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Three days and 31 startup pitches later, the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2011 has been determined. Out of the 29 startups and two audience choice winners, we whittled the list down to seven finalists, which included Bitcasa, Cake Health, Farmigo, Prism Skylabs, Shaker, TalkTo, and Trello. The winner from this group receives the Disrupt Cup and $50,000, taking over possession from Disrupt New York winner Getaround. Without further ado, the runners-up is Prism Skylabs. And the winner is…Shaker! Disclosure: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is an investor in Prism Skylabs and is a pending investor in Shaker.
Israeli startup Shaker essentially aims to turn Facebook into a bar via a social game. As we wrote in our review of the startup, Shaker is a mixture of Second Life, The Sims, and Turntable.fm all mixed together using your Facebook data and connections. Your Facebook profile becomes a walking avatar, your pictures are placed on an virtual wall, you can choose what music is playing in the room for everyone to hear and you can even buy people drinks.
Shaker takes basic social gaming a step further by allowing users to meet new people (as opposed to playing the game with existing friends), which replicates the experience of being in an actual bar. Shaker looks at profile information to show what else you may have in common with seemingly random people in the room. For example, you may have the same birthday as someone. Or you may both like the same movie or band. Other elements include proximity based chat, a Tweet wall, and a “smart phone” social discovery tool to look up information about people in the room.
The startup, which has raised $3 million in funding, is already seeing pretty good traction. The game received 80,000 MAUs in a matter of weeks, and had to block invitations. People were complaining that the bars are too crowded, and users were spending impressive amounts of time within the app. Without any PR, the game was able to attract attention and the startup had to shut down invites to 540 people.
Runner-up Prism Skylabs is a cloud-based service thats allow business owners to bring video feeds online, capture images from these feeds and share this data with consumers and the public. The startup allows a business to download a free software that detects cameras or video on a network, showcases a number of images of the space to the business. Similar to the way you can pull images from videos using a video editing software, Prism Skylabs pulls relevant images of your establishment and builds insightful visualizations from these photos, while protecting customer privacy. The company is backed by SV Angel, Yuri Milner, Eric Schmidt, Aaron Patzer, Brad Garlinghouse, the CrunchFund and others.
Winners Presentation
And I think we have some sponsor awards to [xx]. Heather, why don't you...
We do, and I'm gonna call up three friends, Peter Relan, Richard Kruger, Roland Friga, and Patrick Jung to help present our first set of awards.
And if your company is announced should they come up here?
Please, yes. So Peter Relan, Chairman of Siblings, is going to be presenting an award for best mobile game. Thank you. I'm, well, I've been introduced. I'm Peter. I'm the co-founder of a company called Siblings, which has developed a break-through new technology called Spaceport. You can check it out at Spaceport dot io.
And, basically, it let's you build a mobile game that runs either in an HTML 5 browser Or natively, on any app store; iOS or Android. Which means you have to build your game once in Spaceport, in javascript, and that's it. You can promote it on the rumored project Spartan. You can promote it in the Android marketplace.
You can promote it in the App Store, and you don't have to write these games in multiple places with multiple different technologies. And, the best part is that the HTML5 technology, which as you all know is sort of the new hot technology for the mobile web, is actually available on Spaceport.io so you can build these games.
We came to this conference to sponsor a hackathon last weekend. And we asked game developers and hackers to use Spaceport, and in twenty-four hours, create a game. And we are delighted to announce that a group of three developers led by Vikram Batlah [sp?], who's right there. In 24 hours, took Space Port and built a game called Fortune Planet, mind boggling that they were able to do it in a day and they have done a tremendous job.
We're really happy to see them use this tech to deploy on, as I said on the mobile web or Android or the App Store, in fact on all three if they want. Please give a hand to the three developers who built this game called Fortune Planet. And they get an award where we will plunk down up to a quarter million dollars of advertising once they have developed the game and are ready to roll.
So good luck and hope you'll have it ready for the holiday season. Thanks very much. Next Microstrategy's Richard Kruger and Roland Friga are going to present two different awards, one for best mobile app, and one for best use of social data.
All right. Disrupt San Francisco. Good to see you. I'm with Microstrategy. We're a leader in business intelligence software. We've been showing our new friendly intelligent applications all week here and speaking with a lot of developers about our new gateway Facebook application for developers.
It's amazing to me how much interest there is in social intelligence, and that's what we're applying our technology to now. When I was in school there were zero mobile phones, and today there are five billion of them. It's really become a smaller world, and today I'd like to present the award for best mobile app to...drum roll...to Beaucray, for their language translation application.
Great job, guys. And now I want to bring up my associate who is not Russell Crow - Roland.
Hi, I'm Roland. I wrote down the name of the winner in case, you know, I forget the names standing up here. Well, we do social intelligence and we thought about we want to give away the prize for the start-up with the best use of social data. We think that social data will be very important for enterprises in the future.
And we have this gateway for Facebook enables app developers to make full use of the social graph. Gain a lot of intelligence and information on the users of the apps. So we looked around and a lot of good ideas, a lot of good apps, but only very few app developers really have found an intelligent way to collect data in the right way.
Not too much, not too few. And we found this one very cool start-up, and we want to give away a MacBook Air to Wondershake. Is Wondershake here? Theo, we'll have a beer, and you'll get this directly. Thanks a lot.
Great. And our next award is the Audience Choice award. This is what you all voted for based on our mobile app as your favorite of our thirty one launching companies, and presenting will be Patrick Chung, partner at NEA, for us. Great. Thank you very much, Heather. First of all, can we all join me in congratulating all of the battlefield combatants on a fight very well fought, and congratulations and thanks as well to our judges.
So at NEA we probably see more pitches then other any venture firm out, but this year's Start-Up Battlefield has been a totally different contest. In the very first battle we saw Randy Zuckerberg sing this amazing show-tunes war horse, and then in the very last battle, we saw Israeli girls pick up graphic designers on a Facebook dance club.
Seeing spunk like that in a team is what really has made us get involved and join forces with companies like Groupon, like Beachmint, like Gilt Groupe, like Litro, like Pulse. But this award is not about us choosing which companies are best. This job goes to the most important people in the room who are all of you.
So, like a throng of cheering spectators in a Roman circus battle, the audience has spoken. And it is my honor to present on behalf on all of my partners at NEA, this year's audience choice award which goes to Vocray.
Will you come up? Will you come up to the stage and accept your reward? Wow, two awards. Excellent.
OK.
Guys, congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you very much. There you go. Thank you.
awesome. And as we get ready for the final count down to get to the Disrupt cup winner, we want to give you a preview of what Get Around has been doing With the cups since they won in New York. So we have a video that they prepared for us.
And if the seven finalist can gather up here in the meantime. All seven companies. become a tradition that the winner always does a video. It started with Saludo so whoever wins this time will have to, have to do a video. So if we can have all seven companies come up on stage. So again, just come up on stage.
Bitcasa Cake Health, Farmigo, Prism Sky Labs, Shake, Trello, and Talk To. Everybody come on. There's plenty of room. All right. Do we have the check also? This is the fun part. I get to give away fifty thousand dollars. And Heather, where is Heather? Tell her to be up here with me. I got to say, this group of finalists...every Disrupt, I'm more and more impressed.
And, you know, the judges concurred. Every one of you was a solid company and we had a great discussion backstage. And, unfortunately, not...there can only be one winner. So what I'd like to do is, I'm going...first of all, everyone give these guys a round of applause! They killed it! Right? They killed it.
All right, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna announce two companies in alphabetical order. Okay? And those are...those two companies will be the winner and the runner-up. And then I want all the other companies to to leave the stage, okay. So in alphabetical order: Prism Sky Labs, and Shaker. So everybody else give a round of applause to everybody else - CakeHealth, Bitcasa, Farmigo, [xx], Talk to.
I hope I didn't forget anyone. Okay, where's Heather. Now we have a surprise. We have a Disrupt Cup which you see here, but the runner up from New York suggested that we have a runner-up award, BillGuard... and we created a runner up award, which is down there. Can someone bring the runner up award and place it right next to the, right there.
No..place it next to the cup. It's a running shoe with a TC logo. Pretty cool. Ok, is Heather here? Where's Heather? Who's got the check? Oh, you can't show it yet. Ok. So pretty exciting. All right, I'm going to name the runner up, and you'll know who the winner is. The runner up for Disrupt San Fransisco 2011 is Prism Sky Lab.
The winner Congratulations! Do we have the check please? Come out here. Come here, let's have a picture. Who wants to open that up? All right, congratulations. Congratulations.Very good. That's it, right? That's a rap. There's a...is there a party?
Tonight's after party's at Mighty's.
Mighty. After party at Mighty's. Let's see there...I know these guys are gonna be there. Okay. Thank you very much for having a wonderful three days with us and sharing this with our start-up. And until Beijing, which is like a month away. That's it for Disrupt. Thank you very much. Tech Crunch Disrupt.
In addition to the Disrupt Cup, some special awards were also given:
The audience choice winner, which is presented by NEA partner Patrick Chung, is Vocre, which is a translation app. Vocre allows you to speak into the app while your iPhone is vertical, flip the phone horizontal and the phone’s accelerometer cues the app to translate and speak what you’ve said into the language of the people you’re speaking with, and they then can respond, rinse, and repeat.
Peter Relan, chairman of Sibblingz, presented an award for best mobile game to Fortune Planet, a project created at the Hackathon a few days ago.
MicroStrategy distributed two awards: The best mobile app went to Vocre and best use of social data went to Wondershake.
Shaker’s Presentation:
Awkward moment. We can't seem to plug that music. Okay, we'll do it without music? No music. Alright. I got a feeling that tonight's going to be a good night, that tonight's going gonna be a good night. That tonight's gonna be a good good night. Got a feeling, that's tonight's gonna be a good night.
That tonight's gonna be a good night. That tonight's be a good good night. OK stop. We all know how socializing in real life looks and feels like. And we know that that's not the way we socialize online today. Bet none of you ever told yourself, "I had a great night on Facebook last night And that's not so much because there's something wrong with you or him.
It's because the way social networks are built today, great as they are these simply do not provide those type of experiences. How can you compare this to this.
Yeah.
Shh, ah, what is it? I'm Jonathan the CEO of Shaker and And that's Alfred, another founder and CEO. And we want to present to you Shaker. With Shaker, for the first time, you'll be able to socialize online much like you do in real life.
OK Three weeks ago, Shaker launched a private beta in Tel Aviv. What we're going to do now is dive live to the site and start shaking Okay, start Shakers, the music thing here. so music is important for hangout experiences.
And start shaking. So, I'm dancing Okay, you recognize me? Of course you recognize me. This is me in blue. This is my profile picture on Facebook, hanging on top of my head. Now the People that you see here are real people, hanging out in real time, right now in Israel. It's 3am, so most of them are in their PJ's.
but they're dancing on the bar and listening to the same music. Who are they? The ones in blue and my favorite friends. The ones in yellow are friends of friends, and the rest are gray. People in Shaker act naturally--they walk around talk to other people and grab a seat by the bar. So, lets see who's here.
Yossi. Yossi is our co-founder. We can see here that he's dancing and talking with a girl. She's a friend of a friend. She's yellow. On Shaker, if I want to talk to someone, I have to come closer to approach him so he can see me. Let's try and do that, Andy. So the moment I join the chat, my new manifestation of a Facebook profile just walks there and joins them.
I'm in chat with Yossi and Christy. Now Christy, which is a friend of a friend, while I'm talking to her, I can check her out and see what do we have in common. I can open her profile and see. So, we have four things in common; We're friends with Yossi, our co-founder, that's cool. We're both fans of David Bowie, which is always cool, and we both attended Burning Man a week and a half ago.
So that's three conversation starters Even before I bought her a drink. Will she accept? Andy don't embarrass me. So, one thing you to understand. This girl, Christie[sp?], which I find lots of interest in, is not accessible for me on Facebook. The way social networks Built today. Those kinds of gathering, with relevant people cannot happen.
Let's see what else he's sharing. Profile pictures from Facebook. pictures, I can see some additional info that she is sharing. So, Christie[sp?], feels comfortable sharing some of her Facebook info with people in the room that are here right now. Well, let's have a walk here in the room and see what else is going on.
This is like wall, you can see it. This is the like wall. The like wall are the likes and interests of the people in the room projected on the wall for everyone another one to see together. I can click on one of the 'Likes' and see who likes it. So, for instance, click on one of them She was like a musician and I can see, call actually in route.
I can see what do I have in common from him? this is how I can actually get to know the people around me. Ladies and gentlemen, Shaker opened the private beta just three weeks ago in And it exploded. Tens of thousands of people are flooding Shaker as we speak. They love being able to do more than post and comment.
They love being able to have meaningful social relationships and experiences online. We have been waiting to share this with you for a long time. This is not a game, not even virtual. This is real life. The revolution of experience already begun. Shaker is much more than any specific hang-up. There's a platform of social experience layered on the top of existing social networks.
so obviously the people who are there and the type of venue will determine what kind of experience you're going to get. Imagine, for example, a sport bar, when you can root the team or talk smack. You can imagine Rhianna's fan page turns into a huge concert hall where all of her fans listen to the music.
If it works, and you can imagine Washington Square Park, where NYU freshmen can gather even before their orientation.
It is inconceivable that in the future, fun, casual experiences like those will occur in the physical world only. Some of them will occur online. It's time to bring the social networks to life. So you can log on now to www.atshaker.com And there are exclusive tickets there, for the first to arrive there.
And we're opening, for this special week, a venue for TechCrunch Disrupt, so the people here in the audience can join us, some of the readers. And if you didn't make it in, I see already people getting on it. If you didn't make it in stop by our booth to get a VIP ticket. Thank you. Shaker, everyone.
I have to say LinkedIn would be better if it was like that. That would be pretty cool. Alright, I don't know if the music's going to carry on, so let's, maybe we should all just, no Any questions? Anyone want to jump in? Sure, I have an extra judge just sitting at the end we got a new guy. I will come to you.
I think that there's are some interesting concepts here. It's clear you guys are trying to make the social experience even more. fun and richer. One of the questions in my mind is, you know, users only have so much time they can spend on various services so, what do you think you're really competing with for time, here?
I mean are you competing with dating services, is this a place to meet people that I don't really know? Or do you think that this--you're really, frankly looking to Compete with the time that people already spend on Facebook, and Twitter and LinkedIn and those sort of services? So, Shaker's suppose to be a platform, where you have able to have a venue, really create different experiences.
Different experiences will compete on different sets of time, different sets of people. The time that we're essentially competing with, is the time you spend anyway on Facebook, and the time you socialize on Facebook today, in manners that are not that natural, are not always fruitful. And that time, which is huge, you know that average for young people is almost two hours a day, that time is the time that we can get them on Shaker, at times when they want to socialize in a more casual and fun way.
So yeah, if it's a bar, then when we open the bar in Israel that you just saw, there are many, I wouldn't say dating because it's not dating sites, but it's a clear thing. You see a lot of flirting acts, people dancing on the bar and hooking up together in night.
Josh, I'm gonna bring in. I love the demo, it's as good a demo as I've seen here.
Thank you.
So, congratulations on, kinda, bringing those physical and online worlds together. So I've tried to build a synchronous business myself, and I know how hard it is. So do you also have an asynchronous model also will work in this world or does it have to be synchronous experience.
I must say that we did place our bets on the synchronous model, and I know that it might short in the time of people on the platform, that we are not experiencing that in Israel. We have great time on site--over I think 24 minutes now--which is great But there are not asynchronous natural social interactions.
Imagine that we have this room empty and then each time one of us would come and have his own Social experience, walk away, then another one come. So we're really trying to create that. And I think we have been able, you feel the energy here. we're willing to take the risk of, you know.
So what's the ratio of registered users to simultaneous?
The ratio of how many people? So, until now we've a few rooms, we were able to get, I think the most 1000 was something like that. 900?
We block it, you have to understand, we blocked invitations viable channels in Israel.
There is someone here to blame.
We're standing right now at more than 80,000 MAUs after only three and a half weeks once we blocked in So we're only allowing 540 people to be here at the same time. If you go to our fan you'll see that people are complaining that the bars are too crowded. obviously compare it to the ratio, the population in Israel.
It reminds me of a casual version of Second Life, except that it solves 2 problems that Second Life had. One is getting users. It was always very hard for to attract, and so if you're in Facebook -- and also I think it gives them something to do. People going to Second Life for the first time would spend a half an hour trying to figure it out, and then they wind up with some island with some trolls kicking them into the netherworld.
And this actually brings them with something to do. You know it also, it's like turntable, but you know, the party goes outside of just music. I think that's interesting.
Michael?
I mean I like what you're doing with, you're kinda adding more of the features trying to find out what you have in common with the person, I definitely think it's a more immerse social networking experience. The question I have for you is; you talk about bringing the physical world into the social network world, like, what are you doing that's kinda actually doing that's kinda actually doing that more than just, kind of, making it so that I have to invite other friends into a room?
Is there something that you're doing around the kind of location based services or things like that where, let's say we have fifty people right now they would all be in a room. Can you talk a little more about that?
Oh, certainly. So, location-based systems are not yet built into it, but what we're doing and you tapped into this when you talked about all those commonalities so we use algorithms to bring together people that are relevant to you, based on all those commonalities. So if it's your age group, or your location, or your Affects interest or your a radical place where you live or where you work so you can take this data.
All the data we have on Facebook of social connections. We use algorithms to decide who are the better people that you may want to spend it with. And we learn it, as people gather data.
OK, we're out of time so a big round of applause for Shaker.
Thank you, very much.
I feel like Shaker have discovered the Randomly placing supporters in the audience to cheer at optimal performance, so kudos Shaker. I kind of like the candles. I sort of want You should probably look
Backstage interview:
Guys, how did it go?
Went well. I mean, the music didn't play at first, but other than that, I think, the energy was, you were still feeling the energy and what did you think?
I was really excited; it was great coming here and showing you something that we keep in the heart for a long time. So it was great.
Do you think the judges bought in to your product?
I think so, I mean, they asked questions that were right at the point in the sense of they pinpointed the things that we work on so hard. The algorithms, bringing together people, and the question of what can you do with all the variety we have on the platforms, so, I think very much so. And in regard to Second Life, that question was exactly what we are trying to say.
Is there anything that you guys want to say now that you've had a chance to think about your presentation on stage that you didn't get to say on stage?
Anything special. No. What about hi to Mom and Dad? That was really, we wanted to say that but you know.
Shaker brings social networks to life by allowing people to interact in real time in a shared environment, making the online social experience of hanging out with friends and meeting new people, feel natural finally.
