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 official Startups Celebrate playbook gives you all the tools to start your own movement.
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Startups Celebrate - Build Your Own Movement To Promote Local Startups
1. Build Your Own Movement to
Promote Local Startups
| OFFICIAL PLAYBOOK |
2. Introduce the Startups Celebrate concept
Objective of this document
How-to playbook on how to create your own
Startups Celebrate movement
3. Startups Celebrate is an initiative to encourage
people from around the world to promote local
startups to the general public through a
collaborative movement.
4. The first movement was created in France with
Noël de la French Tech, an initiative to promote
French startup products for Christmas.
5. Based on our experience, we’ve compiled
everything you need to know to make
your own movement very easily.
Ready… Set… GO!
8. 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:
9. 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:
10. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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:
14. Places where to find them
• Your network
• Local VCs
• Incubators
• Accelerators
• Facebook groups
• Slack groups
• …
Post in all places that startups look to.
16. 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”.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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:
22. 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.
23. 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 😉
24. 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 👥
25. 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 🎉
27. 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
28. 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!
29. 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!
30. 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!
32. 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.
34. 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
