[thepadman]

Hey guys, Paddy G (@thepadman) from Collision here. Probably best for me to chip in and clarify the situation. We do get thousands of applications and make time to hop on calls to make sure the companies are viable and have cool teams. We end up choosing around 10%-15% of those who apply.

Regarding registration; Physical space at any conference would come at a premium. As advertised, we're removing this element of the cost to startups who could bring value to the event and charging a fee for tickets & registration. The package grants you 3 tickets (2 day event and evening socials), online circulation, access to industry leader talks, workshops, investor office hours & invitations to partner activations as well as the physical space in your chosen industry area. Our website clearly states that there is a cost associated with registering. Our event isn't free but you can see by the calibre of attendee and speakers (as outlined in the website) that there are definite opportunities and knowledge to be gained.

The event was really well received last year and more than half the participating startups either joined us at Web Summit and/or are returning to Collision this year. For me personally, that is a great testament to the event. We are working tirelessly to improve our systems to make sure everyone gets value from the event. We're a tech startup ourselves and we just want to put on an awesome tech event.

Happy to answer any more questions. Feel free to drop me a line at [e-mail].

[newyorklenny]

Thank you for taking the time to comment. As I make clear in the post, it's not the fact that you charge that is the problem. It's the misleading tactic of calling startups, making us present, asking us questions, then e-mailing us "Congratulations! Your company is great and we are selecting you after screening. You can now pay us $1,400." If you are not explicit when you reach out by e-mail in the first place about the fee, and if you don't mention it on the phone call - you are wasting many people's time. Please look through the comments in this thread.

[thepadman]

Thanks for your note. Paddy G here again.

The team are really sorry that there was a misunderstanding between us and the author of the blog article Lenny Teytelman over the cost of coming to Collision and taking part in our Collide track for startups.

We really try to be as transparent as possible about the costs of attending our events. We believe that we offer great value for money for all attendees, whether they are startups, investors, speakers or general attendees. At our flagship event, Web Summit in Dublin, the numbers of those attending have doubled every year - which we feel shows that many people agree that we provide a great networking experience. Some on this thread have mentioned this.

To be clear, in our call with Lenny there seems to have been a misunderstanding over costs. We followed up the conversation a week later with an extensive email setting out the costs and the benefits of attending in the hope that he and his exciting startup could come along.

I've checked with the team here and from the email correspondence he told us: “I misunderstood you during the Skype call. I thought you are waving the attendance fee of $1450, instead of reducing the price to that.” Which is fair enough and we apologise if we were unclear on the call in any way. He then declined to take us up on the offer and we left it there.

As I have mentioned earlier, our Startups page on the website collisionconf.com clearly states that while exhibiting for selected startups is free, there is a cost for attending. To quote:

'Each week we selected 25 early stage startups from around the world to exhibit for free as part of our Collide Program. The bigger tech companies pay $9,950 to exhibit, meaning exciting, disruptive, early-stage startups can afford to attend no matter what. All they will pay is a discounted price for tickets and Collide registration, and we’ll give them a free exhibition stand.'

Really sorry if Lenny feels we wasted his time. We were genuinely excited about the possibility of him attending Collision but as mentioned previously, we do need to make the effort to screen applications so that we present the very best experience for startups and investors at our events.

We are a technology startup ourselves and of course we can always improve what we do. We are working hard right now to make Collision in Las Vegas on May 5-6 a success for the hundreds of startups across 14 industry areas who are attending. The networking at our events has been called “legendary” and we try hard to live up to that tag.

We are reaching out to Lenny to offer our apologies for any misunderstanding and we hope that those on this thread who are attending Collision will report back on their experience.

Happy to answer any more questions. Feel free to drop me a line at [e-mail].

[newyorklenny]

No Paddy, I did not "misunderstand" during the Skype call. That e-mail was just my polite way of telling you to go away. Here is a less polite but more direct response: http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2015/04/last-post-on-collision...

I am not going to engage in "he said, she said" with you. Instead, I encourage readers to look at the other comments in this thread to make up their mind about Collision. Plenty more of such concerns here http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/2x8i04/weve_been_a....

[sebsn]

Hey, I'm the author of that reddit post (knowhere). We decided to not go and are very happy about our decision now that that comes to light. We almost spend a lot of money for what felt like a big shot.

We decided against it because the deadline was so short. We got accepted on a tuesday and would have had to pay by friday the same week. We passed because that wasn't enough time to make a good decision.

We have the same problem with the phocuswright europe conference as well. They want us to pitch but spend 7500€ (we won't). It's hard to navigate that because as a startup you feel like you have to get out there and deciding between the really goot opportunities and the bad ones is harder then I thought.

[thepadman]

Also, more than happy to meet up with anyone in person at Collision. I'll be off my feet during the day time but will be floating around Downtown/Fremont in the evening so just ping me on twitter.

[rlpb]

Thank you for replying. I don't think it's reasonable for you to be downvoted here. Whether readers like your response or not, you are the one of the direct subjects of the article, so your responses (and certainly your initial response to the article) are extremely relevant here.

Moderators: downvoting the parent is perhaps the clearest abuse of downvotes I've ever seen. Please act.