TechCrunch 50 is very much a different kind of conference. Most conferences are thinly veiled pitches by the speakers disguised as content. At TechCrunch 50 they’ve removed the veil, told everyone to launch, pitch their heart out and then have their companies torn to shreds (or praised) in front of 2,000 people in the room and another 30,000 watching the live online stream.
This is real hard-ball stuff. But listening to 50 pitches across two days can have it’s casualties. One of those has increasingly appeared to be Paul Carr, TechCrunch’s in-house satirist, who’s tweet stream during the conference started out reasonable enough (for him) but has lurched from the reasonable to the not so reasonable. This would be of little significance, other than his increasing irritation with a prominent American flag placed on stage during day one of the conference (which is billed as a international platform featuring participants from across the globe, not just the US). His irritation reached the point where he created his own web site: Is The American Flag Still There.com.
GyPSii, which bills itself as a “mobile digital lifestyle application” centered around geo-tagged content today launches an app for Android phones [get it here]. While there are plenty of other companies doing similar things, Amsterdam-based GyPSii is bit like a supermodel prior to her discovery by the talent spotter: the bone structure is there but not the surface gloss (witness the assault on the eye that is the corporate web site – apparently due to be upgraded). But like any supermodel worth her salt, GyPSii has the potential to generate solid revenue from multiple sources.
What does it do? GyPSii allows you to find places close to you, create places and add content to them, find friends who are closeby and share information with social networks like FaceBook. Currently the content is mainly user-generated but curated 3rd party data is being added. There isn’t a lot of content yet in Europe since the majority of users are Chinese. The Android application supports photo and text content only but applications for other phones also covers audio and video.
Interestingly enough, the only UK entrant into the TechCrunch 50 final 50 list is a new company called The Swop. You can read more about it here but the skinny on it is that it’s about startups swopping services instead of paying for it. They got a hard time on stage at the conference (judges tended not to like the idea of barter) however I can see this very much as a recession-powered idea. Although there are obvious issues to address. Here’s COO Jonathan Morris to explain:
Kooaba, running out of the Zurich tech scene, links real-world objects and digital content via camera phones where you sending a picture as query to its service. That means being able to “click” on objects your camera sees. It’s creating interest amongst magazine publishers right now, as Herbet Bay told me:
Shout’Em (from Croatia) is a “roll your own” hosted mobile social network which has an Android client already. You can start your own co-branded microblogging social networking service on it and they are going to be at Seedcamp in London next week. I caught up with CEO Victor Marohnic:
Problemator is a startup hailing out of Moscow which I caught up with in the Demo Pit at TechCrunch 50 today.
The site is basically designed to “share problems related to organizations, products, persons, regions”. Essentially it seems like a “Twitter for bug-tracking” for, well, just about anything, as Andrei Pavlov explains below. Personally I wonder about how this competes with Twitter itself or more specifically for Yammer. The business model is premium services and white label.
I’m at TechCrunch 50 Mon/Tuesday this week and bumped into two British startups attending the conference: Michael Smith of MoshiMosters and Alicia Navarro of Skimlinks. I asked them about their impressions of the morning session at TechCrunch 50 where several startups launches in the ‘youth’ category. The upshot? Toonstunes (more here) seemed to be their favourite:
TechCrunch 50 is rocking and rolling this week in San Francisco, but it’s easy to for European startups to miss out on the opportunity to hang out together amongst all the Valley buzz.
So we’re putting on a special TechCrunch Europe networking event this Wednesday night. We’re teaming up with DrinkTank, the London meetup event organised by Huddle, and Susan Mactavish Best of Best PR.
So, everyone has been wondering for some time what the hell was going to happen to 3i’s portfolio when it announced it was pulling out of private equity last year.
There’d been whisperings that 3i and top-tier European VC firm DFJ Esprit had cooked up a deal. But now it’s been announced that Coller Capital and HarbourVest Partners, together with DFJ Esprit will acquire a significant part of 3i’s European venture portfolio for around £130 million ($217 million). At the same time DFJ Esprit has announced the launch of two funds totaling $500 million.
Huzzah! It’s that time again! Time for TechCrunch 50: where thousands of struggling entrepreneurs spend three grand they can barely afford to watch fifty of their peers dancing like malnourished bears for the approbation of Jason Calacanis! It’s like Christians and lions meets Satan’s own version of speed dating, with added Scoble! What’s not to love?
I’m sorry – you’ll have to forgive my cynicism, it’s just that I have to prove to you that I haven’t gone native.
You see, one of the main reasons I was hired by TechCrunch was for my traffic-driving habit of hurling faeces at unsuspecting industry conferences. Conferences like Jeff Pulver’s inexorably ill-planned 140 Characters in New York or Loic LeMeur’s très froid ‘Le‘ in Paris – both of which saw the sharp end of my tongue when I was at the Guardian. I learned there that no-one cares when I talk about interesting start-ups or noteworthy trends – but when I textually assault a hard-working event organiser, the page impressions flow like gravy.
TechCrunch 50 is very much a different kind of conference. Most conferences are thinly veiled pitches by the speakers disguised as content. At TechCrunch 50 they’ve removed the veil, told everyone to launch, pitch their heart out and then have their companies torn to shreds (or praised) in front of 2,000 people in the room and another 30,000 watching the live online stream. 
So, everyone has been wondering for some time what the hell was going to happen to 3i’s portfolio when it announced it was pulling out of private equity 
Huzzah! It’s that time again! Time for 