An article that was published yesterday on GlobeAndMail.com has sparked a debate over entrepreneurs paying to pitch investors.

The article speaks of an event organizing company called youngStartup Ventures, a firm based in New York that runs business conferences across America. The event in the center of the controversy is the 2013 New England Venture Summit that is taking place in Boston and cost $1,095 for attendees to hear tips and tricks on how to pitch the over 40 venture capitalists in attendance.

The three big problems are:

1. The registration fee rubbed the attendees the wrong way as there is a movement amongst startups that no one should pay to pitch investors

2. youngStartup Ventures advertised that a particular popular VC would be in attendance even though the VC never agreed to participate. The VC, Spark Capital, then went on to publicly call the organizers “scam artists”.

3. As a result, members of the Boston startup community have created a competing event, which is attended by many of the same VC’s as the New England Venture Summit and is totally free of charge. The event is called Unpitch Boston.

There are a few lessons to be learned here so we reached out to the events community to get their take on the debate.

Because I've not attended a youngStartup Ventures conference it would be ridiculous for me to say who is right and who is wrong in this particular circumstance. I can speak in more general terms though. First, I see nothing wrong with someone profiting from an event they organize. Conferences are a business. If you want to stay in business you need to provide something that is of value to your customer, in this case the attendees. Ideally you want to provide them something they cannot get elsewhere. I do not understand this idea that startups should not have to pay for a VC pitch event. Just because you are a bootstrap company doesn't mean the world should give you hand-outs. But to stay on topic...it all comes down to, are you giving your attendees value. Is it your attendees that drive your decisions or is it the revenue. If the free event gives the attendees a better experience than the youngStartup Ventures event then kudos to the entrepreneurs. But to be fair, the only way one could know for certain would be to attend both events and compare them apples to apples.

That said, I suspect that youngStartup Ventures is driven by revenue if they did in fact use a VC company's name in their marketing when that VC company was not in fact participating.

Traci Browne
@tracibrowne

1) Karma is real.
Conference organizers that inflate attendee numbers and/or lie about the types of attendees at their events don't survive. No one will return the following year. Best practice? Be honest and transparent about projections pre-event and checked in/registered folks post-event.

2) Deliver on Expectation.
Charging a fee for quality content is fine, but it creates expectation. In theory it keeps the quality attendee barrier high (especially if the conference purports to bring attendee buyers together with exhibiting vendor sellers) and the unqualified (read: non-buyer) attendees out. The price point is the tricky thing. A conference ticket over $1k better deliver a way better experience and content than the free to attend Meetup down the street serving pizza and warm beer.

3) Be Magnetic.
The media landscape has changed. It's distributed, and the organizer/attendee power imbalance no longer exists. You don't need to be a media company boasting a fat database from an old magazine circulation to put on a great conference, and you can't queue up a bunch of sales pitches as content. It also means that attendees that don't like what you're offering have a channel to yell about their dissatisfaction. Best practice? Attendees considering a conference are potentially giving you their most precious commodity: their time! Respect that by putting out quality, magnetic content that makes the "good" attendees line up.

Paige Pires De Almeida
Former GM, E2 Conference

Canadian tech blog, betakit asked three Canadian Venture Capitalists to chime in on the debate as well. The overall sentiment was that they believe entrepreneurs shouldn’t have to pay to pitch investors. However, events do have a cost and some entrepreneurs have found success at events like the ones youngStartup Ventures produce. To read more on what the VC’s had to say about the fiasco, click here.

What do you think of the debate? How would you handle this situation? Do you agree with our industry experts? Please let us know in the comments below.