4 takeaways from day one of Launch Dayton Startup Week

Launch Dayton’s Startup Week runs Tuesday and Wednesday this year, beginning at 9:30 a.m. each day. Startup Week continues this evening with the pitch competition held at 5 p.m. at Yellow Cab Tavern, where teams of entrepreneurs will compete for capital funding.

What began as a humble gathering of like-minded Dayton entrepreneurs has become a cornerstone event of the Entrepreneurial Center in the Dayton Arcade.

Several of the founders that came to that first startup week are still in business, said Parallax Advanced Research’s John Owen.

“My favorite thing about entrepreneurship, about Startup Week, is the energy in the room,” he said. “The most exciting thing, I think, is that the people from five years ago, 10 years ago, that were starting out in your seat are the people you’ll hear stories from.”

Here are four insights from Tuesday’s keynote, as well as other local business experts:

Be bigger than your technology

A common pitfall, especially for technology startups, is thinking of their business - and presenting it to customers - in terms of what the product does, rather than what the product will enable the customer to do, Sowder said.

“Every screen, every button is a promise that you’re going to be able to do something,” he said. “Every contract you sign is a promise...and that gets you thinking as well: are the promises you’re making the ones that you actually want to keep in your business?”

Effectively communicating your company depends on the emotional connections you can make with your customers, Sowder said.

Businesses succeed or fail in the “promise gap.”

The “promise gap” is the difference between what a startup often says they can do, and what they actually deliver, Sowder said.

“A startup is a bundle of promises,” he said. “Transparency is the input, and trust is the output. If we’re gonna ask for trust, we need to give transparency on the front end.”

Customers, with any company, have a “promise budget,” Sowder said, which is the set of promises a system can reliably support before users stop trusting them.

“Communication is key, but there are certain companies that you use that you have no slack for,” he said. “You know what I think people actually want? I think people actually want to use companies’ products and services without getting gaslit by the T’s and C’s on the back end.”

Use AI to get started, get unstuck, and get ahead

Most users of artificial intelligence right now use the technology for what Sowder calls “monkey-do” work, like transcribing and summarizing, which are not that helpful in the broader process of running your business, Sowder said.

AI should be brought in much earlier in the process, Sowder added, by generating research, stress-testing ideas, and even playing devil’s advocate on behalf of the customer.

“Asking AI to take the other side of your argument is something we never see enough of,” he said. “AI makes good critical thinkers better critical thinkers, and if you’re not a good critical thinker, it’s going to expose you.”

Dayton has a unique entrepreneurial ecosystem

The Dayton region has a rich history of innovation. For modern entrepreneurs, this means that Dayton entrepreneurs have a unique set of resources - and a unique set of pitfalls.

From the Wright Brothers’ invention of the airplane to Charles Kettering’s invention of the electric cash register, Dayton innovation has always been intertwined with business.

“Dayton has a rich history of innovation that often goes unsung,” said Robert DiTommaso, President of Winsupply’s Support Services Group. “We’re the city of the Wright Brothers, who were not just engineers, but also determined entrepreneurs...that same spirit lives on in this room today.”