Technology

Itgetting down to the wire for your opportunity to show off your early-stage startup inStartup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt SF this October 2-4.Theresimply no better way to place your ideas and technology in front of influential change agents that can help you propel your business forward and set the stage for future success. Here are just four of the many reasons you should exhibit in Startup Alley.

1. Awesome exposure to the media

Along with 10,000+ attendees, Disrupt SF will have more than 400 members of the media. We&re talking the big guns — CNBC, Bloomberg, Forbes, Financial Times — alongside TechCrunch writers, scouring the floor looking forstories about fascinating founders, emerging tech trends or maybe even a future unicorn. Scoring media coverage can work wonders for your bottom line — as Luke Heron, CEO of TestCard, learned when he exhibited in Startup Alley:

We got a fantastic writeup in Engadget, which was really valuable. Cash at the beginning of the start-up journey is difficult to come by, and an article from a credible organization can help push things in the right direction.

Last year, TestCard closed a $1.7 million funding round.

2. Beaucoup investor attention

Journalists aren&t the only influencers perusing the tech and talent on display in Startup Alley. Investors are just as eager to find up-and-coming prospects to add to their portfolios. Itthe perfect place to start conversations and develop relationships that lead to big changes. And we&ve got a plethora of investors (both traditional VCs and corporate folk) in the Valley: Sequoia, Verizon Ventures, GV, SoftBank, Naspers, AT-T, Honda Innovations and more. Herewhat David Hall, co-founder of Park - Diamond, had to say about his experience:

Exhibiting in Startup Alley was a game-changer. The chance to have discussions and potentially form relationships with investors was invaluable. It completely changed our trajectory and made it easier to raise funds and jump to the next stage.

Last year, Park - Diamond closed its first round of funding, allowing the company to relocate to New York and make its first key hires.

3. Wild Card shot at the Startup Battlefield competition

Missed out on the Startup Battlefield applications? All exhibitors in Startup Alley get a chance to win one of TWOWild Card entries to the Startup Battlefield pitch competition. TechCrunch editors will select two standout startups as Wild Card teams that will go on the Main Stage to compete head-to-head in Startup Battlefield for $100,000 equity-free cash, the Disrupt Cup and even more glorious investor and media attention.

4. Free hotel stay for Startup Alley companies who book now

With all of those reasons, ithard to top all the value you&ll get from a Startup Alley Exhibitor Package, but we&ll even sweeten the deal and throw in a complimentary 3-night stay at a SF hotel if you book by Wednesday, September 25. All of this opportunity for $1,995 sounds like ittoo good to be true, but if you act now, this can become your reality.

There you have it. What are you waiting for?Buy your Startup Alley Exhibitor Package and strut your stuff at Disrupt San Francisco 2019.

Brands are often left to act like the person who searches for their keys under the streetlight simply because that is where the light is better. However, when brand marketers focus only on engaging with the customers they can more easily see — where online activity is visible — they risk overlooking the valuable opportunities hiding in darker spaces.

One of the most valuable of those dark web spaces is in the realm of what we call µbrowsers& — the messaging apps like Slack, WhatsApp and WeChat. We call them microbrowsers because they display miniature previews of web pages inside private message discussions. These previews, also known as ‘unfurled links&, create your brandfirst impression and play a big role in whether or not the person on the receiving end will click through to buy, or read or engage.

Google Analytics lumps all microbrowser-generated web traffic into the ‘Direct& bucket, which we often just ignore. This means we look for customers where we know how to create campaigns easily — on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and buying Google Ad Words.

And as more people rely more heavily on messaging apps for primary communication, these link previews from microbrowsers are becoming the leading segment of your direct traffic visitors. In Cloudinary2019 State of Visual Media Report, which drew on data from more than 700 customers and 200 billion transactions, we found that 77% of link sharing in Slack occurs during working hours and that the vast majority of the click-throughs are reported as ‘direct& traffic. The rise of microbrowsers gives us an opportunity to engage and attract customers through word of mouth discussions.

The good news is that the ‘leads& that microbrowsers send to your brand site are usually highly qualified and close to the bottom of the traditional sales pipeline funnel. When consumers arrive on your site they are often ready and eager to buy (or read, view and listen to your content).

Whether it be for sneakers, tickets to a concert, a birthday gift idea, or an article to read — a trusted peer recommendation typically happens in that fleeting moment when the appetite to buy is right now. That isn&t just valuable, itthe holy freaking grail!

Top tips for creating links that engage

Image via Getty Images / drogatnev

The way to get the most value from microbrowser traffic is by helping along this peer influencing that happens in the dark. By creating compelling, informative links with images, video and text information specifically for microbrowsers, you increase the likelihood that peer-to-peer recommendations in groups convert into sales and reads.

What follows are some top tips to ensure that the links unfurling within microbrowsers have the greatest impact.

First, remember the golden rule: your audience is human. When creating content for microbrowsers, design it for humans, not machines.

There are apps out there that help you find friends, find dates and find your distant family histories, but when it comes to &growing your professional network,& the options are shockingly bad, we&re talking LinkedIn here.

Lunchclub is a startup thatlooking to help users navigate finding new connections inside specific industries. The company has recently closed a $4 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz with other investments coming in from Quoraco-founder, the Robinhood cofounders, and Flexportcofounders.

The app follows in the footsteps of others that aimed to be dating app-like marketplaces for growing out your professional network via 1:1 lunch and coffee meetings. Lunchclub is more focused on setting up a handful of meetings for users that have a specific goal in mind. Lunchclub is aiming to be your warm intro and connect you with other users via email that can assist you in your professional goals.

When you&re on-boarded to the service, you are asked to highlight some &objectives& that you might have and this is where the app really makes its goals clear. Options include, &raise funding,& &find a co-founder or parter,& &explore other companies,& and &brainstorm with peers.& These objectives are pretty explicit and complementary, i.e. for every &raise funding& objective, therean &invest& option.

There isn&t a ton being asked for on the part of the user when it comes to building up the data on their profile, Lunchclub is hoping to get most of the data that they need from the rest of the web.

&Our view is that theretons of data already out there,& Lunchclub CEO Vlad Novakovski told TechCrunch in an interview. &Anything that comes from the existing social networks, be in things like Twitter, be it things that are more specific to what people might be working on, like Github or Dribble or AngelList — all of those data sources are in the public domain and are fair game.&

Lunchclubsell is that they can learn from what matches are successful via user feedback and use that to hone further matches. Novakovski most previously was the CTO of Euclid Analytics which WeWork acquired in 2017. Previous to that, he led the machine learning team at Quora.

The web app, which currently has a lengthy-waitlist, is available for users in seven cities including the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Austin, Seattle and London.

Co-founders Vlad Novakovski, Scott Wu and Hayley Leibson