Can a Small Start-Up Still Make a Splash at SXSW? Not If Jay-Z Is In Town

Last year was the first time I had ever been to South by Southwest (SXSW), a popular tech, film and music event in Austin, Texas that draws tens of thousands of people. I thought I was going prepared, but I ended up making a lot of rookie mistakes.

It takes no small amount of guts to start a SXSW presentation with a video of your own leg biopsy.

For thousands of people, starting a business is a dream that never comes to fruition because of the perceived obstacle of funding the venture. But new research  shows that starting a business from scratch doesn’t have to cost your life savings, with more than three quarters of micro-businesses launched with less than £2,000 of start-up funds. The results of the survey into start-up costs comes just a few days after Lord Young, the prime minister’s enterprise adviser, published his ‘Growing your Business’ report, and stated that this is a ‘very good time’ to start a business.

Austin Texas is overrun by technology and digital media folks this week during the SXSW Interactive festival. The event itself runs from Friday through the weekend and finishes up on Tuesday night, and consists of hundreds of lectures, panels, information sessions, and technology demonstrations. It all comes off as being a pretty big deal - on Saturday afternoon alone there were over 100 sessions, including Elon Musk discussing the details of his resupply rocket mission the International Space Station, and Al Gore discussing his book.

Check ou this quote from the Wall Street Journal (Bad Roads, Red Tape, Burly Thugs Slow Wal-Mart’s Passage in India, Jan 11):

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures, has helped his firm post some of the best returns in the entire VC industry over the past five years. The firm's performance has been nothing short of spectacular, and Fred Wilson's reputation has justifiably soared.