So we went to Red Herring a couple of weeks ago. It was DEFINITELY worth it. It’s a very well-planned event attended by important VCS who are VERY accessible and very human. Again, it doesn’t mean that every company that goes there will get funded, but it does mean that phone calls that would normally be ignored get answered by key decision-makers. (We scheduled various meetings with VCs who’d attend the conference beforehand, and in general, the meetings were very productive and seemed to reflect a sincere interest in discovering more about our product.) Red Herring makes such meetings possible. The rest is up to you (and your relevant market).

As a penny-pinching start-up, we drove to Cannes from Barcelona. It took us about 6 hours to get there, but it was a fun drive as I’d made my R&B / pop / commercial house music remix beforehand. My business partner, Oriol, and I were singing most of the way, so the drive went quickly and was a lot of fun as we reminisced with Britney, Mariah, Whitney, Beyonce, the Sugar Babes, Justin Timberlake, Ne-yo and the Black Eyed Peas.

We got there at about 6:15 PM. We were dressed in really casual street clothes. I was in my favourite ripped jeans and a t-shirt. After the valet took my car keys, I was standing on the curb admiring the hotel with my typical roadtrip accessories — a bag of Doritos and a Diet Coke. When I got my first full glimpse of the hotel, I knew it was going to be amazing. I’ve stayed at my fair share of 4 and 5 star hotels, but the Intercontinental Carlton Cannes is really spectacular in that it reeks of “Old World Luxury” AND has a privileged view of the Mediterranean Sea. I told a friend that I felt like Prince William. The rooms were also amazing, with great toiletries, comfortable robes and what has got to be the most comfortable bed that I ever slept on. Honestly, it was like sleeping on a cloud.

All of that being said, luxury is nice, but if we had to do it again, we’d probably have stayed at one of the 3-star hotels near the Intercontinental Carlton Cannes. You have the same access to the VCs, but you don’t have to pay almost 300€ a night. We had reasoned that we’d be more visible to the VCs if we stayed in the hotel and hung out at the bar a lot, but we met quite a few fellow entrepreneurs who chatted the night away with us but then went to sleep at much cheaper hotels. You live and you learn.

After really nice, long showers, Oriol and I changed into our suits (we were told that the dress was business wear) and made our way down to the dinner presentation where all of the 100 winners were called separately onto a stage and given plaques. I know that it might sound kind of cheesy, but it was actually kind of nice receiving an award. You get to go up to meet Alex Vieux, the Chairman and CEO of Red Herring, and people give you a warm round of applause. In my case, I also got a hug from Alex, who announced to the entire audience that it was the first time that he’d ever given an award to another person of African descent. The award presentation is also useful for the VCs and other attendees to identify their networking targets. After the dinner, a number of people came up to us, based on the very brief description (”a vertical search engine based in Spain”) of our project to the audience during the awards presentation.

The dinner itself was delicious and the wine flowed freely. I spent the first 1 hour of the conversation peppering Nicola Byrne of Benchmark with questions. I know that’s not the way it normally works, but I felt that it was a unique opportunity to understand better how the VCs work. And Nicola seemed so nice and normal that I couldn’t let the opportunity to speak honestly and openly with a nice, personable insider slip on by. Also seated at our table was George Coelho, a general partner at Benchmark and from what was said at the conference, one of the pioneering VCs in Europe. He was quite pleasant and down-to-earth. At one point, George, Nicola, Oriol, Sean and I chitchatted about how expensive the hotel was and apparently how small some of the single rooms in the hotel were. Seems that Nicola and Sean were given less luxurious rooms than George. What was most reassuring about meeting the Benchmark folks is that the conversation with them was human. Each of George, Nicola and Sean seemed like normal people, which shouldn’t have surprised me so much but did.

In terms of other entrepreneurs seated at our table, I met Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz, co-founder and CEO of VPOD.Tv. Seems like a nice guy. And he had his start-up reviewed by both Om Malik and TechCrunch, which is no small feat. We bonded while speaking Spanish. His company has at least some connection with Madrid, so that makes me even more interested in seeing how Vpodtv evolves.

And we also spoke with Marcel Smit, CEO of Q-Go.com. Another nice guy. Marcel’s company is working on a natural language search engine, and from what he tells us, they are generating quite a bit of buzz among very-large web 1.0 companies. We heard him talking about past and future meetings planned with key folks in California.

After the dinner, there were drinks. I was prepared to get my buzz on, but it didn’t happen. I knew I was in for a slow night when I heard some VCs talking about how expensive the drinks were. They were British, which meant that the drinks had to be really expensive, because to me EVERYTHING in London is really expensive. Anyway, I ordered a Screwdriver (Vodka with orange juice) and was surprised when the waiter poured me Smirnoff Vodka. No Belvedere or Grey Goose at the Intercontinental? Does J. Lo. really drink Smirnoff? (A reference to the Carlton magazine which showed all the celebrities that stay at the hotel during the Cannes film festival.) In any case, though the alcohol was cheap, the price was not. €18 for a diluted Screwdriver with mediocre vodka!

So the rest of my night was alcohol-free. It was still enjoyable, and I used the moment of clarity to speak a bit more with other attendees, sometimes about our product in particular and sometimes about life in general. We spoke with Anil Hansjee, European Head of Corporate Development at Google; Tami Zhu, Executive Director of New Ventures and Corporate Development at AOL; Nasser Batley, Vice President of Global Banking at Dresdner Kleinwort; and David Rowe of Microsoft. Th conversation with Anil was particularly interesting, as he indicated to us what Google might be looking for in a vertical search engine. Nasser was a really naturally likable person without any apparent agenda. We chatted with him consistently throughout the conference. We eventually went to sleep at about 2AM, getting ready for the next big challenge — the presentation and the meetings with various VCs that we’d arranged prior to the conference.