Our Top 10 Takeaways from New Orleans Entrepreneur Week
New Orleans Entrepreneur Week, better known as NOEW, is a week of celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit of the City of New Orleans. The goal of the event is to educate, connect with peers, inspire actions, and bring the community together. NOEW is a week filled with panels, keynotes, workshops, pitch competitions, awards shows, networking events, and more.
This year’s summit took place at the Ace Hotel. It provided networking opportunities, free mentor meetings, and numerous panels and keynotes from local and national business leaders. Our marketing team attended NOEW, here are their top takeaways!
- Relationships are critical in marketing your business. “People buy from people they like and know,” Jane Cooper (President of JLC Company) said during her Nothing Happens Until You Sell Something presentation.
- After you spend time learning to accept yourself as you are (the good and the weird) you’ll be able to be more accepting of others, Mallory Whitfield explained in her talk “Embrace Yr Weird”. This is super helpful in responding to comments, reviews, and emails! Keep in mind that people tend to lash out online when something negative is happening in their life.
- “Diversity does not equal equity does not equal inclusion.” Krystal Allen & Andrea Chen from Propeller discussed their ongoing journey of demographic representation inside of their company and navigating racism in entrepreneurship. Both women touched on how their goal is to see demographic representation that mirrors the demographics of our city and how educating ourselves is the first step.
- Transparency is key in business, especially when it comes to data-driven decisions. “You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know it exists,” Doug Walner from Align said during the “Entrepreneurs & Investors: What can they learn from data” panel.
- New Orleans is the fastest growing tech city in America! Tech companies and people are moving to New Orleans because of our strong culture and comparatively low cost of living. But, even with the exciting growth we’ve seen, New Orleans still isn’t “there yet”. Michael Hecht of GNO Inc. said in his State Of The Digital Economy and Local Innovation Ecosystem talk that we need to focus on growing the income and resources for the people of New Orleans.
- Jordan Friedman from Bond Moroch talked about the four marketing musts your startup needs from day one which are “a responsive website, a logo, business cards, and an office with a meeting space.” Friedman also touched on the importance of having a LinkedIn page that highlights your successes and what you do well in bullet point format.
- Know your demographic. Tony Simmons of Mcllhenny Company said he knows his demographic is ages 18-35. Anyone in the restaurant and the food industry should target this demographic. “They’re interested in food: how is it made, what is in it, who is the company behind it.”
- Simmons also discussed how to know when to make a new product or a new business. He said to keep a keen eye on the market and watch for the difference between fads and trends. Fads will get super popular then be gone in a very short amount of time. Trends are a much more sustainable choice.
- People are now creating so much data online that it’s extremely difficult to comprehend. Utilizing data visualization helps marketers and strategists understand vast amounts of data to make decisions. Yinliang Tan and Xianjun Geng spoke about the benefits of big data and user-friendly applications like Tableau for visualization.
- Chris Meaux, Founder and CEO of Waitr, said that when it comes to tech, and specifically for Apps, it’s better to launch with imperfections then it is to wait until you think it’s perfect. After you launch you can get helpful feedback from real users and make the updates needed.
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