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Demo
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nerdfight
conferences
TechCrunch50 vs. Demo -- a fight guide
Conference gnomes will need to choose sides. Blog moguls Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington have teamed up to schedule their TechCrunch50 show in September in direct competition to Chris Shipley's Demofall event. I've prepared a cheat sheet to follow the action at a distance. More »
snoozefests
TechCrunch50 announced -- now with 25 percent more awkward pitches
TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis (did you know that he runs Mahalo?) have announced their second TechCrunch conference: the TechCrunch50, with 10 more companies than last year. The conference will be held over three days — overlapping Demo's fall event. Demo is the startup-launch Arrington and Calacanis are trying to compete against, their distinction being that all finalists are supposedly chosen by "merit," as they define it. The "merit" is so important that TechCrunch head Michael Arrington mentioned it twice in the 248-word announcement. I can't wait.
acquisitions
The three moneybags to pitch at Demo
Another Demo is coming up this January 28-30. Smart startup founders will save their best pitches not for the bored audience — trust us, they'll all be ignoring you and sending BlackBerry emails. Instead, buttonhole the guys with money to spend, starting with reps from Google, Microsoft and Cisco. Here's who they're sending. More »
celebritards
Fake Bono draws real pitches
I finally got the story behind Bono's alleged appearance at the Demo tradeshow last year. MindTouch cofounder Aaron Fulkerson recruited the singer from a U2 tribute band — Pavel Sfera from San Diego-area Desire — to walk around the show floor and do his shtick for laughs. Sfera, shown here with telejourno Natali Del Conte, turned out even better than the real thing: He ad-libbed monologues about Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu and Jesus all over the place. Because of the real Bono's role at Elevation Partners, and oh just maybe an oversized sense of their own importance, Demo attendees believed what they wanted to believe: Saint Paul of Clontarf had come by their show to check out their startup! Fulkerson had to hustle Sfera out of the show after founders began excitedly pitching him. "I've got a cure for hunger," one gushed. It involved Web page markup technology. (Photo by Brian Solis, I think)
This must be reuse-your-email week
I got a free pass to DEMO! I was really happy — until I got to the last line of the attached email.
I got a free pass to DEMO! I was really happy — until I got to the last line of the attached email.
capitalism
Techdirt, the ever-opinionated analysis blog, has weighed in and found Demo's lineup of startups and new products more compelling than last week's TechCrunch40. Why? Mike Masnick doesn't come out and say it, but his implication is clear: Unlike the parade of Web 2.0 one-note-Johnnies drummed up by TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, most of experienced Demo organizer Chris Shipley's picks were focused on useful improvements to existing technology, not gimmicky new ideas. Arrington and Calacanis launched TechCrunch40 because they felt that it was somehow wrong for conferences to charge startups to present. Nonsense, of course. I think that the fact that Demo charges presenters — reportedly $18,500 apiece — was actually what makes it a stronger event.
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Why Demo's conference beat TechCrunch40
Techdirt, the ever-opinionated analysis blog, has weighed in and found Demo's lineup of startups and new products more compelling than last week's TechCrunch40. Why? Mike Masnick doesn't come out and say it, but his implication is clear: Unlike the parade of Web 2.0 one-note-Johnnies drummed up by TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, most of experienced Demo organizer Chris Shipley's picks were focused on useful improvements to existing technology, not gimmicky new ideas. Arrington and Calacanis launched TechCrunch40 because they felt that it was somehow wrong for conferences to charge startups to present. Nonsense, of course. I think that the fact that Demo charges presenters — reportedly $18,500 apiece — was actually what makes it a stronger event.
More »
8:05 AM on Fri Sep 28 2007
By Owen Thomas
1,549 views,
10 comments
followup
Demo's outcasts revealed
We hear there were actually two companies who chose to forgo this week's Demo conference and present at Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington's TechCrunch40 conference instead. The startups in question? Media-sharing service Wixi has confirmed that they will not be presenting at Demo, and we hear that avatar service mEgo is also off the list. (Two flacks for mEgo didn'tt return our call from this morning and sent us straight to voicemail when we followed up a few minutes ago.) Both companies presented onstage during Tuesday afternoon's "Rich media and mashups" section. If Demo followed its usual cancellation policies, these companies would seem to have lost their $18,000 entrance fees. (Representatives for Wixi had no comment on the fee.) We hope these two companies were able to get a worthwhile experience from TechCrunch40. They may not have won the $50,000 grand prize, but they learned something about the value of a contract.
rumormonger
Who's not coming to Demo? The startup that got kicked out
We hear that Chris Shipley and the rest of the Demo conference team are coming down hard on companies who violate their exclusive contract. A tipster "has it on on good authority" that one presenting company has been "yanked off the stage" at tomorrow's fall Demo conference in San Diego, because it demo'd its wares at Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis's competing TechCrunch40 conference last week. No surprise there: The whole point of these startup-demonstration conferences is to show something new, and an already-launched product won't make the cut. But Shipley's crew is being especially tough: We hear that the company isn't gettting its $18,000 entrance fee back either. So who is the culprit? And did they make the main stage, or did they lose out on Demo just for debuting in TechCrunch40's also-ran DemoPit? If you know anything more, fill us in.
embargo breakers
We have Demo's list -- now what's the real surprise?
Well, that was much too easy. The organizers of the Demo conference, it turns out, have gone back on promises made on the website ("the list is not released prior to the conference") and has put the list of startups appearing at next week's event out in a press release. Bastards! The list is technically embargoed until Monday at 7 a.m., but if so, why'd they put it out on the Net? Well, it turns out that the secret secret is what the companies plan to demonstrate. So here's your chance to send in the real dirt: If you have the inside track on any planned demonstrations, send it in by Sunday. After the jump, the full list of companies. More »
embargo breakers
Send me Demo's secret startup list
Embargoes, in the age of instant journalism, are the silliest of PR conventions. In fact, they're counterproductive — especially for publicity-seeking startup conferences like this week's TechCrunch40 and next week's Demo, organized by Chris Shipley (left). And yet not everyone gets this. Blogger Paul Boutin sent TechCrunch40 organizer Jason Calacanis into a rage by committing an act of journalism: Going to the open site of the startup conference last Sunday and copying down, by hand, the names of the 40 startups due to present. What prompted Boutin to do this? Why, the organizers' ham-handed, ridiculous embargo demands. More »
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