next stepping stone without having that experience of failure and falling flat on my face.”
-Brian Scudamore, Founder, 1-800-GOT-JUNK

“Entrepreneurs typically do a terrible job of taking care of their own financial futures...Remember to invest in your future too.”
-Lisa Stone, Chief Strategy Officer, Ellevest

We didn’t only eat donuts...
The cred team also volunteered this year at the event, continuing our “fangirl”—yet mostly professional—relationship with The Hustle Team. We helped with guiding attendees, displaying food, and bringing leftovers to St. Vincent de Paul, a shelter a few blocks from the theater. On top of seeing our clients on stage, we had a great time being a part of the event and helping our friends at The Hustle.

See you at the next Hustle event!

-Abrisham “overthinking this signature” Khosravyani

Youth Marketing Strategy SFO: Catching Up with The Future of Marketing

Following the success of events in London, Berlin, and New York, Voxburner brought their Youth Marketing Strategy summit to San Francisco for the first time on June 12 at Fort Mason’s Gallery 308. YMS offers insights that reflect the latest trends and hottest topics in the youth marketing industry. We attended to see our speakers from Tophatter and Greenbrier and hear what’s driving the behaviors of GenZ and how brands and agencies can do a better job of meeting the youth market where they are. Here’s what we learned.

CEOs, VPs and Founders shared their thoughts on current marketing opportunities and challenges and why young people are so important to their organizations:

• “These issues that are polarizing to older demographics are not to younger ones. Be a human, that’s what these young consumers want. Staying silent is not a long term strategy.” - Meredith Ferguson, DoSomething Strategic

• “We know that most young consumers, don’t read the New York Times or watch Bloomberg Tech. Surprisingly, most younger consumers get their news from local news websites. We need to figure out how to meet them where they are vs. trying to get a story in a top tier.” - Lane Kasselman, Greenbrier

• “We have to think very carefully about what we do. I encourage our company to act as a media/publishing company and think about planning every 3 hours vs. every 3 months.” - Livio Bisterzo, HIPPEAS

25-year-old Steve Bartlett of Social Chain helped us understand How to Avoid Becoming Completely Irrelevant in 2018 and the power of working with micro-influencers:

• “Most people are creating things from the perspective that people care. The only thing people really care about is what I can do for them . . . you are not a marketer, you are a publisher.”

• Personalization is the way to turn everyone into an influencer (ex. people sharing photos of their names spelled wrong on Starbuck cups)

• Where is the opportunity? Podcasting, free reach on LinkedIn because they haven’t figured out their algorithm yet, music.ly, Twitch, and Facebook Groups.

During The Kids That Are Changing the World panel,  the audience had a chance to ask ambitious youth what they want from their brand relationships. Authenticity, relatability and transparency were key:

• “GenZ grew up on social and smartphones and can detect BS much faster than other generations. Brands need to take this into account.” - Tiffany Zhong, Zebra Intelligence

• “No-one really gives a shit about you and what you’re doing, what they do care about is the content you're building out and what they can do with that. It’s all about trying to create content where, after people watch it, they feel like they’re walking away with something.” - Mehak Vohra, Jamocha Media

The first panel after lunch and a 10-minute guided meditation brought together speakers from brands TOMS, Casetify, Par en Par, and Tophatter to discuss The Future of Retail:

• “Instant gratification is what we see shoppers wanting, and snackability. In a world where our attention spans are shorter than goldfish, you have to bump the adrenaline up quickly." - Malcolm Scovil, Tophatter

• “It should be a given in your business model that you’re doing good, or at least doing no harm in your process of creating.” - Laura Choi, Par en Par

Ben Harms of Archrival gave an engaging talk on The State of Youth Culture and Shifting Trends. Key insights included:

• Youth are compelled to find and follow their personal passions to build up a life resume of experiences.

• GenZ is the most self-reliant generation yet. They know how to find the answer. 72% want to start a business.

• “This generation has blown open the world of acceptance. The more unique and individual you are, the more oddly normal you are.”

• “Girl Power” is an outdated mantra. In Z’s minds, the gender paradigm has already shifted and it’s up to us to catch up.

• 82% of GenZ said they’d rather trail blaze than follow traditional paths.

• “The idea of building loyalty among this generation is one of the most elusive things. They’re incredibly loyal - but that definition is changing. Youth are loyal to creativity and innovation. Brands must constantly push themselves to keep favor.”

Event Spotlight: The Startup Conference 2018

The Startup Conference took place on May 17th in Redwood City. This event gave many startups and founders the opportunity to soak up knowledge that will give them the tools to succeed. The energy was electric and there were rarely any moments where people weren’t laughing, asking questions, or networking. Throughout the day, the audience sat at the edge of their seats, listening with hunger in their eyes. Three cred clients spoke at this event - Lattice, Venrock, and Sharethrough. They each shared insightful wisdom with the crowd.

Jack Altman from Lattice took the stage amongst the first set of speakers, offering insight on the true struggles founders face. He noted that fundraising isn’t very natural, but there are a lot of resources online available for people following the same path. He reminded the audience that although asking for funding is tedious, ultimately, it’s a funnel to find out which investors really align with your company’s vision. 

Ethan Batraski of Venrock took the stage with Soma Somasegar of Madrona Venture Group, Varun Jain of Qualcomm Ventures, and Martin Stroka of F50 for the panel of VCs talking about what makes a killer pitch that piques the interest of investors. Ethan, along with others, agreed that out of the four requisites - market, team, technology, and ability to execute (operational excellence) - investors would rather put their money in a startup that has the right team and market fit. Varun agreed that it would be ridiculous for investors to ever invest in a startup with a founder who has no business acumen. 

Sharethrough’s Rob Fan took on the Scaling & User Acquisition panel. He spoke with purpose, informing the crowd that who you hire depends on who your consumers are. Rob shared the reason why companies can scale quickly is because they invest in their customer support early on. He also noted that utilizing word-of-mouth is an early-stage company’s best friend.

The event ended with 3 startups, who were chosen by the audience, pitching in front of investors. The startups that pitch are likely to gain coverage for their ideas and meet influential decision-makers. If you are an early stage startup looking for investors, this event happens every May in Redwood City- see you there next year!
 

Cheers for Three Years of #cr3d!

It’s hard to believe it’s been three years! We started cred with a vision to connect passionate speakers to opportunities to build thought-leadership. To date, we have confirmed 1,800+ speaking opportunities for our clients to speak at events located all around the world! It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come at achieving that mission and so much more.

We’ve grown our team to a healthy 17 (and still growing). We've built a data-base of over 7,500 events from scratch, helped over 200 speakers connect with engaged audiences, and are launching our first official internship program this summer, too. In 2018, a huge focus has been to grow the Event Management side of the company and we are happy to report that we have been super busy working with multiple clients to coordinate and source speakers from one-day summits to multiple day conferences (with 27 under our belt to date).

cred works hard, but we also know how to party!

We celebrated our Third Birthday in style at Neyborly Union Square, a modern and chic art gallery here in San Francisco. The team shared stories of the company’s conception and spent time basking in nostalgia as we recalled memories from the past three years. It truly is something special to work at a successful company with such an accomplished group of individuals. Our three-year-old-selves would be proud!

MIT AI Looks to the Future of Industries

All Eyes on the Future: Three Days of Supreme Content at MIT AI 2018

This past weekend, MIT Club of Northern California (MITCNC) hosted its second annual MIT AI Conference in San Francisco. For two days, MIT Alumni and leading AI experts from various industries gathered at the InterContinental Hotel for a series of fireside chats moderated by VCs and journalists. Attendees were also given the chance to bring their families and experience Kids Day on the third day of the event.

cred worked with MITCNC for months to coordinate the speakers and content for this one-of-a-kind forum on “The Future of Industries.”

Shuja Keen, President-Elect of the MITCNC giving welcome remarks.
Photo by Maqsood Hakim

One of the most well-attended sessions of Day 1 of the event was  the “Applying AI Research to Production” session featuring Jeff Welser from IBM Research, Richard Socher from Salesforce, and Anima Anandkumar from Amazon AI. The 80-minute chat discussed where their work and research in data science has been taking these leading companies.

Another crowd favorite was the session “Spanning the AI Spectrum”, where our client, Joanne Chen of Foundation Capital, moderated thoughtful questions to Richard Rabbat of Gfycat, Jaime Teevan of Microsoft, Guy Satat of MIT, and Bruce Welty of Locus Robotics with Rory O’Driscoll of Scale VP.

Joanne Chen with Richard Rabbat, Photo Courtesy of Maqsood Hakim

The event wrapped its final day on Sunday with the true future of AI: Children, joining to show off their creativity and technical skills—using briefcases, laptops, python software and immeasurable excitement.

Here is a snapshot of activities:

• How to Build a Drone- Sponsored by Flybrix

• How to Build a Self-driving car- Hosted by Curiosity Machine

• AR & VR Immersion Class Hosted by Upload

• The Competition Robot of Cupertino Robotics Club on Exhibit

• The Competition Robot of Missfits All Girls Robotics Team on Exhibit

Check out these photos from Kids Day:

MIT AI was a thrilling conference that left attendees of all ages excited for the Future of AI. We can’t wait for next year!

If you want help coordinating events like this, contact: hello@credpr.com

Event Spotlight: SaaStr Annual 2018

Last week the cred team had the opportunity to attend one of our collective favorite conferences: SaaStr Annual 2018. As one of the top conferences in SaaS globally (we ranked it in our Top 10 of 2017 in case you missed it), we loved being able to see our clients in action. SaaStr Annual is a massive convention, bringing together people across the spectrum in software as a service from start-ups, to investors, to unicorns such as Hubspot, Basecamp, and Medallia.

We were proud to have a solid line-up of cred clients present to share their insights on investing, building companies, and using SaaS. Some of our favorites included our client Joanne Chen of Foundation Capital, who moderated an invigorating talk to an absolutely packed room around “How do SaaS Companies Build Differentiated Assets in this New World of AI.” We also loved learning from our very own Mike McDerment, CEO of Freshbooks, who discussed his team’s “Unusual Approach to Replatforming” in a talk called “Split Testing Companies.”

An attendee favorite of SaaStr was the opportunity to set up “braindates.” Start-ups could meet with VCs or other companies excited about SaaS. It was an exuberant environment for idea-sharing. One of our personal favorite activities was the Yappy Hour on the first two nights. Attendees could unwind and play with puppies courtesy of Family Dog Rescue.

We are looking forward to SaaStr 2019 and continuing to place our innovative clients at this event!

Want to speak at events like SaaStr Annual? Reach out at hello@credpr.com! 

Knowledge Sharing with 100 early Stage SaaS CFOs

Yesterday we were onsite with Bowery Capital, an early stage Venture Capital firm, to help put together the 5th Annual CFO Summit. Bowery hosts these Executive Summits quarterly to provide a forum where early-stage growth companies can come learn from experienced executives. 16 CFOs from leading organizations were selected to discuss extremely tactical, hands-on topics, such as 'Planning for Hyper Growth', 'Understanding the ROI of Investing in People', and 'When to Change Systems Based on Growth/Funding'. Formats included facilitated panel discussions, 'tactical' work-shop like presentations, and roundtable conversations, with the main goal focused entirely on knowledge sharing in your role as a CFO.

The Summit, limited to 100 people to keep it intimate, was a great environment where C-level peers could share actionable business strategies and lessons learned.

Check out some of the highlights below!

Why Smart CEOs Are Social CEOs

These days, it’s a given that your company needs to have an active social media presence. But what about the members of your C-suite?

A recent Edelman study revealed 78% of the highest-rated CEOs were present on social media channels. Executives like Marc Benioff utilize social media to not only share company updates but also provide insight into aspects of their personal lives.

When used correctly, CEOs can use platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn to expand thought leadership and boost marketing efforts. However, the benefits gained by engaging on social go beyond boosting business. Compared to peers who are not active on social media, Social CEOs are 89% better at empowering others, 52% stronger at communications, 46% more influential, and 36% better at cultivating networks. 

Here are four other reasons why CEOs should make time for social:

1. Connect with customers: Not only does social provide a direct line of communication with those who purchase your product, but it’s a practical way to always have a finger on the pulse of your company and industry. A good example is when Airbnb’s Brian Chesky took to Twitter last year to ask people what they wanted his company to launch in 2017.

2. Build trust: 80% of consumers are more likely to trust a company whose CEO uses social. Think of social as a place to share details that humanize you and prove your accessibility to the public.

3. Strengthen public perception: In the midst of a PR crisis, brands who put their CEOs on the frontlines see a significant boost in public perception. For instance, AirAsia’s CEO Tony Fernandes was lauded for providing updates via Twitter after an AirAsia plane crash in 2014.

4. Create brand awareness: John Legere builds time for social media into his day as CEO of T-Mobile. While sometimes controversial, he’s a prime example of the many ways you can use social to your advantage. He frequently engages in conversations with customers, and his public tweets help spread T-Mobile’s message and set the company apart as the “Uncarrier.”

For more insights about execs on social media, check out thesE articles, here and here.