Evaluating barter deals is something I’ve always struggled with. As a launch event, I need to squeeze every penny possible from that exhibit hall while still providing fantastic, compelling value to the exhibitors and sponsors. I’ve had three or four calls in the past few days from companies that want to trade something for booth space - advertising, a promise to promote the show, a speaker I might not otherwise be able to get - even equity in their own startup. I sure could fill the exhibit hall quickly this way, but of course I wouldn’t be able to pay for the exhibit hall in the first place.

My method of evaluating barter for booth deals has been arbitrary at best, with a large helping of gut instinct. I need a better way to standardize this so that I can go to a set of rules, plug in the data, and decide if the deal makes sense more scientifically. Does such a thing exist outside of a lab at Cal Tech?

I do look at every deal though for one reason only: Charles Schwab. At my very first trade show in 1999, a tiny company out of Austin Texas wanted to exhibit at my Daytrading Expo. But they were a small firm and money was tight - but they had software for trading the stock market no one had ever seen before - cutting edge stuff. I offered them a 1/2 cash, 1/2 barter for promotion deal on a 10×10 space. We didn’t know it at the time, but a few people from Charles Schwab were walking the floor at the show and found these guys in their 10×10 booth. 9 months later Charles Schwab purchased the company for $497 million dollars (I wish I had suggested an equity trade). For all of our shows for the next three years that company was a Gold Sponsor of our show at $60,000 per show. Granted, this was in the day of dot com mania, but they never forgot that barter - and rewarded us for it when they could.