Announcing TechCrunch50 2009 | Hacker News Reader

Announcing TechCrunch50 2009

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19 pointscoglethorpe11 comments

We applied unsuccessfully to TC50 last year. One thing that caught us out a little is that they are very strict on the no publicity before the conference rule - that's fair enough of course since they want to maximise publicity/exclusivity around the event itself. But it meant that we held back from publicising ourselves waiting for their decision (and due to the large volume of applicants, final decisions were somewhat later than advertised). Unfortunately when the decision came through it was negative - we would have loved to go, but it's not the only way to get yourself known. You've got to think carefully about the timing of your company launch and how gambling on acceptance to TC50 might affect your other marketing efforts.

Worth a repeat on how the selection process worked: http://techpulse360.com/2008/11/10/how-fairsoftware-became-a...

If I saw my story in a movie, I'd say Hollywood writers exagerate. And then it happens to you.

Deleted comment

The entrepreneurs are supposed to be on stage - they don't pay the entrance fee.

The room, full of people paying $2,995 are bankers, VCs, journalists (they don't pay), bloggers, corporate dudes, etc.

Anyone applying to debut at TC50?

Does presenting a product launch at the YC investor day count, as far as TC50 is concerned, as prior release - so to speak? Has anyone been caught out by this?

(The same question goes for the YC-competitors' demo days/investor days)

Best of luck to all the YC companies planning to apply!

Is it better to debut at TechCrunch or DEMO ?

Easy answer: apply to both. Usually, you won't even have to figure out the answer to that question, the "market" will decide for you.

Just like YC, having been selected at TC50 or DEMO opens doors. Remember that VCs, corporate M&A people, etc. are swamped with requests from every possible geek who thinks they have an idea. They need to apply some kind of filter.

Depends on who your target audience is. As of last year, DEMO had the most traditional press walking the floor (NYT, Businessweek, etc). That gets you customer penetration outside of the Valley echo-chamber. If your audience is just early adopters, TC might be the way to go.

Both are good, have their strengths.

I went to TC50 last year. Only drawback I saw was that there were so many companies, many got lost in the crowd.

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