Startup Grind Day 3/3: Zette Pitches at Global Conference 2024
Today was the day Zette officially exhibited and pitched at Startup Grind’s 2024 Global Conference!
We woke up at the crack of dawn, equal parts sleep deprived from late-night exhibition prep and buzzing with anticipation for the day ahead. We packed all of our conference swag early in the morning, picked up a cascading set of 16 yellow, black and gold balloons on our way from San Francisco, and rolled up to Redwood City in an Uber XL, ready to rock and roll.
Our booth initially consisted of a 6’ Zette sign and a single barstool in the corner of the main hall. Alas — no one puts Zette in a corner, so we took charge and made our own booth on the main street in the busiest section of foot traffic. The Startup Grind staff didn’t technically say yes to our request…but they also didn’t say no. (Better to ask for forgiveness than permission!)
First order of business: making a table! We stacked a rectangular box on top of our allocated barstool to create a makeshift table, then draped Zette-branded fabric over it to complete the illusion. We scattered on top holographic Zette stickers, branded pens, colorful flyers, and a bucketful of chocolate candy to give away, like Santa Claus on Christmas Day.
Compared to being crammed side by side with dozens of other exhibiting startup founders in a limited indoor space, our new spot seriously stood out — in a good way. Guerilla marketing at its finest! From our new perch, we were able to pitch to hundreds of Startup Grind attendees, handing out business cards, flyers and candy left and right.
Throughout the afternoon, we met so many fascinating people, ranging from investors to college students, early-stage founders to government employees. We were asked questions about our backgrounds, how our business model worked, what our partnerships looked like, and how we planned to scale. (It was like a real-time “Ask Me Anything!”) We convinced a ton of new people to try out Zette, and received a flurry of LinkedIn requests and business cards in return.
One of the highlights of the day was going onstage at the Fox Theater to pitch Zette live as a Top 40 Startup. Our CEO Yehong Zhu spoke immediately after Howie Liu, co-founder of Airtable, and right before Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, two Silicon Valley icons that she met backstage.
When it came time to pitch, our team had only one minute to captivate the live audience. Yehong woke everyone up with an ice breaker, briefly highlighted our company’s mission and investment opportunity, and ended with a tongue-in-cheek, “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s Make America Smart Again!” to laughter and applause from the audience.
After a few more hours of manning our booth, we headed to Startup Grind’s final happy hour — replete with buttered popcorn, an open bar, and confetti-decorated sock giveaways. The hall was packed with hundreds of people socializing and networking before going off to their respective post-conference destinations.
Surveying the now-familiar faces in the crowd, it was hard to believe that the day was finally coming to an end. We were filled with gratitude for the invaluable connections we’d made at Startup Grind, and exhausted from a day well spent.
As we took our booth down — packing up leftover swag and stuffing our surviving balloons into an Uber back to San Francisco — we congratulated ourselves on a job well done. After a long and packed three days at Startup Grind, it was finally time to go home.
That’s all from us, folks — see you next time!
— The Zette Team
