Biggest Wins for Startups at re:Invent

What is moving the needle for startups at AWS?

It seems like eons ago when I attended a huge conference. In fact, it was over a year ago in Singapore attending the Singapore FinTech Festival and SWITCH when over 60,000 attendees came together to learn all about the latest in FinTech innovation and meet with rising startups. I thought it was too big at the time, but now I would give anything to be among a huge throng of random people pushing their way through the crowds to attend sessions.

I have never been to AWS re:Invent, but I have heard it is the same vibe. The biggest difference is that it is all about cloud, even more people attend, and it’s in Las Vegas. As opposed to most vendor oriented events, re:Invent is a learning conference for the global cloud computing community.

The very first re:Invent was a smaller affair. That was in 2012 with 6,000 attendees mostly from startups and emerging technology partners. Back then, only startups were on the cloud for the most part. Enterprises treated cloud as a mere novelty.

Last year’s re:Invent was on a different scale. There were over 65,000 attendees taking over a good portion of Las Vegas for a week. Though there was a startup program, the heavy emphasis was on enterprise cloud migration and adoption of AWS. The content, the speakers, and the steep costs to attend led most startups to give re:Invent a pass.

The pandemic has put an end to conferences for this year, but the show must go on as they say. To adapt, conferences switched to virtual formats, as did re:Invent. With the move to virtual, this meant creating an entirely new experience.

The event is now three weeks. Then in January, there will be recaps and additional sessions. The entire program runs follow the sun, so the same talks and sessions run three times a day to accommodate time zones. Because it is virtual, it means no travel is required. It also means that the cost considerations are off the table for startups as re:Invent is completely free this year.

Today is week two of re:Invent, which also kicks off most of the startup programming. The Startup Attendee Guide helps sort through the various programs and talks from customers and AWS experts. On the events…