2014 Schedule
Interactive: March 7–11  •  Film: March 7–15  •  Music: March 11–16

Building Your Startup with the Crowd's Help

#sxsw #B2BSocial

Iap27010

Building a startup is hard. Really hard. It's a whirlwind experience that requires boldness to win in today’s market.

The latest technology companies understand what it takes to win and are adapting their go-to-market strategies accordingly. They’re infusing “the crowd” of potential customers into every stage of the startup journey – from researching their market and beta testing to launch and post launch marketing activities. And they’re doing it in the unlikeliest of markets – B2B technology.

This shift represents a change in not only the types of businesses that are and will emerge in the future, but how those businesses go to market, build advocates, and foster a sense of community around their products and services.
This panel will explore new routes to market technology companies are taking, how they’re tapping the crowd to help, and the impact a “social first” strategy can have on the next wave of technology companies.

Sponsored by Spiceworks.

Presenters

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Jay Hallberg

Co-Founder/VP Mktg

Spiceworks

In 2006, Jay Hallberg co-founded Spiceworks, which has grown into the largest and fastest-growing professional social network for IT. With more than 2.4 million IT professionals using Spiceworks, it’s transforming how over $1 trillion worth of technology products and services are managed, marketed and sold each year in the small and mid-sized business (SMB) market.

Jay frequently speaks on social business applications and networks, B2B social commerce & marketing, and SMB IT trends at top industry events, including the Web 2.0 Expo & Summit, Interop, Cloud Summit, TechCrunch Roundtable, InformationWeek 500, and GigaOm Structure, among others. His commentary has also appeared in top publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily. Jay holds an MBA from Harvard and an engineering degree from the University of Illinois.

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Susan Etlinger

Industry Analyst

Altimeter Group

Susan Etlinger is an industry analyst at Altimeter Group, where she works with global companies to develop both social media listening and measurement strategies that support their business objectives. Susan has a diverse background in marketing and strategic planning within both corporations and agencies. She’s a frequent speaker on social media and analytics and has been extensively quoted in outlets including Fast Company, BBC, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Find her on Twitter at @setlinger and at her blog, Thought Experiments, at susanetlinger.com.

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Tad Hunt

Co-Founder & CTO

Exablox

Mr. Hunt has more than 16 years of experience in information technology. Before embarking on Exablox, Tad was Principal Engineer at Entrisphere (later acquired by Ericsson), a last mile telecom technology startup, from inception through acquisition by Ericsson. He was responsible for much of the core system architecture beginning with the initial product. He designed, architected, and implemented major components from embedded consumer devices to telco big iron. Prior to Entrisphere, he was a senior engineer at Bell Labs on PathStar, one of the first VoIP telephone switches, where he worked on the network management GUI and MGCP protocol stack. Prior to that, he was a kernel developer on the Inferno OS project. Tad received his bachelor’s degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he was a member of Computer Science House.

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Todd Krautkremer

VP, Sales & Mktg

Pertino

Todd Krautkremer is VP Sales & Marketing at Pertino, his 5th tech start-up. Pertino is reinventing networking for the cloud era by enabling any size business to setup an secure, enterprise-class network in the cloud in minutes and pay a low monthly subscription. Over 5,000 business have build networks on Pertino's Cloud Network Engine service.

Todd frequently speaks at industry events and has authored numerous articles on networking, mobile, cloud, security, big data, and consumer-driven sales and marketing. His commentary has also appeared in top print and online publications such as USA Today, Business Insider, InformationWeek, IDG Connect, NetworkWorld, CRN, Fast Company, and Wired.

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