New York City | May 19 - 23, 2012
It has been a wild week so far at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City. Rainstorms and traffic jams couldn’t stop nearly 2,000 people from making it to our big weekend hackathon, and our last two days of interviews, panels and startup presentations over at Pier 94 in Hell’s Kitchen.
Tomorrow is going to be the grand finale. → Read More
Disrupt NYC day two has just wrapped up. During the conference today, Michael Arrington demanded to know from Ron Conway when he was going to run for Mayor of San Francisco (he kept saying he would “never”), our very own Josh Constine grilled Tim Armstrong with questions about AOL, layoffs, which publication he likes more: Huffington Post or TechCrunch (he said “both”), and we watched 15 more… → Read More
On one end of the spectrum, networks like Twitter and Facebook have acted as catalysts to organizing events like the Arab Spring or the riots of London. On the other end of that spectrum, networks like Yelp or Foursquare tee up user generated reviews, tips and public-facing profiles. Somewhere in between all that falls hownow, an iPhone app-based social network that lets users publish messages… → Read More
They say that all work and no play makes for some dull boys, and I think brothers Darren and Derek Dodge would definitely agree with that sentiment. The two of them have just launched a new iPhone app called About Last Night here on our Disrupt stage that aims to connect fans of the nightlife and help them find the best parties, clubs, concerts, and games every night.
“We like to think of… → Read More
In case you were wondering: Ron Conway says he will not be running for mayor of San Francisco.
Apparently that was on Mike Arrington’s mind when he interviewed Conway and SV Angel partner David Lee on-stage at Disrupt today. He said he heard from more than one source that Conway is considering a run “somewhere down the line,” and asked flat-out if that’s true. → Read More
What good is a Foursquare check-in if it doesn’t lead to a coupon or freebie? Why bother tweeting about a brand you like if they don’t acknowledge your undying love and loyalty? With TechCrunch Disrupt finalist SocialStock, those types of actions may now be rewarded…or at least that’s the company’s vision. The service, founded by Subbu Rama, aims to be a stock market for people and places which… → Read More
Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt makes for a pretty grueling experience when so many companies are pitching every passer-by. But Jordan Crook and I went in feet first to check out some of the startups there. In scenes more reminiscent of tag-team pro-wrestling, or perhaps a sort of Startup relay race, we tag-teamed around and interviewed a bunch of them including Jaxx, Screach, Fanitics… → Read More
For SaaS companies, whose customers are usually signed up on recurring monthly billing cycles, the art of retaining customers is just as important as winning them over in the first place. In fact, it’s probably more important, since customers aren’t tied in to long-term deals. It’s also a lot cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. So they need to better understand them and work… → Read More
Most businesses need to be able keep in touch with their customers and provide customer service over the phone, but rolling out a call center can be expensive. Not just that, but most call center software today isn’t very good at keeping tabs on customers and presenting all the information that businesses need to serve them better. That’s why Talkdesk is launching its cloud-based call center… → Read More
Software is eating another part of the world. (Or at least the next generation of software is eating the older 1970s-era kind.)
Sunglass, which is coming out of beta today at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, should bring a bit of joy to longtime CAD users and professional architects and designers. The company is launching very social, browser-based software for 3D modeling.
“This is like Google… → Read More
Email is broken. Social networks are not for private file distribution. Collaborative file sharing sites are missing pizzazz and key functions for the enterprise. This is the thought process behind Postwire by VisibleGains.
The company explained to TechCrunch, “We want to do for client communication what Flipboard did for blog reading.” By using a private sharing workspace, Postwire allows for… → Read More
Vinylmint is a Norfolk-based startup that aims to assist musicians in creating their music. It’s essentially a recording studio in the cloud. You record uncompressed audio right into the computer, the service uploads it to the cloud, and then you can listen to and edit tunes in your browser. Think of it as a mixing board with microphones all over the world. → Read More
A panel run by TechCrunch’s Josh Constine with with Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL and Melissa Brenner of the NBA was billed as being about how social advertising is working for those content brands. In the end, we heard a lot more about the future path of AOL and TechCrunch perhaps. But let’s review.
Armstrong admitted that AOL was originally built as a portal and on a subscription model but that… → Read More
Earlier today, David Lee of SV Angel said that one of the hottest areas to watch in tech right now is the area of mobile commerce and companies that can “close the loop” between online and offline transactions. Today sees the launch of Cardify, a mobile app and merchant dashboard that aim to solve that challenge from the direction of customer loyalty.
The idea behind Cardify, a contestant… → Read More
Only 25% of U.S. local businesses have websites and just 10% show their prices online, but Centzy launches today to let you sort local business searches by price, open hours, and eventually quality — reviews relative to price. That means you could find the nearest dry cleaner open until 7pm that’s the cheapest but has the best customer ratings pulled from Yelp and CitySearch.
Centzy uses a… → Read More
There was a time when I would watch shows like Extreme Couponing with a sense of morbid amusement — there was clearly plenty of money to be saved by clipping bits of dead plant matter out of a newspaper, but the process of keeping track of or remembering them when I go to the store has always stymied me.
That may no longer be the case, if Ted Mann and his Philadelphia-based team have anything… → Read More
While customers love deals and coupon services about as much as they love money itself, merchants — particularly small businesses — tend to see things a bit differently. Often times they feel it’s bad for business (aka the Groupon effect), overloading the retailer with a non-regular clientele, which can make the company look a bit desperate with tacky deals.
But Mirth, which has just… → Read More
When you live in New York City, there are certain expectations of what you should be able to accomplish easily. You can get almost anything delivered straight to your doorstep, whether it be food, groceries, toiletries, or pot. But there’s one service that is still stuck in brick-and-mortar land, and to be quite honest, it’s shocking that it’s stayed offline and off of our doorsteps for so long… → Read More
If you are so inclined, it’s pretty easy to criticize Business Insider — the all caps headlines, the slideshows, and content that has been “aggregated” from other sites. (And yes, BI has some mean things to say about us too.) But in the course of of the Disrupt panel on new media, BI founder Henry Blodget offered several unapologetic explanations of why he and his writers do what they do.
One… → Read More
At TechCrunch Disrupt New York this morning, Luis von Ahn, the founder of the ambitious free language learning and text translation site Duolingo, announced that the site will come out of private beta on June 19. Duolingo was founded by reCaptcha founder Luis von Ahn in 2011. The site opened its private beta in late 2011 and currently focuses on teaching its users English, Spanish and… → Read More
TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington sat down with Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha in another fireside chat at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 this morning. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Botha served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal during its sale to eBay, and today considers himself a champion of consumer web plays. He also sits on the board of hot startups like Eventbrite… → Read More
At TechCrunch Disrupt on Tuesday, Y Combinator’s Harjeet Taggar said that the incubator’s next class will have at least 80 startups, up from 65 in the prior group. Even though Y Combinator is hosting its largest class ever, it was also the most selective class the incubator has ever had, with just a 2 percent acceptance rate.
While Y Combinator grew its class size by about 20 percent, the… → Read More
Betaworks‘ CEO John Borthwick took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt with Crunchfund’s MG Siegler this morning to discuss betaworks’ investments and the state of the investment business in San Francisco and New York in general.Betaworks, the New York-based company behind popular services like bitly, Chartbeat and SocialFlow has also made a number of investments in other startups, including Tumblr… → Read More
This morning at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012, TechCrunch editor Eric Eldon sat down for a fireside chat with Jeff Jordan, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and former CEO of OpenTable, to discuss his investment perspectives. Jordan, who took OpenTable public in 2009, shared his thoughts on the current investment landscape, including the situation with companies like Groupon, Fab, Pinterest, and… → Read More
Kickstarter is a great place to launch a product. Remember the Pebble smart watch, which saw over $1 million in funding in its first 28 hours on the site, and surpassing $3 million well over a month before their stated goal?
Disrupt, which just so happens to be underway as I type these very words, is also an excellent place to launch your product. We’ve seen countless companies rise to almost … → Read More
Welcome to Day Two, folks. If Day One wasn’t enough for you, then you’re in for a real treat. We have a special product announcement at 11:20, Design Office Hours and an incredible list of Day Two Battlefield contestants.
If you’re wondering what happened yesterday, you may want to check out this, that and this! And don’t forget to follow along as we unveil a brand new batch of Startup Alley… → Read More
Our very first day of Disrupt NYC is over and the conference started off with a bang. We had memorable chats, dove into fashion for a bit, hung out with the Startup Alley companies and witnessed 15 startups launch their products in our first day of the Startup Battlefield.
Even though we will have brand-new companies launching tomorrow while fighting for the ultimate prize of $50,000 and the… → Read More
Babelverse won the opportunity to appear at TechCrunch Disrupt from the Startup Alley and with little notice ended up giving a slick pitch. Essentially this is a solution for universal speech translation, powered by a global community of human interpreters: it means anyone can be an interpreter. We covered its launch back in January but here’s a quick rundown.
Machine translation, as we know… → Read More
“All people wear clothes!” declared one of Tagbrand’s founders on stage at Disrupt today. That’s true, but let’s review.
DailyBooth was (is still perhaps?) a phenomenon for a time as people became accustomed to sharing their daily lives in a more quirky manner than mere video can afford. (Ok, OK, it’s a bunch of teenagers sharing their zits, but work with me here, people). Now Tagbrand wants to… → Read More
We spend more and more time on social networks, but sometimes it can feel like work. I mean, scrolling through your news feed isn’t work work, but it’s not quite as easy as vegging out on your couch and watching TV.
That’s where a new startup called Stevie comes in, with a website launching today at Disrupt, along with mobile apps that function as remote controls. Stevie looks at content shared… → Read More
