Where Were the Start-Ups at SNW?

Now that SNW is over, there has been a lot of talk about how shockingly underattended it was–even by those of us who expected it to be smaller than usual. Clearly the recession took its toll, with tradeshows being treated as discretionary spend that can be cut by both end-users and vendors. As Beth Pariseau noted in her Storage Soup post on the conference, the economy was the “elephant” in the room.

What struck me most forcefully, however, was the dearth of start-ups. This was always an exciting part of SNW for me: a peek into the future and a chance to see where the big guys might be headed next. As recently as last year I recall seeing maybe 15 or 20 small vendors taking up floorspace, all of them hoping to not only find end user leads, but also to catch the eye of potential big partners.

But this year, the buzz around the latest innovations was muted at best, as there were just a small handful of startups there. Hard to say exactly what element of the economic meltdown was hitting them hardest: is there is significantly less venture money overall for storage startups? Or perhaps those who did raise capital were nevertheless spooked by the economic forecast, and are just being more careful with their cash.

In any case, the show was far from a wash out in spite of everything. In a way, SNW has always been at least as much about scoping out one’s competitors’ latest offerings as it is about talking to customers, and there’s a great deal of collegial discussion that goes on between storage vendors – mostly in the bar. In this light, a vendor-only event that Greg Duplessie is holding in Boston June 8-10 could fill this need–perhaps even drawing those start-ups that couldn’t afford SNW as well as the bigger vendors they all want to partner with.