Putting on an event is like producing a movie. There are actors (speakers), there are financiers (sponsors), the showing (the event), and the release to the viewing public (attendees). Just like many movies, not all events succeed.

Some events fail small, such as a meetup group not happening, and some fail big, like an international conference where people paid to travel oversees and the event was canceled on them at the last minute. Just this week an event called the Partners for Innovation and Growth produced by Tanya Noel was one of these events.

The PGI event was planned for July 27^th thru July 30^th with no set location or schedule given to speakers or attendees. For full disclosure, I was supposed to be speaking at this event and StartupDigest was actually a media partner for this conference for a short time. I pulled out as a speaker and partner when I felt the conference was not going to be organized as well as I thought it could be.

On June 27^th at 8:01am, the attendees who paid to attend this event were sent an email informing them that the conference had:

“changed from Viareggio, Italy, to a beautiful conference center in Umbria. We’re very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause to you. The conference will take place Monday & Tuesday June 27th and 28th, and will be less structured, following the Unconference style.”

The attendees were not informed that the event had been canceled but changed locations to Umbria. What followed remains largely unclear, but what is clear is that Tanya never showed up to Italy, and we have learned from the stranded attendees that the event in Umbria never took place and that she blamed her Italian counterpart for “hijacking” the conference.

All speculations aside, the bottom line is that there are people who paid for a conference ticket, paid to travel to Italy, and have gotten neither their money back nor even a straight explanation.

There is no mention of any updates on the situation besides the event’s cancelation on the PGI Twitter page, Facebook page, Eventbrite page, or website. The last time Tanya tweeted about the event at all was on June 23rd. What’s worse is that I found a press release on their media page promoting their next event in the Fall 2010 with a list of speakers that “may or may not be attending.” I’m not kidding. Here’s a screenshot of this page if it’s taken down (keep in mind some of these speakers listed here were people she stranded in Italy):

I understand that producing an event is hard and sometimes ends in failure. What I don’t understand is failing to give a straight story to the people who spent time and money to attend the event, failing to help them out in its wake, and failing to show any lessons learned for promoting the next event.

In the future, if you are organizing a paid event, especially one that involves travel, you need to:

1. Commit to definitely paying or definitely not paying for a speakers travel & lodging from day one so you can avoid confusion later. This decision should never hinge on a sponsor and should not change over time.
2. Set a specific “go or no-go” deadline on the event for yourself. If you’re openly recruiting an international audience, this deadline must be at the very least one full week ahead of time. If you push forward beyond that date, there’s no turning back, even if only 10 people show up. Anyone would much rather show up to a lame conference than chase one that doesn’t exist.
3. If you do decide to cancel, email all attendees, speakers, sponsors, presenters, media partners, and everyone else involved in the event immediately. Mark it as URGENT in the subject line to maximize readership of the initial message.
4. Post daily updates on your website and Facebook/Twitter channels about what you’re doing to wind down the event and get people their money back.
5. Do not try to transfer attendees or speakers at the last minute to another event, whether it’s yours or not, and avoid the inevitable cancelation.
6. If someone pays you for a product or service you can’t deliver, give them their money back immediately. Don’t drag it out. And if you’re broke and upset because you can’t pay back what you owe, at least be honest about it so people know what’s going on.

If you are one of those very unfortunate people to have wound up in Italy stranded with nowhere to go, please reach out to me and I will connect you with our StartupDigest curators in Italy. We might as well try to make the most of this experience for all of you.

Below are some of the tweets I pulled around the situation. The official hastag is #ievc. Leave any comments you have below or tweet with the #startupdigest hashtag and I will make updates to this post as needed.

idarose: I am suddenly realizing that I am the only person remaining in Tuscany for the canceled #IEVC conference…talk about my hopes squashed

vc20: RT @valto: #pgivc #ievc it’s starting to look like the PGI conference is not happening. Some mess by the organizer: http://bit.ly/b5HGNj

RT @christinelu: thinks @PGInnovation owes people an elaborately well made up explanation for why the organizer is a no show and gave people no warning.

@papadimitriou @valto she’s making fun of us. Moving the conference to Umbria is fraud. Am I the only one very pissed?

@papadimitriou I asked for a full refund yesterday but got no answer yet

@christinelu thinks @PGInnovation owes people an elaborately well made up explanation for why the organizer is a no show and gave people no warning.

PGInnovation: We have a new venue for IEVC Tuscany! Please contact us for further details.It will start on Monday at 10am. info@pgi.vc Thank you! #pgivc

steookk: @valto can anybody give a full explanation of what is going on for tomorrow’s event in Viareggio? Our complains in FBpage were deleted #pgivc

@christinelu: @PGInnovation stop perpetuating bullshit Tanya. i read the email. people know i’ve been patient w/ your crap. you screwed people over.

I have reached out to Tanya directly and asked her to give an open and honest face-to-face interview to explain exactly what happened. Let me know if you have any specific questions for her. I will post updates as soon as I have them.

Alain Raynaud is the organizer of the Co-Founders MeetUp of Silicon Valley, which will meet next on May 26th. He is also launching the Founder Conference in August.

I organized the first Co-Founders MeetUp 8 months ago following a discussion at TechCrunch50 with a few friends. I had been involved with Adeo Ressi’s Founder Institute which helps startups take off, and finding a co-founder was clearly a big problem for solo founders. When plans to organize a joint event with VCs and others just didn’t materialize, I took matters in my own hands and “just did it.” By the way, I think this is the entrepreneurial spirit: do not wait for permission to do something you deem important.

Eight months and four MeetUps later, I can attest that the demand for co-founders is huge. People don’t know where to find the co-founder who will help turn their idea into a great, successful product.

Before I dig into the topic of how and where to find your co-founder, let me emphasize that by realizing that you need a co-founder, you are making the right decision. Too often, when faced with an obstacle — lack of progress on your idea, it’s tempting to procrastinate and refuse to look for outside help, especially if you are of the introverted type.

It sounds obvious, but to find a co-founder, you need to start going out and interact with people. And I don’t mean just online by posting in forums. If you live in Silicon Valley, you are lucky: there is an amazing number of networking events you can attend and start meeting strangers. More on that in a second.

What does the right co-founder look like?

To put it bluntly, the difference between a co-founder and a consultant is that when things get bad, they don’t bail. They stick with you, because they believe in the vision. They believe the product deserves to be built, no matter what. Therefore, you need a shared passion. Can you pitch your idea with enthusiasm?  The most common scenario is a founder with an idea, but without the technical skills to build the product. So you start looking for a technical co-founder. Your attitude at that point is critical: if you are in love with your idea, you’ll tend to downplay the effort involved in actually coding the damn thing. The saying goes that “ideas are worth nothing, execution matters.” In your case, execution is the act of coding. If all you bring is the original idea, expect it to change many times over as details are worked out. You need to look yourself in the mirror and ask the hard question: what value are you really bringing to the table?

What events should you attend?

Now that you understand who you are looking for and what a possible deal would be, where do you go? There are essentially two ways to find a technical co-founder for your idea. You can chase entrepreneur-minded developers, or you can chase people passionate about your domain, and try to find one who happens to be a developer.  I like to say that it takes 6 months for networking to pay off. If you need a co-founder for tomorrow, it won’t happen. So as much as you can, start networking well in advance. Don’t worry about confidentiality: everyone will think your idea is stupid, so no one will bother to steal it from you. The best you can hope for is for someone to like it, but they are already busy implementing their own ideas anyway.  As the organizer, I of course recommend the Co-Founders Meetup. It has gathered a large crowd of positive people, ready to help each others. It shows that the strength of the network is not only in the direct connections you make, but also the friends of friends that you would never have been introduced to otherwise.  Another great even to meet potential co-founders is Startup Weekend. Why? Because you get to observe the people you work with for two full days. That’s a huge advantage, as you get to know them much better than an impression at a cocktail party.

Your Passion Is Your Pitch

The #1 finding of the co-founders meetup was that personality is key. Comparing dating to founders is cliche, but it’s true. Given two similar ideas by two founders, you want to know who is behind the idea. What kind of person they are. My favorite example was from the first Co-Founders Meetup: two women pitched their idea. At the business level, they sounded about equally interesting to me. But one presenter was all-business, while the other one took the opportunity of her pitch to give us a striking demonstration of yoga. I know which one I want to work with, and so did everyone in the room. Choosing was made so much simpler by discovering the person behind the idea.  At the following meetup, someone wanted to build a marketplace for Mariachis. How do I know the founder was genuinely into that space? In case you didn’t guess it yet, he brought his guitar and gave an impromptu concert, right during his pitch. The audience loved it. That was a very effective way to demonstrate his passion for that project.  At the other extreme, one of the presenters, to whom I had asked to share something personal about, chose to highlight the most complex piece of hardware that he had ever designed. Right there, you know that if you join his new startup, you’ll be chatting about geeky stuff over lunch breaks. It’s amazing how much you can find out about someone when they go 30 seconds unscripted.

How Do You Strike a Deal?

No matter how great a potential co-founder looks like when you just met, only time an tell if the relationship will last. I’ll give you the secret number: it’s is one month. That’s how long it takes to find out whether you have a partner or not. It’s critical that you trust your guts: after one month, if your impression is that it’s not working out, don’t let excuses blind you: run. People will tell you all kinds of stories about family emergencies, being just about to finish what they promised last week… Accidents do happen. Being off by a week is completely fine. But if after one month, you are dissatisfied with the progress, stop.  In practice, how do you formalize a deal with a potential co-founder, so you can bail if need be? My position is that you should be fair and upfront. You need to communicate clearly how you’d split the company if indeed you have found the great co-founder. The best way to do so is by e-mail. It’s formal enough that there is no misunderstanding, but legally weak enough that the co-founder can’t sue you if things don’t work out exactly as spelled out in your e-mail. Try something like: “I think the technical co-founder I’m looking for should get about 40% of the company, and let’s finalize this in a month.”

How Much Equity To Offer

Are you shocked by the high number (40%)? Remember that it comes with vesting: if the co-founder doesn’t stick around for 4 years or more, he only gets a fraction of the 40%. If he stays on board and works hard for one year, he gets 10% of the company. That sounds about fair. You can adjust your number as you wish, but keep in mind that anything below 20% is not really a co-founder offer, it’s more like a tip.  How do you split the equity among co-founders? I have seen two basic philosophies that both work quite well in practice. One is to say that everyone is equal. Two founders, split 50/50. Three co-founders, they each get 33%. The other approach is to say that the main founder (the future CEO) gets 50%, and the other co-founders split the rest. With three co-founders, the split would therefore be 50/25/25. That works quite well too.

What If Nothing Works?

You still can’t find the co-founder of your dreams?  Revisit your requirements. Are you asking for too much? As in, please develop this really complex iPhone application for me, while iPhone gigs pay extremely well today. Can you make some progress on your own, in parallel to your co-founder search? Insurmountable problems tend to go away as you chip at them every day, little by little.  Are you passionate enough? This is critical. Maybe your vision is not that interesting. If so, think about what is really the essence of your idea, and try to apply its insight differently, so it impacts more people. A boring idea is not your friend. Listen to feedback from people you pitch to — you are always pitching. Are they bored to death, or bring up the same objection over and over? Yes, you know better, but… maybe there is a grain of truth in their objection. Being in love with your idea makes it really painful, but sometimes you must kill your idea have it re-emerge better and stronger.