

Alfred Wins TechCrunch Battlefield SF 2014 - elyrly
http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/10/and-the-winner-of-techcrunch-disrupt-sf-2014-is-alfred/

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rock57
2014 And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014 Is…Alfred! "Disclosure:
CrunchFund invested in Alfred, but Mike Arrington was not a finals judge, nor
in the judging room" Of course, it's a "once in a lifetime event" that
happened in 2014, a pure coincidence and there is absolutely no conflict of
interests)! However, to be 100% sure there is no repeating pattern here let's
check...

2013 And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013 Is… Layer! "Disclosure: One
of Layer’s seed investors is CrunchFund, an early-stage VC fund cofounded by
Michael Arrington, who also founded TechCrunch."
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/and-the-winner-of-
techcrunc...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/and-the-winner-of-techcrunch-
disrupt-sf-2013-is-layer/)

2012 And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012 Is… YourMechanic! Impressive
list of investors includes "CrunchFund (disclosure: TechCrunch founder Michael
Arrington is a general partner of CrunchFund), SV Angel (disclosure: judge
David Lee is managing partner of SV Angel)..."
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/12/techcrunch-disrupt-
sf-2012-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/12/techcrunch-disrupt-
sf-2012-winner/)

2011 And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 Is…Shaker Disclosure:
TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is an investor in Prism Skylabs and is a
pending investor in Shaker. [http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/and-the-winner-
of-techcrunc...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/and-the-winner-of-
techcrunch-disrupt-is-shaker/)

As I've predicted, no pattern, you can have any color car win TC as long as it
is black (aka backed by, you know...)

Disclosure: I am not trying to mix correlation with causation here, just
reporting facts and suggesting to discuss those facts. This comment is meant
to start discussion on fair play on the most prestigious global Startup
competition, and I have no personal positive or negative feelings or other
type of bias to any entities or personalities involved.

PS edited by adding 3 empty lines for better formatting

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alexanderss
Apart from Alfred being the only CrunchFund company among the six finalists
(and Mike Arrington tweeting it as the winner on Twitter before it was
publicly announced), three of the finals judges have already invested in
Alfred through SV Angel (David Lee as Managing Partner, Marissa Mayer and
Kevin Rose as LPs). Alfred was also the only SV Angel company in the finals.

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sgdesign
For those like me who thought this was about the awesome Alfred _app_ [1]:
it's not.

[1] [http://www.alfredapp.com/](http://www.alfredapp.com/)

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nateparrott
Am I the only one who's a little disappointed the hottest startups these days
are all about helping rich people delegate menial tasks to poor people while
minimizing human interaction?

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joshschreuder
_"...the first service layer on the shared economy that manages your routine
across multiple on-demand and local services"_

Definitely sounds like a line from Silicon Valley.

It's an interesting concept, but $25 a week on top of (presumably) extra money
you spend on the sub-services seems pretty expensive just so I can avoid
washing my laundry!

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adamfeldman
In time-poor and income-rich Silicon Valley, the time saved is ostensibly
worth enough to make such services viable

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egypturnash
Does Alfred actually have a market beyond "overworked and overpaid techies"?

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MediaSquirrel
yes, working families.

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mrchess
> "Alfred will head over weekly... and replace supplies... like putting new
> paper towels on towel holder"

I find it funny that this is considered a problem these days.

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ar7hur
In this so-called shared economy, intermediaries such as Uber, Homejoy,
Airbnb, etc. already take a 20% to 30% cut while trying to remain only an app,
or technology layer (as they claim when regulators try to intervene). That may
or may not be justified. But having yet another app layer take its cut
($100/month!) on top of that seems unbearable. Or maybe bearable just in
Silicon Valley.

~~~
2pasc
I actually disagree. It seems crazy - yes. But, in Europe you have many
families that have a maid that does a little bit of everything. These maids
are super expensive here - only the top 1% have them. So you have an alfred +
the different sub-services, and you are good to go. The sum of all of that is
less than a European maid, and you don't have to deal with the details. It
sounds too much, but for a family with two working parents, it is a luxury
that I am sure is hard to do without, once you have tried it.

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mathattack
At least the name is kind of cool. I was hoping they'd be related to a butler
service.

