Startup Boston Week calls upon roughly 250 speakers across five days each September, and this year, more than 700 people applied for those slots. So what separates the applicants who get picked from the ones who don’t?
In a special Ask an Event Manager session hosted by Innovation Women founder Bobbie Carlton, Stephanie Roulic, the founder and CEO of Startup Boston, pulled back the curtain on how they choose their yearly lineup and what speakers can do to stand out among hundreds of other applications.
Your topic should match your résumé
Roulic doesn’t weigh past speaking experience heavily—Startup Boston Week regularly features first-time speakers and moderators. One terrific example? A co-op student who joined a startup during its earliest days.
What she does look for is alignment between what someone wants to talk about and what their background actually shows. If, for example, someone pitches a session on fundraising, but their LinkedIn and other online profiles show no evidence they’ve raised money or invested in a company, Roulic won’t chase them down to ask why. “I am not going to take the time to email you to find out if you have done fundraising or not,” she said.
Her advice: if your expertise isn’t public knowledge, spend an extra sentence or two explaining it in your pitch.
Is your subject overdone?
Fundraising and landing funding are, in Roulic’s words, the most overpitched topics she receives. What she struggles to find speakers for are the unglamorous fundamentals: building a customer success team, navigating enterprise sales, scaling a product roadmap. “No one wants to talk about…the nitty-gritty things,” she said, “and I think at least from my vantage point, that’s always what’s missing.”
So don’t overlook the “boring” subjects. They’re often exactly what audiences and this event organizer want to see.
Seriously, follow the directions
When Carlton asked about the biggest mistake speaker applicants make, Roulic had a quick answer: “Not following directions.”
Keep in mind that organizers invest significant time creating FAQs and outlining timelines, expectations and submission requirements. When applicants email with questions that are already answered on the event website, it raises concerns about whether they’ll pay attention to future communications.
“If I do confirm you as a speaker, are you going to read any of the emails I send you… or am I going to constantly have to repeat myself?” she said.
For busy event teams managing hundreds of speakers, reliability matters. In the same vein, respond to emails in a timely manner. Conference organizers juggle hundreds of speakers, moderators and logistics. Having to chase someone for forms or scheduling details creates unnecessary work, and organizers remember it. Startup Boston even tracks internal notes about speakers who are consistently difficult to manage.
(One way to avoid a headache: make sure you check your spam and junk folders regularly!)
Where to begin if you’re starting from scratch
For speakers still figuring out what to pitch, Roulic has an excellent, low-tech solution. Spend an evening writing down what you’ve actually learned over the past five or ten years. “Don’t even think of speaking topics,” she said. “Think about what [you’ve] learned…that [you’re] really, really good at now.”
From there, you can develop speaking topics around genuine expertise instead of trying to force yourself into subjects that seem more marketable. Work to identify the expertise that makes you the right person for a particular conversation—and then find the audience that needs to hear it. After all, as Roulic pointed out, “there is a community for everything.”
Startup Boston Week marks its 10th year this September. Learn more at startupbos.org.
Once you’ve landed the gig, see how to secure hosting or emcee engagements, a natural next step for any conference speaker.
