Never a dull moment for the Gazaro team! Not only did we participate in TechCrunch50 earlier this month and had a great time doing so, we also managed to ruffle a few feathers. 
TC50, as it is also known, is a conference that is set up to give Web 2.0 startups a place to launch new products and ideas to investors, media and other attendees. This year it was held at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse from September 8 – 10.
For us, the conference was a great opportunity to meet interested entrepreneurs and get positive feedback on our site. We delivered over 400 demos to TC50 attendees, including Mark Cuban.
Of course, the conference wasn’t without drama and Gazaro supplied a good part of it. Through the use of our promotions team, we managed to attract some attention.
We definitely caught people's attention!
Attendees of TC50 were issued poker chips for each of the three conference days and were advised to award them to their favorite company, a sort of People’s Choice competition. We leapt at the opportunity and, long story short, got ourselves disqualified from the competition through what was arbitrarily dubbed as “chip manipulation”.
It seemed as though everyone had their own opinion of what constitutes “fair” marketing: we got both compliments and complaints concerning our strategy (although definitely more of the former!).
We maintain that we just competed and worked harder than everyone else. We also had 4 different marketing strategies at play that were all very effective at directing traffic our way. More than happy to trade strategies with anyone interested. 
It does beg the question though: What is the best and most “fair” way for a small company to get noticed in a crowd?
