Originally published in Las Vegas Citylife on March 20, 2013

South by Southwest is a film, interactive, and music festival held annually in Austin, Texas. Last week, in an effort led by Gabe Shepherd (who will also be helping build the inaugural SXSW V2V conference taking place locally this summer, but more on that later), over 120 local members of the tech community made the trip out to Texas with a singular goal: to promote Las Vegas as the place to create and grow your next startup.

I spoke with Dylan Bathurst, founder of Rumgr and Used Gear Sale, and organizer of local community events Vegas Jelly and Startup Weekend about both his experience at the conference and the evolution of the Las Vegas tech scene.

What was the reaction of the SXSW crowd to the local push? What do you expect to come of it?

I think the reaction was pretty incredible. Vegastech was trending globally on twitter, and the cocktail hour and other parties were completely overbooked the whole time. You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a #vegastech t-shirt of poster. It was awesome!

Since this was the first time doing something like this, I didn’t really set any expectations. Like any first time venture you just have to go big and put yourself out there, see what went well, what didn’t, and what you can do next time. I think Gabe and the Vegastech SXSW crew gave us as startups an incredible stage to experiment with and I think each of us came away with some great lessons learned.

What stood out in particular?

…the tradeshow booth. Each startup had a section of the booth to make their own and pitch their company from. It was a way for the founders of the company to be able to talk to people one-on-one for three days straight. We received a lot of feedback from passers by in that time, and some, like Rolltech, even got featured in a VentureBeat SXSW video contest.

As you mentioned, #Vegastech was the number one trending topic for a while there during SXSW. How did you all pull that off?

Focus. Gabe and his crew weren’t down there just kicking back and letting everything they worked for the whole year before SXSW go down. They were all over downtown talking to people, tweeting, retweeting, setting up, tearing down, and just hustling in general. It was definitely their effort that made everything go as well as it did.

On DTLV as tech accelerator

Is brain drain a concern, where we’ll end up losing talented developers faster than we can rope them in?

Not trying to self promote but I wrote an article about this exact issue.

The gist is that having successful and growing companies come out of Las Vegas is a win. Maybe not at face value, but it is. It gives us credibility as a legit accelerator city with a great culture that fosters crazy ideas like cellphone powered robots.

In Romotive’s case, I think only one or two of their 20+ people are actually from Vegas. Most were attracted here from around the US. That’s awesome! As far as capturing local investment, if Romotive and others get investment and then leave to go to SF or somewhere else where they think they can be more successful, that’s great. When they are successful, and their investors get 10x their initial investment, a lot comes right back here. 

So from your view, what does the downtown Las Vegas tech scene look like in 2013?

I think our tech scene is getting smarter.

By that I mean that 2011 and 2012 was where a bunch of startups rose and fell learning that you can spend all your time building a cool product and it doesn’t matter if nobody wants or uses it. We’ve all been learning what it takes to start a startup and have come together in different ways to help each other learn faster. “A rising tide raises all ships.” I think as the Vegas Tech Fund funds more and more awesome companies in 2013 for their ROC (Return on community) as well as ROI, and that knowledge is shared among the rest of the community, we all benefit and get smarter. 

Let’s talk about Dylan.

Used Gear Sale, your newest project, is now live. How did your experience building and launching Rumgr affect the path you took getting Used Gear Sale up and running? Did you do anything different this time around?

It took us three months to get Rumgr live, and another 9 months to learn some valuable lessons. UGS took us 1 week to bring live and 1 month to learn even more valuable lessons. We did everything differently. We’re still not done learning, and still not done changing. You just have to keep going.

Two efforts you helped found, Vegas Jelly and Startup Weekend, have been instrumental in facilitating and bringing together the local tech community. What’re your suggestions for folks that are eyeing Las Vegas, or those that simply want to get involved?

I really like the way Brad Feld puts it in his book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City.

If people come asking how they can get involved, give them a task to do. If they do it, they’ll become part of the community and thrive. If they don’t do it, they didn’t really want to get involved in the first place. We saw that over and over again at the Jelly.

My suggestion for people that want to get involved is to get a lay of the land first. Find the other people that are doing things. See how you can help. Really execute on that, and then you’ll find your niche in the VegasTech community with other folks. It has to be a “give before you get” type of community. So embrace that and everything will be awesome.