Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: DEMOfall 08 (Page 1 of 2)

DEMOfall 08 vs. TechCrunch50: My Wrap-Up of Last Week

September 15, 2008 / / 1 Comment

I attend a lot of conferences. A ton of conferences. I actually started reporting on tech conferences in 1997, would you believe?  Heck, I can’t even count how many I’ve attended, how many reports I’ve filed, for how many media outlets, how many endless thousands of words I’ve tapped out, at all hours of the day and night, from meeting rooms, lobbies, and bad hotel rooms all over God’s green earth (not to speak of planes flying above it).  I think that gives me some perspective on what makes for a good conference. Demofallkarawalt

So, then, I suppose you guys would like to hear my take on the events I attended in California this past week, huh?  I guess this is as good a time as any, as I drink wine on the plane home and finally get some think time, to start tapping this one out on the keyboard. Seems like my chance to wax on about my thoughts on these two opposing/overlapping events… Techcrunch50mikearrington

Now, the way I figure it, there are two ways I could do this: a really long blog post (trust me, I have tons I could say), or really short. I can’t see something in between. Since the flight is only another hour and a half, I’m thinking shorter has to be the way to go. Thus, here’s my analysis in sound-bite form.

Two Conferences for Startups: Similar, But World’s Apart
You know how the two events were similar, I suspect. I’ve blogged previously on this topic (scroll back if you want). I’ll focus here on how they were different.  So, here goes some thoughts off the top of my head:
– DEMO was for a more experienced, mature crowd. TC50 was for the "cool kids." (Cool kids by definition are not all that experienced, and frankly can be a real pain in the ass.)
– DEMO was extremely well run. TC50 wasn’t.
– DEMO was held in a resort location. TC50 was held…south of Market.
– DEMO was friendly. TC50 wasn’t.
– DEMO networking was excellent, as usual. TC50’s was…meh.
– DEMO had great social media tools set up for attendees. Never saw anything like that at TC50.
– DEMO had some great parties. TC50’s…weren’t.
– DEMO had everything on site. TC50 required riding cabs (hotel, evening events), which sucks.
– DEMO’s food was flat-out excellent. TC50’s was ho-hum.
– DEMO’s production values were top-flight. TC50…has some things to learn.
– DEMO had great bump music. Never heard much at TC50.
– DEMO’s on-stage presenters were well prepared. TC50’s varied…widely.
– DEMO’s logistics were impeccable, as usual. TC50’s were…challenged.
– DEMO’s support of press attendees is flat-out the best. TC50’s was…some emails.

But enough equivocating! How do I really feel? 🙂 I’m just telling it like it is based on my own conference experience. Do with it what you will.  Now, in defense of TC50, I was only there for one day (the last).  Maybe the first two days were better (God, I hope). Because I wasn’t there for all of TC-50, I can’t attempt to give you a list of my top-10 favorite startups that launched there.  But, since I did take in the entire DEMOfall conference, I will do my normal best picks from that event — out of the 72 startups that presented.

My Top-Ten DEMOfall Picks
Here are the ones that lit me up, presented here in no particular priority order (just alphabetically). And, to give you the gist of each, I’m including part of what I tweeted about each right as they were on stage:
•  Best Buy (Giftag.com) – of course! my hometown boys – "universal gift registry"…Firefox plug-in…just highlight product at any ecommerce site, then click Giftag icon in your browser bar, and it’s saved
•  BizEquity.com – provides valuations of small businesses, at no cost to the business…small biz in U.S.=$5.8 trillion, a couple trillion more than all Nasdaq cos!
•  BlueLava Technologies (iLovePhotos.com) – has desktop software (Mac now, Win later) that examines your photos and sends ’em to the people in the photos…ooooo!
•  DialDirections (SayWhere) – no more typing on your iPhone, just SAY it, dude! mapping, directions, reviews… (coming soon)
•  Fusion-io – announced ioDrive last yr, now ioSAN…shared solid-state storage…1.5Gb/sec – doubling perf from last yr…can transfer 5 DVDs in seconds
•  MixMatchMusic – a community for musicians and consumers alike, to mash it up…and the musicians even make money!
•  PaidInterviews – disrupting the traditional recruiting model…once candidate’s selected, they’re paid their "ask price" to go on interview…turns recruiting world upside down
•  Plastic Logic – been developing new display technology for 10 yrs, reader coming ’09…no glass, very light, long battery life….woooo!
•  PhoTrade – a visual marketplace connecting photogs, advertisers, web publishers…upload, set price, share…when you’re on deadline, you gotta find and buy a photo fast
•  SpinSpotter – out to bring transparency to news reporting…lets user put on "Spinoculars," highlight unsubstantiated words, submit objections…gad, maybe keep media honest?

Read My Play-by-Play Twitter Account of Both Events
By the way, speaking of tweets, I thought I’d give you the links to my entire Twitter archive on each of these events. The only way I can capture or save all my tweets for later blogging — at least until somebody creates a better way — is to scroll back in Twitter and shoot a screen capture of a page at a time. So, that’s what I did, and I then posted those images (PNG files) to my web site.  The trouble with this approach, of course, is that everything is arranged most recent first — so you don’t get the logical, chronological order of the event, unless you somehow go to the bottom screen capture first and read up.  Anyway, here’s my index of tweets for DEMOfall (#1 most recent, #18 oldest), and my index of tweets for TechCrunch50 (#1 most recent, #8 oldest). 

Let me know what you think. Did you attend either event?  Or did you try to follow them online?  Do you even care?  What were your favorite startups at either one?

Best Team Get-Up at DEMOfall – BizEquity.com

September 9, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Bizequitycomgroupphoto

So, how does a presenting company stand out at DEMO? Ask BizEquity.com, led by DEMO returnee Ami Kassar (on the far left). This new site helps you find out what any small business is worth — so they all dressed up like, you got it, small business owners. Ami is in pizza shop garb, complete with tomato sauce stains… 🙂

DEMOfall Blog Feed Is Startin’ to Buzz

September 8, 2008 / / 1 Comment

In addition to having a Twitter account — @demofall08 — DEMO has a nice blog feed set up at a site created by EventVue, which you can see here. Actually, it’s just part of an entire social network for the conference. I joined it over the weekend, so my posts will be there. (And my tweets appear at their Twitter page, too.) In the screen shot below, you can see that at least one TechCrunch50 blogger is already using the blog feed. Figures.

Eventvuedemofall

UPDATE:  Hah, just found another Twitter account that DEMO runs — @demotweets — which I see has been going for some time now. I guess it will also have updates about the event. The other Twitter page mentioned at the top is for the purpose of aggregating tweets from attendees, so it was just set up a couple days ago.

TechCrunch50 vs. DEMO – My Take

September 7, 2008 / / 0 Comments

You may have been seeing some of the talk online about TechCrunch50 taking potshots at DEMO as its organizers try to get publicity for their new event, which they purposely scheduled during the same timeframe as the venerable, long-standing event. Tc50logo
Can you say "in your face"? DEMO is now going into its 19th year and has become widely regarded over that time as the place for promising new startups to launch. The TC50 organizers are trying to claim that they somehow are more pure because they do not charge a fee to the startups they accept to present, while DEMO long has done so — widely seen as the price for the process DEMO puts a presenting company through to benefit from its first-class brand of company launch experience, which includes all the positive things that go along with that in the way of publicity and investor exposure.

Demofall08

I'm about to leave for San Diego to attend DEMOfall 08, which will be about my seventh time covering their events as a press registrant. They are very, very well run events. I also have a press pass to TechCrunch50, although, since the dates of the two conferences directly overlap, I will only be able to attend that last day of TC50 (in San Francisco), on Wednesday. I'd like to take in all of both events, but I can't; no one can, except from a distance or online.

TC50, despite its name, is actually debuting 52 companies. DEMO will have 72 presenters. Another difference between the events is that DEMO always releases its list of presenters the Friday before the event, which typically starts with a Sunday evening reception. TC50 has chosen to be, uh, different, saying it will only release names of its companies at 6:30 am Pacific on Monday, and that's only for companies who will pitch that day. It won't release the names of those presenting on Tuesday and Wednesday until 6:30 am on each of those days. Do some people know already who's presenting?  Sure, I suspect word leaks out a lot from the companies themselves, although both shows prohibit news being formally released before their "embargoes" lift on Monday. (Note that press attendees' inboxes begin filling up days before both events, but they of course expect us to honor the embargoes, and I do.)

So, what do I think about all the hype going back an forth (most from the TC50 side) about this competition for Startup Launch King-of-the-Hill Event?  A lot of distraction, really — which even TC now admits.  This is supposed to be about the startups. I wholeheartedly agree. It seems there are plenty of them out there, so what's the problem with two events like this?  Why does one have to be in the other's face?  (It would just make a lot more sense if the events were scheduled separately.)  I have a take on how they're different in other ways, too. DEMO, over the years, has increasingly tended to attract more established startups — which, of course, have no problem paying their fee. Many have raised Series A and B rounds by the time they get there, and I've seen many beyond that stage. Thus, the fee is a pittance for them, especially for the benefits they gain. (And it costs them more than that to have good PR support for the event.)  DEMO has even taken to having 4 or 5 large firms introduce new products or services at each of their events. My hometown boys from Best Buy being a prime example at the year's DEMOfall… TC50, on the other hand, seems to be seeking raw startups for its event, those that have raised little or no money. Thus, not having to pay a fee is a good thing for them. More power to 'em! But it will be a different type of event than DEMO for that reason: earlier stage startups than most (not all) of DEMO's presenters.

Another way I'm thinking TC50 will likely be different:  I suspect many more of their presenters will be Bay Area based.  DEMO has long prided itself in its companies being from all over the U.S., and increasingly the world. (See my last post for the number of countries this year's DEMOfall class will be from.)  We'll see how TC50's companies stack up in this regard next week

I did not attend TC's first attempt at a conference last year (called TC40), but I heard from a very experienced tech PR person at DEMOfall last year, who had come directly from it to DEMO, that it was "pretty horrible."  I'm hoping for their sake, and for all the hype and expectations they have created, that they do better this year. And, most of all, for the sake of the startups — who may have not invested a fee into the TC50 event, but have surely invested many, many hours of preparation.  And that's money, too.

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