TechCrunch50 conference - my 2 cents
I attended the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco this last week. It was an amazing event and I met some unbelievable people. Here are my comments and observations, and of course my 2 cents on the winners.
First off, those that dont know TechCrunch (plug) it is THE technology blog for the Silicon Valley technology company click. A great blog, great people, well presented, well managed. Excellent all round. As expected they put on an equally great show! What a job. Only criticism (dah), the poor wifi internet connections plagued the show and caused quite a problem for those attending (that have to keep up with the day to day of their startups) and especially the poor companies with booths that had to demo their INTERNET based websites. Wow - I sat through at least 20 demo failures. I take my hat off to the companies that had to demo on the stage in their presentations that suffered major connection drops too.
Next year - overcompensate and give everyone a cable or at least get T1 lines with enterprise wifi routers :) at a internet convention.
OK, moving on. The format. Basically 50 technology companies were picked to pitch their business idea to a panel of experts for 8 minutes. The top 6 were chosen and out of them one winner received $50k and a lot of exposure and probably a good chance at funding. Good model, love the idea, the whole thing just works.
The winner was Yammer.com. A simple, well implemented website that caters to enterprise collaboration and communication. In my opinion, they were one of the top "website" offerings however I did not see that much innovation in their solution, or see any evidence that they could scale and support a large adoption. Which brings me to my next point.
Why was technology not even mentioned in this convention? There was not ONE word of technology, architecture, or how these sites or products were actually built. This is at a time when 99% of startups fail because of poor technical architecture and implementation. It should have been the second most important question after the business model. If I was involved, I would have had a technical architect or a qualified CTO up on the panel for every presentation that asked the relevant questions and thereby gave the panel and investors some idea of the "how" and the technical integrity of the company. Wow. Just a little insight into the way the angel, VC, start up process works and how far ahead we are at JavaDojo. (plug) :)
Another interesting thing I witnessed was the celebrity in the angel and VC people. They are treated and act like gods. The conference was very well represented with money guys and they were very "available", which is an unbelievable opportunity for these companies that make the trip and pay the ticket price. Nice job on the invites and for showing up!
My favorite's were Yossi Vardi and Marc Cuban. All out cowboy's and open book straight shooters. Yossi with his wit and sense of humor stole the show and made me really want a meeting with him, just to hang out, let alone pitch, and Marc Cuban with his "rich kid" dont give a damn attitude, which makes him a super celebrity and everyone think they can make it. Loved this part of the conference a great deal.
From a quality of innovation and technical evolution perspective, I walk away from the conference feeling pretty bummed. I saw little "new" and a lot of the old. Most companies had just found new ways to work with old ideas, using web 2.0 spaghetti script to make pretty interfaces that had no use really other than solving a problem that they invented. Other that the Hitachi image search guys and the Swype team, I saw nothing that was all out "fresh".
My pick for next leader and success story is the otherinbox.com (Joshua Baer), and ClosetCouture.com (Christine Elia_. Christine killed it! I would work with her in a second - what a great presentation.
In the Pit, my favorite company was Spellr.us. What a simple and well implemented solution. It was the ONLY solution I saw that actually did anything useful!. Kevin is a honey and I loved him too. Go boy!
I was very happy to see adgregatemarkets.com and see there product. It was the closest offering to our incaMoon product and made me happy that we are entering a new market as I hoped. I would love to work with them and help them implement the pureSolv platform to make their Ad stores scale as they grow. What a great presentation by Henry Wong their CEO and founder and a wonderful team, shout out to Nihal!
In summary, TechCrunch50 was cool. It was a great event. The web 2.0 companies out there right now are not impressive. As an investor I would not have spent a dime. Its a real down year for the industry. No Googles, Twitters or Facebooks.
To all these companies - spend some time on your back end! Make sure your technology can handle your success before you launch. The consumer will not return to your site or service if it fails or breaks ONCE. The web is fickle. Talk to us if you need help, I will always answer emails to help people with architecture. :) Martin
First off, those that dont know TechCrunch (plug) it is THE technology blog for the Silicon Valley technology company click. A great blog, great people, well presented, well managed. Excellent all round. As expected they put on an equally great show! What a job. Only criticism (dah), the poor wifi internet connections plagued the show and caused quite a problem for those attending (that have to keep up with the day to day of their startups) and especially the poor companies with booths that had to demo their INTERNET based websites. Wow - I sat through at least 20 demo failures. I take my hat off to the companies that had to demo on the stage in their presentations that suffered major connection drops too.
Next year - overcompensate and give everyone a cable or at least get T1 lines with enterprise wifi routers :) at a internet convention.
OK, moving on. The format. Basically 50 technology companies were picked to pitch their business idea to a panel of experts for 8 minutes. The top 6 were chosen and out of them one winner received $50k and a lot of exposure and probably a good chance at funding. Good model, love the idea, the whole thing just works.
The winner was Yammer.com. A simple, well implemented website that caters to enterprise collaboration and communication. In my opinion, they were one of the top "website" offerings however I did not see that much innovation in their solution, or see any evidence that they could scale and support a large adoption. Which brings me to my next point.
Why was technology not even mentioned in this convention? There was not ONE word of technology, architecture, or how these sites or products were actually built. This is at a time when 99% of startups fail because of poor technical architecture and implementation. It should have been the second most important question after the business model. If I was involved, I would have had a technical architect or a qualified CTO up on the panel for every presentation that asked the relevant questions and thereby gave the panel and investors some idea of the "how" and the technical integrity of the company. Wow. Just a little insight into the way the angel, VC, start up process works and how far ahead we are at JavaDojo. (plug) :)
Another interesting thing I witnessed was the celebrity in the angel and VC people. They are treated and act like gods. The conference was very well represented with money guys and they were very "available", which is an unbelievable opportunity for these companies that make the trip and pay the ticket price. Nice job on the invites and for showing up!
My favorite's were Yossi Vardi and Marc Cuban. All out cowboy's and open book straight shooters. Yossi with his wit and sense of humor stole the show and made me really want a meeting with him, just to hang out, let alone pitch, and Marc Cuban with his "rich kid" dont give a damn attitude, which makes him a super celebrity and everyone think they can make it. Loved this part of the conference a great deal.
From a quality of innovation and technical evolution perspective, I walk away from the conference feeling pretty bummed. I saw little "new" and a lot of the old. Most companies had just found new ways to work with old ideas, using web 2.0 spaghetti script to make pretty interfaces that had no use really other than solving a problem that they invented. Other that the Hitachi image search guys and the Swype team, I saw nothing that was all out "fresh".
My pick for next leader and success story is the otherinbox.com (Joshua Baer), and ClosetCouture.com (Christine Elia_. Christine killed it! I would work with her in a second - what a great presentation.
In the Pit, my favorite company was Spellr.us. What a simple and well implemented solution. It was the ONLY solution I saw that actually did anything useful!. Kevin is a honey and I loved him too. Go boy!
I was very happy to see adgregatemarkets.com and see there product. It was the closest offering to our incaMoon product and made me happy that we are entering a new market as I hoped. I would love to work with them and help them implement the pureSolv platform to make their Ad stores scale as they grow. What a great presentation by Henry Wong their CEO and founder and a wonderful team, shout out to Nihal!
In summary, TechCrunch50 was cool. It was a great event. The web 2.0 companies out there right now are not impressive. As an investor I would not have spent a dime. Its a real down year for the industry. No Googles, Twitters or Facebooks.
To all these companies - spend some time on your back end! Make sure your technology can handle your success before you launch. The consumer will not return to your site or service if it fails or breaks ONCE. The web is fickle. Talk to us if you need help, I will always answer emails to help people with architecture. :) Martin