

Announcing The TechCrunch50 Finalists - wave
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/announcing-the-techcrunch50-finalists/

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brm
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.

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furiouslol
Usain Bolt

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ph0rque
Congrats to DropBox!

(I didn't notice any other YC companies)

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khangtoh
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.

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furiouslol
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

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lakeeffect
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.

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axod
A social network for bird watchers???

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raghus
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?

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axod
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.

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raghus
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.

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axod
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 :)

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raghus
_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.

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axod
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 :)

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bluelu
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... :(

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

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

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vaksel
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.

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thorax
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....](http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/demopit_company.php?demopit=6)

Probably a number of gems in there.

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huhtenberg
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.

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

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furiouslol
Winners: Blah Girls, Connective Logic, DropBox, Grockit

Curious: Angstro, Imindi, Popego, Swype, TrueCar

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auston
Popego = FriendFeed 3 times more visual.

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

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furiouslol
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"

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

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

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PhageX
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!

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ian
Massive congratulations to Drew and Arash

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dhouston
thanks ian!

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rokhayakebe
Icharts. Simple idea, Huge need.

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furiouslol
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?

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rokhayakebe
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.

