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Techcrunch50, the Silicon Valley startup conference spun out of the popular, namesake technology blog, has become one of the prime spots for aspiring millionaires to launch their tech startups.
As a testament to the conference’s power, Mint.com was purchased for $170 million on Monday by Intuit, just two years after the Web 2.0 personal finance site won the conference’s $50,000 best in show prize.
This year there’s 50 companies who won the approval of TechCrunch’s outspoken leader Michael Arrington, snagging the right to launch publicly Monday and Tuesday at the conference in hopes of winning their own outsized payoff — either instant fame, the $50,000 prize or funding from the venture capitalists prowling the room. The contestants range from sites seeking to steal classified ads back from Craigslist to those hoping to save the internet from its glut of unused ad space.
Here’s a selection of Monday’s hopefuls:
iTwin sells a pair of USB drives that allow users to share files simply by plugging the fobs into separate computers — no passwords necessary. Think of it as syncing and sharing for dummies.
At $200,Spawn Labs living room appliance is a bit pricier, but it lets Xbox and Sony Playstation users play games from any computer, including having their friends play games with them from across town or the country. Think Slingbox for the Xbox.
Story Something is a customizable story service for parents — letting them customize stories for their children — making the child into the hero — and have the story sent to the parents via email, so they can have story time at night with an iPhone instead of a hardback.
FluidHTML seeks to bring more Flash back to the internet, by promising to save the problems most Flash websites have — search engines can’t index them and people can’t link to a particular page. With what amounts to its own proprietary mashup of HTML-like language and Flash, the company hopes to convince online sites, such as its current partner Sotheby, to pay it to use its language.
Then there’s Clicker.com, which — armed with $8 million in venture capital, seeks to become the place to find online television and movies, solving the problem of not knowing whether to look on Hulu.com or Google Video or some other site to find full South Park episodes to the latest season of Kitchen Confidential.
5:1 calls itself the iTunes and Match.com for ads — promising to lets large online publishers pick ads for their site quickly as a way to fill non-premium ad spots without running creepy teeth whitening ads on their site, an unfortunate side effect of using so-called remnant ad networks.
SeatGeek, which launched from a private alpha, attempts to predict when prices for scalped tickets will go up or down (similiar to FareCast — the airline prediction service that Microsoft bought for use in its travel search site). The site says it can help ticket buyers save hundreds of dollars on tickets, while making seven to ten percent via affiliate commissions.
But YCombinator’s Paul Graham, one of Monday afternoon’s judges, was doubtful of the model, suggestion that if the company’s predictions were so good, they ought to be doing something else with their technology.
“Why don’t you buy the tickets and re-sell them yourselves?” Graham asked. The site’s founders said they’d considered it, but thought offering it to the masses was a better way to riches. Graham wasn’t convinced.
RackUp, by contrast, promises that all auction bidders get more than they pay for — in this case, buying gift cards, where purchasers get anywhere from three to 18 percent more money on a gift card than they actually pay, with the site making its money by charging retailers for each transaction. The math seems odd, but the cards look legitimate.
If you want to earn your money instead, Udorse.com want people to use their social media sites to become product endorsers. Using the company’s site to tag their online photos with links to products or places in the photos, users earn a small affiliate commission they can take as cash or share with charity. Sign up using the code tc50.
The judges were divided. Google’s Marissa Mayer liked the idea, though Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh was a little unsure, despite his appreciation for the group’s enthusiasm.
“I’m not sure about the business model of you getting paid for me to dress like you,” Hsieh said. “If tomorrow we are wearing the same thing, because I bought something after seeing your picture on Facebook, that would just be creepy.”
See Also:
- The Ultimate Popularity Contest: TechCrunch Vs. Demo
- Yammer Takes the Prize at TechCrunch50
- TechCrunch50: No WiFi, No Lights, No Problem
Source: Ryan Singel
