Each week in the New Tech Newsletter we feature a Spotlight Q&A with founders, angels, New Tech alumni presenters, and other people or companies in our community we believe you’d like to learn about. Reach out if you’d like to recommend a startup, founder, angel, accelerator, or New Tech alumni presenter for us to spotlight for the PNW tech community!
This week we spoke with Lloyed Lobo, CoFounder of Traction.
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What inspired creating your conference?
When Alex Popa and Lloyed Lobo started Boast.AI, they were struggling to find tactical advice to figure out the right go-to-market strategies to drive business growth, particularly as bootstrapped founders. Many of the events and conferences at the time focused on high level entrepreneurial stories, and when tactics were presented, it mostly by consultants and agencies vs. learnings from startups.
Around the same time they were talking to their friend Ray Walia, CEO of Vancouver startup incubator Launch Academy, who shared that most startups he came across had difficulty showing meaningful traction.
After talking to several entrepreneurs not only in North America, but around the world, Lloyed, Ray, and Alex were convinced that the problem is universal — most startups have trouble figuring out a repeatable, scalable way to get, keep and grow customers. And voila, Traction Conf was born.
What started out as pizza nights bringing a small group of founders together has evolved into a community of more than 100,000 subscribers where leaders behind the fastest-growing companies share tactical business advice via webinars, podcasts, meetups, retreats, and conferences.
How does your conference serve the tech community?
By providing tactical content, meaningful connections, and access to capital to help startups grow and scale.
What’s the most innovative or interesting thing about this year’s conference?
We have people joining us from various countries spanning North America, Europa, Middle East and Asia.
We’ve setup a Founder-Funder Zone to connect founders with investors.
We’re hosting an invite-only CXO Summit atop Grouse mountain which will be a gathering of 150 tech leaders including conference speakers, high-growth startup founders and execs alongside media for an evening of networking, learning, and fun excursions (such as disc golf, Irish hurling, and guided hikes) over delicious food and gorgeous views.
We have two fun parties lined up during the evenings of Aug 10 and 11.
Plus attendees will be treated to tactical content on how to:
- Build a brand and product that everyone loves & talks about;
- Create a culture and team for high growth;
- Pick the right marketing & distribution channels;
- Convert visitors to recurring users & paying customers;
- Create a category & build a community;
- Continue to drive double-digit growth by adding new blockbuster products, becoming a platform, or leveraging 3rd party platforms;
- Prepare to scale, exit, or IPO in the most effective manner;
- Raise money from top-tier VCs
- And a lot more!
Below is a small highlight of the 40+ sessions
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- The Only Way to Mars Is to Build Your Own Rocket – Anu Muralidharan, COO, Expensify. One of the few profitable, multi billion dollar tech companies out there.
- The Ultimate Product Strategy to Deliver Billions – Sara Hicks, CPO, Mailchimp. Acquired for $12.1 Billion by Intuit, bootstrapped company.
- Where to Fish to Land a Unicorn: The Framework for Identifying Your Best Bets to Win Big – Oji Udezue, Head of Product, Twitter and Former CPO, Calendly.
- Outbound Fury: How to Engineer Virality, Displace Competitors, and Win the Hearts & Minds of Millions – Raj Sarkar, CMO, 1Password. $6.8 Billion category leader.
- How ClickUp Grew Revenue 100x in 3 Years by Throwing Out the B2B Rulebook – Melissa Rosenthal, CCO, ClickUp. $4 Billion viral productivity platform.
What do you love the most about the conference?
Enabling the community to make genuine and meaningful connections that last beyond the conference.
We’ve always kept the conference small and capped it at 1,000 attendees for this reason.
What is one of the highlights, or memorable moments, for you in doing this work?
Hearing success stories from the community about how they made a meaningful connection that led to a large funding round, a key hire, a sizeable customer, etc. makes all this work worthwhile.
“I absolutely loved the conference – such great speakers. And the food was sooo good, it was such a pleasant surprise!” ― Karen Peacock, CEO, Intercom
“Great job on the conference. You guys really know how to do it right! I met some killer people. So glad I came up from San Francisco.” ― Zack Onisko, CEO, Dribbble
“The best startup conference I’ve attended. Speaker lineup is incredible. Attendees are high-level. Plus, Vancouver is beautiful” ― Josh Fechter, Founder, The Product Company
