When I was a marketing person inside startups I used to wonder why the CEOs I knew were so hesitant to spend a lot of time at events, why they would duck out early after giving their talk or have the one obligatory beer at a party before exiting the side door. I would rationalize it to personality quirks, a lonely wife waiting at home, a new baby, or the person just being a jerk.  But until I became a founder and CEO this past year I really didn't get it.

If you don't know me, or haven't read my [post from last year about hustling SXSW](http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2012/02/how-to-hustle-sxsw-for-fun-profit/) last year, you might not understand how out of character it is for previously bubbly and hyper-social me to write this and feel this way. What I've learned in the past year is that these disappearing CEOs wanted nothing more than to get back to their desks an crank on the real, serious, hard problems that their companies face.  Sometimes there is just **no way** to put on that super social hustle face and roll with the good times.

When all you want to do is write code, talk to customers and keep hitting your startup's metrics, the idea of spending a week surrounded by old friends and new friends taking shots, cooking up partnerships, and discussing the future of the industry sounds like just about the worst thing in the world.

Part of [putting on "the show"](http://pandodaily.com/2013/01/30/the-show/) of fake it til you make it success in an early stage company is giving the impression that you have endless bandwidth to give back to the community through mentorship, in-kind partnerships or sponsorships, and speaking gigs.  Founders with a reasonably popular blog like mine get offered opportunities to do all these things, and it is so easy to be distracted. It is so easy to tell yourself it's okay you spend 20 hours on that stuff this week because "that's what a startup CEO *does*".

Actually, you're right - lot's of startup CEOs do that. But they shouldn't, because these opportunities don't actually make sense. Spending a travel day so you can give a 20 minute talk, hang out with a bunch of attendees who ask question that are easily answered by your blog, and a speaker dinner with a handful of people you could pick up the phone and call for help anytime you wanted isn't efficient.

Just because you talked to people doesn't mean you actually talked to customers or added meaningful deal flow to your pipeline (if you even have that figured out yet), and while you were tweeting your pictures of the jetway or the hotel restaurant your team was back in the office schlepping away.  Probably thinking you're kind of a jerk.

If you work on a consumer tech company you have probably heard, or used, the argument that SXSW was a huge part of catapulting Twitter to massive adoption.  This is just not true. By the time that event took place Twitter was well on its way with tons of traction. The echo chamber offers a powerful drug, but it is no substitute for the real thing.

**Take your consumer tech company to SXSW when it has product market fit and show off like a boss!**

I'm not saying no founders should attend SXSW, I think it is massively valuable when you know what deals you are trying to do, have validated that your product is something millions of people want, and need a showcase to beat your chest and make it count.  That's why Twilio rocks SXSW each year.

But if you are an early stage startup founder of a consumer startup with no customers, or an enterprise startup with no revenue, wondering whether you'll hit the metrics you need to raise a Series A before you run out of money, then you don't belong at this event. Get back to work.

Danielle has been working in startups since 2007, was formerly Director of Marketing and 1st employee at Twilio, and is now CEO and Cofounder of Referly. The company was part of Y Combinator Summer 2012 class.