How PR and Event Management enabled PR agency rassami to stage great events that introduced geeks to investors

TechCrunch Europe

TechCrunch Europe is a blog covering Web 2.0 and Mobile start-ups, part of the TechCrunch Weblog. TechCruch is dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies, and is said to be able to make or break a start-up depending on the coverage by its journalists. TechCrunch Europe is edited by Mike Butcher. A former editor of New Media Age magazine  and The Industry Standard Europe, he is often commenting on the European tech scene for a number of national newspapers including the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times and The New Statesman, as well as for the BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg.

Objective

Two years ago, Butcher asked PR agency rassami if it could help organise some specific TechCrunch Europe events. Butcher had been arranging informal get togethers between new technology businesses and investors, but these had become so successful and sought-after that he felt there was a need for formally organised events. As rassami specialises in PR, it needed to join up with an events company to meet the objectives, and teamed up with the b2b event solutions company TwistedTree to deliver the kind of events Mike had in mind.

Strategy

The TechCrunch Europe events are designed to bring together Europe’s technology start-ups and investors for discussion, learning, and sharing of their experience of building companies in order to grow the European tech ecosystem. There are obvious business benefits on all sides in introducing those in the process of launching start-ups with more experienced entrepreneurs, business leaders and investors. The start-ups get advice and funding, while investors get to be involved with exciting new businesses while they are still in their infancy.

Tactics

The first event was TechCrunch Talk London on 18 September 2008, a gathering of around 150 people for presentations, panel discussions and networking. The TechCrunch Talks then rolled out to European capitals including Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Barcelona. The success of these suggested it would be a good idea to have two big annual celebratory European events based in London: GeeknRolla, showcasing a great number of European start-ups through the TechCrunch Pitch! competition, and The Europas, the “anti-awards dinner event“. These would gather, present and highlight the best, most innovative and most interesting of the European tech new businesses to key European investors.

Results

Both GeeknRolla and The Europas were launched in 2009, and their success is proved by the fact they were well oversubscribed with more than 280 people attending. A lot of buzz was generated in the tech and investor community, as well as in the press.

The second annual GeeknRolla in London has just taken place on 20 April, with 430 people attending the event and close to 500 at the after-party – and this during a day of no air travel due to the Icelandic volcano ash.

TechCrunch Europe’s Mike Butcher says: "The TechCrunch Europe events, and in particular GeeknRolla, are a comprehensive attempt to create a new business culture in London. A culture of open sharing of information about how people really do create the kinds of companies that become the next Google, Twitter or Facebook. Our speakers are ingrained in Europe's technology start-up culture, and are as good as any on the planet.”