TechCrunch will have a decent presence at the upcoming Dublin Web Summit in October, featuring co-editors Eric Eldon and Alexia Tsotsis and yours truly speaking the event, which also runs just before the so-called ‘Davos for Geeks’ event known as F.ounders. We will also have a custom-built TechCrunch studio for TechCrunch TV (pictured), so you’ll be able to catch back-stage interviews with the tech celebs.
This year there is also a brand new side-event called START, which will feature 100 hand-picked startups which have raised Seed investment and are just starting out. If you want to apply, we’ve managed to get the organisers to extend the deadline till tomorrow for TechCrunch readers, so apply here.
START will run alongside DWS and features the likes of Sweden’s Wrapp, the facebook-mafia-backed Nation Builder and Levo League – Sheryl Sandberg’s first investment. It will also feature mentoring sessions from VC’s such as Google Ventures, Earlybird and Greylock as well as an opportunity to meet the press (TechCrunch!) and PR people from the valley. Last year even Bono turned up on one evening at the F.ounders event.
Alongside the 3,000 attendees at DWS from across Europe there will also be a developer conference with its own two day schedule of speakers and parties. DWS is also arranging to block off entire streets for the evening events, featuring bands and various corporate parties. Dublin is known for its parties, or, as they say there, ‘The Craic’.
Speakers include a refreshingly balanced line-up with many women speakers including TED speaker Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, Soraya Dorabi, co-founder of Foospotting and Science speaker / technologist Debbie Berebichez. Not to mention Ben Milne of Dwolla and Joe Fernandez of Klout, Jan Rezab of Social Bakers.
TechCrunch Readers can use the special voucher code DWS12TC here to purchase two tickets with a discount.
Here’s a run down of companies so far selected for START:
Nationbuilder (San Francisco)
Community organizing platform. Raised a $6.25 million seed round from Andreessen Horowitz, Sean Parker, SV Angel, Dave Morin and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moscovitz.
The Levo League (New York)
Having gained notoriety from a rare Sheryl Sandberg angel investment, Levo League seeks to help young female professions break the glass ceiling with “smart content for smart women”.
6WunderKinder (Berlin) – Multi-platform productivity solutions for individuals, groups and businesses. 6WunderKinder received $4.2 million funding from Atomico in their Series A round.
Qordoba (Dubai) – Revolutionising online translation and publishing with an unparalled network 450 linguists in 20 countries and 15 time zones to deliver fast, convenient and high quality language services, allowing companies to develop and adapt their content
Sponsorhub (New York City) – Known as “Klout for conferences”, Sponsorhub is the first platform that allows brands to easily identify, asses and sponsor the ‘right’ events on a scalable level. The end result is higher ROI for sponsors and better monitization for producers.
RetailTower (Ghana) – One of Africa’s hottest startups, specializes in creating e-commerce marketing software that helps online merchants promote their products and drive traffic through leading comparison shopping engines.
Wrapp (Stockholm) – Social gifting service for celebrating friends’ occasions with free and paid gifts from attractive brands. Raised over $10 million in their Series A. Niklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype, is a board member.
GoCardless (London) – A UK-based service that allows smaller merchants to easily set up interbank transfers for customers. Accel, SV Angel and Y Combinator have invested.
Scopely (Los Angeles) – Currently in stealth mode with the goal of creating a platform for games developers to market their works. The team includes 12 senior engineers/project managers from Playdom, Mindjolt and Warner Bros.
Lua Technologies (New York) – The simplest way for mobile workforces to effectively communicate, coordinate, and stay accountable. Using Lua, teams on-the-go remain agile, connected, and up to speed. A recent graduate of TechStars NYC.
9GAG (Hong Kong) – Image-based social media website which centres around user-uploaded, comical images, or “gags”. The site had 1 billion monthly pageviews as of December 2011.
