This involves two things.

1. Low cost (definitely less than 50k. Preferable less than 25k). This makes the barrier of entry low and there will be people who say "I don't know if it's worth it but what the heck, let's try
   it anyway. It doesn't cost much."

2. A tangible gain from coming. We cannot piss off the high paying sponsors who will have booth and other things at the event. However, just paying 10k or something and having a link on the website
   doesn't do much. A startup row which will be active from (say) 14:00 to 17:00 on the first day where the startups can all be in one room with a row of tables. They can pitch their wares, organise
   little contests or whatever during that time. It won't be exclusive but will be along with other talks.

There seems to be a little confusion here. We are planning to have 3 slabs for startups as below.

Associate sponsors : 1L

Associate sponsors : 50% discount for startups for which we are working on the criteria

Start up row : Free for shortlisted startups to showcase their products. Need to work on the criteria for this as well and I will be starting a thread for this soon.

IMO, reducing the cost to 25K might help get more startups to sponsor PyCon. But providing a space for all the startups to organize like a job fair might hurt other high paying sponsors. We should also keep in mind the space availability at the venue. If we promise a space for stratups as mentioned and the number of startups who sponsor us go high we might end up having space crunch; looking for a bigger halls will cost us more which we cannot afford unless we get more than 40 sponsors.