Our Director of Customer Experience, Suzanna Mathews, sat down with our Strategic Partnerships Executive Taylor Stevenson about his recent trip to the Collision Conference April 30 – May 3.
Welcome back to Wichita, Taylor . . . I notice you’ve been brimming with ideas and enthusiasm ever since you got back from Collision. Who all went to the conference with you?
3 members of our team: Our CEO, Mike Mathia, our VP of Tech, Jason Toevs, and myself. All 3 of us. In Mike’s car. For 15 hours.
What is Collision, exactly?
Collision is North America’s fastest growing tech conference. There are 25k attendees, comprised of 600 start-ups, 400 investment firms, and whole host of media people. They want you to collide! They foster an environment that allows you to collide with the people that will drive success for startups.
Did you have any meaningful collisions?
We met a number of potential collaboration partners with other startups, conversations with prospective investors, conversations with members of the media. We also met potential members of our team and prospective clients.
The conference was in NOLA, a southern city of infamy; what did you think of New Orleans?
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see much other than the conference center and our curated Collision events. The city has a grit to it that is normally edited in most other cities. You see people from across all walks of life -- all in the same space. I can’t wait to go back on vacation!
Why was it important for you to go?
To be surrounded by others who have the vision to grow scalable technology companies. It allowed us to get out of our Midwest mindset and refocus our vision for the broader technology sector.
Any major wins you want to gloat about?
We got accepted into the PITCH competition. Of the 600 startups, 70 got to participate in that. While we didn’t win our round, that pitch facilitated a multitude of conversations – including with promising investors, reporters, and clients.
That’s awesome! Any other take-aways?
We were reminded that technology is global. The number of different countries, perspectives, and industries that were represented was amazing. Technology is a global language. While we may not have communicated in the same language, we all embraced the vision of changing the world through technology.
Any surprises?
Investors advised us to move -- to surround ourselves with our peers in technology. In the future, we’ll share why we’ve chosen to stay in Wichita.
And the last question I always conclude with is this: Are there any Q’s I should have asked, but didn’t?
I believe that every startup should take the opportunity to attend a national conference like that. It was game-changing for us in terms of team chemistry, our mindset and our vision for what is achievable!
Footnote: The guys are looking forward to going to next year’s Collision conference in Toronto. And we women in the office are looking forward to joining them next time!
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