Build Your Own Movement to Promote Local Startups

| OFFICIAL PLAYBOOK |

Introduce the Startups Celebrate concept

Objective of this document

How-to playbook on how to create your own Startups Celebrate movement

Startups Celebrate is an initiative to encourage people from around the world to promote local startups to the general public through a collaborative movement.

The first movement was created in France with Noël de la French Tech, an initiative to promote French startup products for Christmas.

Based on our experience, we’ve compiled everything you need to know to make your own movement very easily. Ready… Set… GO!

Overview

Define your celebration

concept

Find products from local startups

Build a websitePromote your

movement

1CHOOSE YOUR CELEBRATION &

CONCEPT

Your event can be based on any celebration that people love & where they make gifts.

Los Reyes de Las Startups is based on the Three Wise Men day, which is when Spanish kids get their gifts.

Example:

Your event can focus on any part of the world that makes sense to you and that has enough startups: country, city, state, region, group of countries, etc…

Nordic Startup Gifts combines startups from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Example:

New York Hearts Tech is an initiative from startups in the NYC area which was developed for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

Example:

Based on this, find a cool name.

2FIND GREAT PRODUCTS

FROM LOCAL STARTUPS

Define criteria to have a coherent offer

✓ Products that make great gifts (=B2C startups)

✓ Products that are innovative, fun or original

✓ Products that have a wide range of prices (if you only take tech products, you will likely end up with only expensive gifts which will limit your audience)

Be clear and serious about your criteria or you will end up with a WTF list that won’t be attractive.

You will bring them exposure that will boost sales, PR and SEO

Team spirit! They will get tremendous value, best practices, networking & opportunities from collaborating with one another.

Go and find those startups

Your arguments:

Places where to find them

• Your network • Local VCs • Incubators • Accelerators • Facebook groups • Slack groups • …

Post in all places that startups look to.

3BUILD A WEBSITE

For your first edition, using a website builder is more than enough. We did our first website using Strikingly in a couple of hours.

You don’t need to code to make a great website

Don’t do an e-commerce website: redirect people to the startups websites when they click on “Buy”.

noeldelafrenchtech.fr | V1.0

Here’s what you need to put on your website

Explain the concept & why you’re doing this. This is not Amazon. Explain what’s different (startups + local + your special touch).

Do different categories if you have enough products (Tech, Food, Kids, Home, Art, Music, etc.)

For each product, explain what the product is but also talk about the startup and the team behind it. That’s what makes your movement special.

If you want to go further, there are tons of additional things you can do

(video, randomization, price sorting, etc.) but I advise you to do something simple for the first edition.

Website Collect info Good processes

& deadlines

Be organised from the start and you will save a lot of time!

Your best friends for this phase are:

4PROMOTE YOUR MOVEMENT!

Leverage all existing audiences from startups

Each startup already has its own audience: make them all promote the common initiative to add them up.

• Send a newsletter to their existing clients & leads.

• Post on social networks.

Try to get startups into the right mindset:

We can all make the pie bigger together (=everyone brings something) which is more interesting than trying to take a bigger chunk of the pie individually (=‘please put me higher on the page’).

It’s a big challenge 😉

Create social media accounts for your initiative and create some buzz!

One effective way is to make contests on Facebook where people can win products by sharing on their walls. Our page got 1000 likes organically on the first day with this.

Leverage social media 👥

Start with innovation-savvy press and expand from there. We got 200+ articles from French press, including major TVs: so can you!

Leverage press

Non-profit + startups + local + celebration

=

🎉 a winner for journalists 🎉

5BONUS TIME

all the optional stuff you can do

Make a launch party 🎉

To celebrate our second year, we threw a launch party for startups & journalists. 70+ JOURNALISTS CAME

They got a tote bag with a catalog listing all the gifts, discussed with startups all night-long and were able to try the products.

BIG SUCCESS

Make physical events

Some places will offer you to showcase the initiative

on location.

It’s very cool but can be time-consuming: choose wisely!

Get sponsors

This is a new thing we’re trying this year.

We’re not asking any money for this, but we chose sponsors that are well-established brands to help us choose the startups and get extra legitimacy and exposure.

Will let you know if it’s worth it!

Get official support

In our case, we’ve had the official support of the French government from the start.

Not bringing us money, but great legitimacy for press and general public, plus it’s always nice to feel encouraged!

FINAL WORDS…

Do you need money? Not really.

Our budget was under $100 on the first year (Website hosting, etc.) and everything was done by volunteers.

From our second year, we’ve asked $100 per startups in order to have a cooler website, make a video, throw a launch party, etc. It’s still volunteers only & non-profit but that gives us the means to make things bigger. I wouldn’t ask for anyone’s money before proving the concept works though.

Sounds fun? Join the Startups Celebrate movement

I promise it will bring you a lot of fun, energy, networking & unimagined opportunities. All we ask is that you keep the same bottom-up, peer-to-peer, non-profit spirit.

Ready to launch your own movement? Reach out! penelope@startupscelebrate.com

Official sponsors of Startups Celebrate movements