Vegas Trade Show ROI

A story about how a bootstrapped trade show appearance in Las Vegas led to significant early revenue, despite a VC questioning their modest market size estimates.

"In '97 we were exhibiting our software at a trade show in Las Vegas. I drove there because I couldn't afford a plane ticket. We stayed in this $15 or $12 a night hotel where they subsidize you for gambling, except I didn't gamble.

We were showing our software and found some really valuable customers at that event. That particular event probably got us half a million in revenue eventually. A VC saw us and asked what we do. We told him we're doing this software. He asked how big the market is - we were at zero revenue at the time. I took a wild guess and said maybe $10 million.

The VC asked 'Why are you so unambitious?' I had no answer except I thought to myself - if I'm too ambitious then I wouldn't have a business because I wouldn't be able to raise money. If I start in this niche maybe there's a way to find it.

It worked out exactly that way - at the event we pulled in two critical customers who each paid us about quarter of a million dollars. So from that single event we made half a million dollars, yet the VC told us we were unambitious.

Interestingly, that $10 million number I randomly mentioned - we found ourselves actually saturating at about $10 million about 7 years later. That's exactly what happened."