Are my comments being downvoted because I didn't have quite as negative an experience as others?
Granted, there weren't thousands of investors there, but my startup personally had a busy schedule meeting with them - that week (before, during and after the event itself) we had meetings with approx. 40 different investors.
Nowhere am I saying you should pay to pitch or pay to meet investors. I'm merely saying that whether or not an event is worth it depends on what you do at it (and beforehand) and that you can't expect it to be worthwhile just for showing up, because it won't. I found it useful, others didn't - I only wanted to shed light on why I thought it was useful and what we did to make it so.
NOTE: We also did NOT take part in the pitch contests.
I thought I was giving a counterpoint to the statement "there were very few investors" and adding advice from my experience:
The important thing to note is that they won't come to you just because you're there. You have to attract them in some way (or better yet: contact them in advance and have meetings already set up).
My other comment similarly was a counterpoint to "the only winner was the organizers", giving my experience and why I think I had the experience I did.
I'm sorry that this came across as "no you're wrong" without any details. :-(
Granted, there weren't thousands of investors there, but my startup personally had a busy schedule meeting with them - that week (before, during and after the event itself) we had meetings with approx. 40 different investors.
Nowhere am I saying you should pay to pitch or pay to meet investors. I'm merely saying that whether or not an event is worth it depends on what you do at it (and beforehand) and that you can't expect it to be worthwhile just for showing up, because it won't. I found it useful, others didn't - I only wanted to shed light on why I thought it was useful and what we did to make it so.
NOTE: We also did NOT take part in the pitch contests.