I saw an ad somewhere saying entry fee was about 2 grand. I almost fell out of my chair laughing. The only types of public conferences worth that type of money are high value supplier/vendor conferences, where you've already got a product line and can leave the weekend with actual and prospective customers. Informational conferences, where there is a high signal-noise ratio on the state of the art in your industry may also be worth attending, but usually for a couple hundred bucks at most, not 2 grand.
At that price point, probably the only people who should be at a PR launch type conferences like Disrupt or Launch.is are VC's press, and already successful founders looking for something to do on a Thursday. VC's and the press are there to do their job -- get leads and invest or write. And when they leave, that entry fee is going into a company expense report. The startups in the audience are just there to get inspired and rub shoulders, which isn't a good enough justification for the cost.
If you haven't made it yet, get back to the lab and go build.
Not only that, but basically think of the $2,000 as a marketing expense. There aren't many $2,000 marketing campaigns you can ever hope to run that will get you the kind of publicity Disrupt will get you (if you're successful there). It's the kind of money you will fork over when you're serious, your product is solid, you're confident in your team, and you're prepared to make a potentially big debut.
Companies that aren't ready will see the $2k as exhorbitant. Companies that are ready will probably see it as cheap.
At that price point, probably the only people who should be at a PR launch type conferences like Disrupt or Launch.is are VC's press, and already successful founders looking for something to do on a Thursday. VC's and the press are there to do their job -- get leads and invest or write. And when they leave, that entry fee is going into a company expense report. The startups in the audience are just there to get inspired and rub shoulders, which isn't a good enough justification for the cost.
If you haven't made it yet, get back to the lab and go build.