For starters we would like to thank the staff at TechCrunch for putting up such a great show. TC50 truly provides an invaluable source of networking for both start-ups and companies in the technology industry.
Kijubi Table at TechCrunch50
We arrived in San Francisco on Sunday night and stayed at the Phoenix Hotel on Eddy. It’s not necessarily in the best neighborhood (the seedy Tenderloin), but the hotel, rooms and courtyard pool provide a great boutique-like feel (very South Beach). Monday morning we woke up at 5:45am and got ready to rock and roll. Upon arrival to the San Francisco Design Center Concourse, the check-in process took no more than a minute and was well organized. We found our table, set up our iMac and were ready to go before the 7:30am opening.
Instead of gifting chocolates, bags, cups, or other schwag, we decided to give away tons of fun activities to reinforce what our website does. Talk about a relevant and exciting way to engage people. How did we do this? Twitter. We gave people simple instructions: Follow us: http://www.twitter.com/kijubi, Tweet: “RT #Kijubi #TC50 http://bit.ly/frvzb” and tell us “What Kijubi Doing?” Many people won prizes like indoor skydiving, sailing, fishing trips, theme park tickets, plus so much more. In the end we gave away over $5,000 worth of activities, adventures, and fun things to do. I was told we were the most tweeted about company at the show that day.
I would say the absolute best part of launching at TC50 was the press we received, the wonderful connections made with VC’s, angel investors, potential partners, and industry bloggers. After attending several other tech shows, this one proved to be the best networking of all, and a great way to launch Kijubi!
Check out some of the articles written about Kijubi:
TechCrunch.com: Kijubi Launches Booking Engine For Local Outdoor Activities
New York Times: A new resource for travelers
LA Times: Kijubi launches at TechCrunch50: 6 outdoor activities you wouldn’t expect from a travel site
SoCalTech: Interview with Billy Fried, Kijubi
BlackBookMag: Kijubi Active Vacation Search Engine Debuts
There are also lots of bloggers writing (or re-posting) great things about Kijubi. You can check out the Google Blog results for Kijubi here.
We would highly recommend you consider launching your tech product or service at TC50 if the opportunity to do so is available.
