Announcing The TechCrunch50 Finalists | Hacker News Reader

Announcing The TechCrunch50 Finalists

techcrunch.com

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Is it wrong that I just want to turn off my feed reader until DEMO and TC 50 are over?

It'd be much cooler if the winning company automatically got acquired or something.

To me a huge conference to announce your launch is like throwing a huge celebration at the START of a marathon.

Usain Bolt

Congrats to DropBox!

(I didn't notice any other YC companies)

Honestly, I'm not even sure why Grockit is in the list, they've just raise $8M series B, its series B, I repeat. Would the 50K matter?

I guess my point is why isn't the chance given to another startup that really needed the exposure and money.

It's more for the exposure than the prize money.

Mint got lots of exposure after being the winner. I don't think they care much for the prize money.

"why isn't the chance given to another startup that really needed the exposure and money."

Why should they? It should be based on merit. If Grockit's product is great, they deserve their place there

it should be but only tech people care about this conference, if it was done by the inquistr.com it would have been off the hook, they cover more than just tech, and that is what our customers read.

Mint, last year's winner, had already raised a big Series A and were probably in the process of raising their Series B before the conference started. They donated the $50k to charity.

A social network for bird watchers???

Yeah - binocular companies have been looking for a niche social network to advertise on FOR SO LONG.

Why, do you find that very surprising? I've done some birding on and off and I know that many birders are very passionate about what they do and would love to sync up and go to a particular spot where some rare bird has been sighted - and what better way than some website/social network kind of thingy to keep up-to-date and share stories and photos?

Call me stupid, but how would it make money? It's not big enough to go mainstream advertising revenue,... what do bird watchers buy?

I don't know, maybe they are so passionate they would pay for membership. It just seems like a niche inside a niche inside a niche to me.

I certainly don't mean to say you're even remotely 'stupid'. It's just that I've been a birder so I know that this is an enthusiastic group and wanted to share that perspective.

As for what they buy, they do buy a bunch of things like books, binos, recorders, clothes, travel to those places etc. etc.

I have no idea if this particular TC50 company will execute well. And even if they do, whether they'll make any money at all. But you seemed to be questioning the very premise of such a site and I think you should reconsider that. Birding is not that small a niche within a niche... Perhaps a site for Latvian poetry that was written after the Soviet Occupation but before Gorbachev - that's a niche! Not birdwatching.

Sure, I could be wrong. It just seemed to stick out a bit. Do you think a social news site for birdwatching would be a hot acquisition target? or get a few million funding? or turnover millions in revenue?

I don't know about birdwatching... maybe everyone apart from me is doing it and spending a lot of money on it :)

Do you think a social news site for birdwatching would be a hot acquisition target? or get a few million funding? or turnover millions in revenue? - I have no idea. You might be right after all. I do think that if well executed, it is in the category of something people (birders) want.

When I was into it, I bought a few books, a nice pair of binoculars, took a trip to a National Park in the north of India in the middle of winter and often woke up at daybreak to watch birds. That last thing required real commitment. I guess we'll leave it at that.

Sure... I wasn't meaning bird watching was in any way not cool, or a waste of time, but as I say it stood out on the techcrunch list for me :)

Doesnt ning or FB communities exist for niche social networks? I do lot of stuff Im passionate about, but its hard for me to create a profile for each one of them.

Are we assuming the avian variety of bird? It makes a whole lot more sense if we don't.

i watched animal planet and this guy was bird watching and he got attacked by a bear out in the wilderness.

The sad thing abut the TechCrunch50 is that it seems to be almost impossible to get coverage if you want to launch something yourself (even though it might be much better than a few of the startups listed there), because they don't even seem to read emails... :(

Who cares about TechCrunch, though? The site is mostly where people with failed startups go to wank.

So which sites would you chose to publish first articles about your startup when you are going to launch? (Except hacker news ;))

is anyone else severely unimpressed by the finalists? You would think, that the second year around, they'd have many more startups to choose from, since word has gotten out about TC50.

Some of the demopit companies are good ideas. For example, this is the first I had hard of www.expensify.com: http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/demopit_company....

Probably a number of gems in there.

That's David Barrett's project. He's the guy who wrote P2P media distribution engine for Red Swoosh, and then got subsequently "let go" from Adobe (that acquired Swoosh) over some anti-DRM remarks. He's also one of more interesting participants of p2p-hackers maillist.

Ugh, Adobe -> Akamai, my bad, sorry.

Winners: Blah Girls, Connective Logic, DropBox, Grockit

Curious: Angstro, Imindi, Popego, Swype, TrueCar

akoha

Popego = FriendFeed 3 times more visual.

Connective Logic doesn't even have a website...

Connective Logic: I'm basing my opinion on the problem domain that they are tackling, which is making it easy to write software that takes advantage of multi-cores

Popego: If it's like Friendfeed, then ba humbug. I expected more from their description of "most meaningful information"

www.connectivelogic.co.uk, it's all over google!

AdRocket appears to be a more automated version of (the not amazingly successful) Amigo (http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/05/carson-systems-launches...).

Has anyone used any of these in-email text advertising networks? If so, what scenarios did/didn't they work well in?

Although I have not used AdRocket, a friend talked to me about it and I would imagine that it would primarily be good for companies which offer a wide range of commercial products, or auction houses. Because of the variety, sharing this data and finding matches would more easily allow personal profiles to be built. As a consumer my favorite experiences with advertisements are the 'you may also like...' or 'find similar items...' services. This is not an easy task by any means, but if they do this successfully and possibly also allow consumers to use AdRocket to be used as a search or recommendation engine then they may really be on to something!

Massive congratulations to Drew and Arash

thanks ian!

Icharts. Simple idea, Huge need.

Agreed. But the Google Charts API will be hard to beat.

API is the problem. I think API is a gateway but not a end result. You have to give users something they don't have to write a line of code for.

Our company in nothing more than a community based around an advanced programming interface for the basic consumer.

Please explain what Icharts does. "Youtube for interactive charts"?

So you share charts like you share powerpoints on Slideshare?

How's this different from Wikinvest's interactive charts?

It fouces on a niche market. Plus in the corporate environment I think they will be more open to using Icharts then hosting their apps on Youtube as it is open to anyone. Icharts may have privacy features.

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