September 10th, 2008

TechCrunch50: Day 3

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 6:32 am

Categories: Conference, Live blog, TechCrunch50

Tags: Dr., Session, Andrew Mager

Photo by Steve Maller

I’ve been covering TC50 for the past few days, and believe it or not, I’m still hungry for more startup pitches.

6:30 a.m. The final sessions of the conference are posted on BusinessWire:

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• Akoha (Presented by Austin Hill and Alex Eberts)
• Bojam (Presented by Andrew Greenstein and Eyal Hertzong)
• CauseCast (Presented by Ryan Scott and Sloane Berrent)
• Closet Couture (Presented by Christine Elia and Sheldon Chang)
• Foglight (Presented by Ben Crockett and Jason Peery)
• Footnote (Presented by Russ Wilding and Brian Hansen)
• fotonauts (Presented by Jean-Marie Hullot)
• Goodguide (Presented by Dara O’Rourke)
• Goodrec (Presented by Mihir Shah and Yishai Lerner)
• GoPlanit (Presented by Steve Chen and Jimmy Ku)
• Grockit (Presented by Farbood Nivi and Michael Buffington)
• Minor Studios (Presented by Dave Werner and Martin Reptto)
• plaYce (Presented by Carmel Gerber)
• Shattered Reality (Presented by Damon Grow and Eric Stone)
• Truecar (Presented by Scott Painter Tom Taira)
• VideoSurf (Presented by Lior Delgo and Dr. Eitan Sharon)
• GazoPa (Presented by Hideki Kobayashi and Go Kojima)

6:35 a.m. Walking from CBS Interactive SF offices to the San Francisco Design Center Concourse.

Demo Pit: Divvy

7:30 a.m. Divvy, a website that allows you rent anything to anyone, launches.

I got a great demo from Aaron Freed, the company’s co-founder. It’s very easy to sign up and setup your subdomain (you.divvy.com). You can rent anything from a Nintendo Entertainment System, to a car, to a house!

Paypal is integrated and a calendar reservation system comes standard.

You can easily find people around you looking to rent:

Demo Pit: Photo Thread

Photo Thread maps out the timestamps of photos based on geography. They will be launching in a few months.

VideoSurf

A visual video search engine:

9:28 a.m. The puppy is helping me edit today. It’s a Divvy dog:

9:35 a.m. They have a huge dome in the middle of the lunch area:

My conference buddy is Meghan Asha from Non-Society. I have been lending her photos for her lifestream.

The first panel of judges (left to right) is Robert Scoble, Sheryl Sandberg, Joi Ito, Bradley Horowitz:

GazoPa

Find images that are similar based on shape, color, and size. If you are searching for people, you can find similar faces.

You can draw things and then search for images that look similar. Let’s try a tee shirt:

Voila:

fotonauts

A Wikipedia for pictures. A place where everybody will come to look for pictures. Think of it as a very smart registry of images.

It’s a desktop app. You can organize photos by town and location. fotonauts will search through Creative Commons photos too. You tag the photo, and they do the rest in the background.

There is a social element too. You can share photos with friends in context.

Horozitz: This socializes tagging and allows me to leverage the work around me.

Bojam

An open source Wikipedia for music creation. Mix Facebook with Garage Band.

You have a drummer in Australia, a bassist in Norway, and a vocalist in Africa. You can all be sitting in your basements and you can still collaborate.

Watch the demo video of Bojam »

For someone who wants to learn guitar, they also have chrods scrolling at the bottom in sync like karaoke. You can mute all the other instruments and practice over the beats. You can even record your track.

Bojam is about a community of musicians.

Grockit

Massively multiplayer online learning. You can earn points for helping one another. Social studying.

10:49 a.m. Jason Calacanis arrives. I think he was out late last night.

10:55 a.m. I went inside that huge dome thing and snapped a picture:

Everybody was wearing 3-D glasses and tripping out. I will have more information about this product later.

Akoha

What if playing a game could make the world a better place?

Akoha claims to use web and real-world missions to create a new form of game play and do good in the world.

Atmosphir

Free downloadable video game for Mac and PC. There is a design mode where you can create your own adventures.

It’s starting out as a platform. They want to become an environment where any video game idea is possible.

We hope to be the online interactive equivalent of Lego

View a short video demo »

Playce

Making the world a playground with high-end social games.

Our emphasis is on quick engadgement. You should be able to send a link to a friend and have them be able to just jump right in the game.

Playce is not a tools company, it’s a destination site. They monetize with advertising and virtual goods.

Horowitz: Ahkoa could be a really fun addictive thing. They are trying to do good in the world.

Scoble: VideoSurf has the best potential to be a business.

Exit Strategies, M&A Uncovered

• Michael Marquez, CBS Interactive
• David Lawee, Google
• Ted Wang, Fenwick & West LLP
• Moderated by Heather Harde (CEO Techcrunch)

Marquez: It’s strategy first. We’re an audience company. We are trying to build the largest audience. We want to build engaging and compelleing experiences.

Wang: We are certainly moving into a buyer’s market right now.

Lawee: The exit opportunities out there are looking more and more limited.

Marquez: We try to find people all around the world that are experts in their domains.

If you want to get in touch with me, reach out to me directly. Let me know why your company is interesting. There are business opportunities that we could work together on.

One of the big mistakes is coming in without the point of view of the value between us. What assets do you bring?

Wang: You need to create competition if you want to maxmize your value on the exit. Do you best to create a bidding process with a logical forcing function (raise another round, another auction). You gotta be careful and cautious though. Gotta think through your tactics.

Marquez: It’s a collborative relationship.

Walle: At Google, we don’t really think about the size of the deal, just the impact. YouTube was a small number of people, but the pricetag wasn’t small. A lot of these companies are coming into Google and they have changed the direction of the whole company.

12:35 p.m. Taking a lunch break. I am going to buy myself a new camera. Expect the photos to be better.

2:09 p.m. Officially putting down my Fufi F-50. Let’s see how the new camera works:

Chris Jolley from MSN Money is speaking:

Phoenix-based Flypaper has built a product that is a few steps above Powerpoint. With an intuitive user interface, you can build professional presentations and host them in a web browser. It almost looks like Flash, but not quite:

It’s more interactive than a Powerpoint too. You can have form inputs for users to fill out. They have a 30-day trial now, so try them out.

Tamales for lunch today:

2:21 p.m. Daphra Holder and Charles Best from DonorsChoose challenged me to raise money for their project. It provides students in need with resources that public schools often lack:

Afternoon sessions starting. The panelists are Sean Parker, Don Dodge, Jeff Weiner, and Loïc LeMeur:

BirdPost

Mapping bird sightings. You can make a list of birds that you are dying to see.

You can create your personal “lifelist” of birds that you’ve seen in your life.

All of the birds are tagged with physical characteristics. The site is completely searchable.

Closet Couture

Fashion social network with an online style community.

You upload pictures of your clothes and the community votes on outfits.

There is a calendar integrated so you can plan upcoming parties, or use it as a historical review (you won’t wear the same thing in front of the same people).

You can even make a packing list for trips to see what clothes you’ve packed before. You can use it as an inventory system.

Footnote

Facebook for the deceased.

You can make a timeline of the person’s history. Upload photos from high school and share memories.

Links to historical newspaper articles and public government documents. Write stories about your history with the deceased person.

They are digitizing over 2 million images a month.

Causecast

A powerful online social medium that connects non-profits, leaders, celebrities, and brands to those who want to make a positive impact on the world.

3:37 p.m. Sean Parker, co-founder of Facebook app Causes adds feedback:

Go Planit

A social travel planning tool. Plan your trip and go.

If you don’t know what to do, there is a recomendation engine that gives you tips. Book dinners with OpenTable in one click. Print out a custom travel guide too.

Export the iternary to iCal or Google Calendar. iPhone app too:

4:30 p.m. Steve Gillmormade an appearance:

Online banking startup Mint just had a redesign:

TrueCar

The future of marketing and advertising will be so great that consumers will not be able to get enough of it.

TrueCar is an information service that delivers actual transaction data, showing what everyone else is actually paying for their car.

This will introduce total transparency to the whole car-buying process.

Login to TrueCar, enter your zip code, make, and model and you’re on your way. You can view the data from a local, regional, or national view.

GoodRec

It’s about making recommendations to your friends, not rants. Thumbs up, or thumbs down.

The goal of the product is to make fast, confident decisions that you don’t regret.

4:53 p.m. TechCrunch has a whole row of writers here covering the event. I am sitting one row behind them.

5:07 p.m. Arrington and Calacanis are talking about the Demo Pit winner. The winner is…

iamnews

An open newsroom platform. Basically, they enable publishers to collaborate in the creation of news. Most small to medium publishers don’t have the resources to get everything.

Create news assignments, and pull in data from Twitter, Flickr, Seesmic, YouTube, Blip and more.

5:28 p.m. They just gave away five Xboxes:

Hollywood panel

• Michael Yanover, a secret Hollywood powerbroker
• Matt Diamond, American director
• Adam McKay, creator of Funny Or Die
• Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and Dr. Horrible
• Stan Rogal, director



Yanover: Silicon Valley and Hollywood are finally getting to know each other. The two sides are starting to appreciate and respect each other.

Whedon: The excitement on the web exists between the creative people and the audience. The Hollywood people are still trying to figure it out. They come to it with great enthusiasm, but they try to either control all of it, or not pay people. Viral marketing is an oxy-moron.



Rogal: I think we are at the very beginning of this. My 15-year-old stopped watching television and completely went over to the Internet. He didn’t know that CSI was on CBS, he thought it was just a YouTube video.

Arrington: Was the wakeup call YouTube?

Yanover: The use of Flash has changed the life of Adobe a little bit. Content is much easier available. YouTube allows you to be more modest with production cost.

Diamond: Every medium has predicted the end of every other medium. Technology tools have changed the way people consume media.

8:18 p.m. Yammer wins TC50.



Full photoset on Flickr »

September 9th, 2008

TechCrunch50: Day 2

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 6:32 am

Categories: Blogging, Conference, Future, Live blog, TechCrunch50, Tools

Tags: Presentation, Andrew Mager

Yesterday’s presentations were a lot of fun to cover. I’m getting right back into the grind today.

6:30 a.m. Here is a list of today’s presentations:

• Alfabetic (Presented by Oded Broshi and Arik Kopelman)
• DropBox (Presented by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi)
• Emerginvest (Presented by Andrew Waterman and Eugene Kim)
• ExchangeP (Presented by Saul Kato and Charles Katz)
• FitBit (Presented by James Park and Eric Friedman)
• icharts (Presented by Seymour Duncker and Tyron Montgomery)
• Imindi (Presented by Adam Lindemann and Galen Kaufman)
• me-trics (Presented by Christian Dodd and Jame Vreelan)
• MIXTT (Presented by Eve Peters and Diana Agraz)
• Mobclix (Presented by Sunil Verma and Krishna Subramanian)
• Mytopia (Presented by Guy Ben-Artzi and Galia Ben-Artzi)
• Popego (Presented by Santiago Siri and Emiliano Kargieman)
• PostBox (Presented by Sherman Dickman and Scott MacGregor)
• Swype (Presented by Mike McSherry and Cliff Kushler)
• Tingz (Presented by Patrick Hunt and Richard Benson)
• TonchiDot (Presented by Takahito Iguchi and Peter Anshin)
• PERSONALRIA (Presented by Guy Hirsch)

6:36 a.m. Walking over to the venue. I am gonna try to get the same seats I had yesterday.

8:11 a.m. Gathering pictures from yesterday, and writing up two quick reviews if I can.

8:20 a.m. ComScore is doing a breakfast session. There’s about 50 people in the main conference center. I bet more people will be at Apple’s announcement.

8:29 a.m. Internet is much better today. There is about 60% more wired Ethernet cables setup on the tables:

Breakfast is bigger today:

When you get to your seat, there are flyers waiting for you:

8:32 a.m. Michael Arrington taking a pic:

9:01 a.m. I got a great demo from John Holland, Chief Experience Officer at Search Me.

Here is the full writeup »

9:12 a.m. Jason Calacanis announces that we are changing the format of the conference to American Idol style. Judges give their remarks right after each presentation.

Mike Arrington, Kevin Rose, and Mark Cuban hanging out:

Calacanis and other join in:

9:20 a.m. Meghan Asha and TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher are doing a Seesmic video:

9:30 a.m. Stage is set. We are ready for day 2:

Read the rest of this entry »

September 8th, 2008

TechCrunch50: Day 1

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 6:40 am

Categories: Blogging, Conference, Startup, TechCrunch50, Technology

Tags: Start-up, Presentation, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, E-mail, Team Management, Investment, Finance, Financing Startups, Management

When Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis team up on a project, the webs are bound to be shaken up.

Last year, their conference TechCrunch40 was an enormous showcase for startups to present their idea to venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and the press. This year, it’s even bigger.

I will be liveblogging this event for the next three days. I will try to writeup all 50 startups, plus some from the demo pit.

Email me if you want me to cover something specifically.

6:30 a.m. Here is today’s lineup:

• Adgregate Markets (Presented by Henry Wong and Du Nguyen)
• AdRocket (Presented by Scott Milener and Andreas Svensson)
• Angstro (Presented by Rohit Khare and Salim Ismail)
• BlahGirls (Presented by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg)
• Burt (Presented by Gustav von Sydow and Gustav Martner)
• Connective Logic (Presented by Stuart Smith and Jeremy Orme)
• Devunity (Presented by Alon Carmel and Leeron Shalev)
• DotSpots (Presented by Farhad Mohit and Matthew Mastracci)
• FairSoftware (Presented by Alain Raynaud and Eileen Long)
• Hangout Industries (Presented by Pano Anthos and Lucas Smolic)
• LiveHit (Presented by Jeanine LeFlore)
• OtherInBox (Presented by Joshua Baer and Mike Subelsky)
• Quant the News (Presented by Brett Markinson and Ben Goertzel)
• Rinen (Presented by Hirofumi Manganji and Go Hagiwara)
• Shryk (Presented by Shane Kempton and Kim Stroh)
• Tweegee (Presented by Shay Bloch and Adi Brandwine)
• Yammer (Presented by David Sacks and Adam Pisoni)

6:38 a.m. Heading to the San Francisco Design Center Concourse. Hopefully I can plugin there.

Calacanis announced that Ashton Kutcher will be one of the first presentations at 9 a.m. PST.

Google’s Marissa Mayer will give a presentation today at 11:30 a.m. PST.

7:30 a.m. Just got here. The name badges are two sided:

The demo pit is warming up. Qik’s booth:

Video search engine CastTV:

7:40 a.m. Seesmic is here. Think of it as a video Twitter:

Read the rest of this entry »