Laid off due to COVID-19 impacting the coworking and events industries like a sledgehammer in March, Moby, Accelerator Manager and Content Creator, turned to the idea of an online summit to ensure everyone can echo that headline, “I know how to thrive online.” Weeks ago, SXSW had just cancelled, shelter-in-place orders were coming out around the world, and the world was gearing up for a deep recession.
The theme of April, as Moby and I saw it, was a round of massive lay-offs, extreme budget cuts, and grim stories of loss. Entrepreneurs, small businesses, and startups who relied on in-person sales and customer acquisition channels would be hit the hardest.
We wanted to help. Our hypothesis is that in every recession, there are businesses which find a way to adapt and grow. In 2020, those businesses will be the ones that are entrenched in online customer acquisition, selling their products and services in the virtual world, and see this as an opportunity to grow.
“The moments I’ve grown most is when I’ve gone through loss”
– Noah Kagan, Chief Sumo at Sumo.com
Online-First Summit
Working with CJ Finley from ThriveOn, we’re putting together a 4-day 75+ speaker virtual conference called Online-First Summit 2020, on May 11th, to help business owners shift their business models, offerings, and customer acquisition online in the face of social distancing.
“The goal is for attendees to be armed to the absolute teeth with strategy and tactics, and go out in this new normal confident in their ability to execute.”
– Moby
The team is focusing on taking the audience on a journey for 4 days, focusing on speakers answering questions people would have when expanding their revenue digitally and trying new things.
Who is growing right now, and how? How can others do the same? How do you get customers when you can’t network and meet people in real life? How do you survive an economic downturn?
Online-First Summit Support
- ThriveOn: Media-savvy entrepreneurs helping mission-focused entrepreneurs
- Tixpire: A new way to pay for any virtual experience or event
- InnovationMap: Houston’s Voice of Innovation
- Emerald Labs: An advanced range of development support for software, apps and websites.
- MediaTech Ventures: Us! Yes us.
The business models covered in the summit are those which can withstand social distancing, if it comes back again, including online courses, e-commerce, digital memberships, consulting, services, and more.
Hosting an Online Summit
It takes a lot of planning to put together a summit in 5-6 weeks.
We’re bullish on using HeySummit to build out the tech, using Zoom for live sessions, and Vimeo for pre-recorded interviews. Moby started out certain to never do a virtual summit without that tech stack; we’re splitting up the sessions evenly with half of them being live-streamed, and half of them being recorded webinars and interviews.
Tickets can be bought at onlinefirstsummit.com for $35, which include access to all sessions and replays for 90 days.
From landing pages to ticket sales, to attendee and speaker management, HeySummit works for live summits, pre-recorded events, or hybrids, as well as as a webinar, live stream, and for hosted video.
Included? A consulting package for $200, which includes a content marketing course, consulting, and swag.
Beyond excited to kick this off and for all the support from the community and MtV!