Is the worst behind us? The broad worldwide recession hit the venture capital and startup communities hard last year. Memories of the NASDAQ meltdown and venture capital “nuclear winter” earlier this decade sent everyone into a tizzy as they feared a repeat performance—venture dollars froze and hundreds of thousands of tech workers were laid off.
But it appears that the worst is over for now. Or at least, the broad indicators suggest that venture and entrepreneurial activity has stabilized and may in some cases be trending up. In Q2 2009 we tracked via CrunchBase a total of 400 estimated new startups founded, $6.4 billion in new venture capital financings and $15.8 billion in merger and acquisition activity. (Download the full report here for $195) And we only tracked 20,000 new layoffs, just 10% of the 200,000 we saw let go in Q1 2009.
(Stats and charts after the jump). → Read More
For the past few weeks, TechCrunchIT editor Steve Gillmor and I have been pulling together speakers and demos for our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp this Friday. What started as a roundtable and a few demos, quickly grew into a full-fledged mini-conference with 45 speakers, including nearly 20 startup and product demos. Other than TechCrunch50, I’ve never seen so many CEOs and companies begging to be present at a conference before.
It barely fits into one day, but we’re gonna pack it in. The CrunchUp is nearly sold out, with nearly 400 attendees signed up so far. There are about 20 tickets left. (You can buy one here for $295, and is also the only way left to get into our annual August Capital Summer party). Some people in Silicon Valley are already complaining about the name Real-Time Stream, so we’ll give away a ticket to whoever can come up with the best alternative name in comments.
There will be panels on investing in real-time startups, the emerging stream platforms, real-time search, and how businesses are adapting from a marketing and customer relationship perspective. I’m equally excited about the demos, which I’ve been previewing. They will include never-before-seen stream readers (from Seesmic and others), new real-time search engines (Wowd), real-time media demos (Magma), mobile video (Qik), real-time CRM (Salesforce, Bantam), and ways to speed up RSS (Wordpress, Netvibes, and more).comments. (Full updated agenda after the jump). → Read More
http://blip.tv/play/Ac_JOIOUeQ
Last night was our big MeetUp in Austin, and it was a blast. The guys from DadLabs made the video above, which somehow manages to both mock and honor the event at the same time. (They also helped us livestream our Web Grassroots panel, which at one point drew an online audience of 2,600 people). As you can see in the video above, the place was packed with folks from startups and stranger places. People came all the way from Dallas and LA to mingle in the startup crowd.
I hitched a ride from the roundtable to the party from the Ice Cream Man in his truck, despite the fact that security asked him to leave the conference center we had been at for passing out free ice cream. In the end, everything was cool, though.
Austin startups are a hardy breed. Since there are only a few venture capital firms in town, including Austin Ventures , which helped us put on the events, many startups tend to go without VC money longer than they would in Silicon Valley. Those who don’t starve tend to figure out their business models faster. That said, some investors are already thinking about creative ways to infuse more capital into Texas startups. One angel investor I spoke with, Joshua Shipsey of the Central Texas Angel Network, told me that he is exploring starting an angel seed fund along the lines of Y Combinator and TechStars.
Both the Roundtable and the MeetUp made me realize that TechCrunch, in its own way, is a grassroots phenomenon. We try to bring together people who are building startups or want to build them, and connect those startup communities across the country and around the world. These are our people. → Read More
Next week is our MeetUp in Austin, Texas, but before we party we are going to tackle the issue of how to use the Web to build grassroots support for a business, a cause, or a political candidate. Everyone loves to give lip service to grassroots campaigns, but do they really scale? When do they work and when is it best to use traditional mass marketing and outreach? To help answer these questions, we’ve put together with Austin Ventures a Roundtable: “The Web Starts At The Grassroots”. We are releasing the final 100 tickets here. They cost $50 each, proceeds will go to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and each ticket will get you into the Austin MeetUp afterward (which is otherwise sold out).
Some new panelists joining me will be:
• Shawn Colo, cofounder of Demand Media
• Owen Van Natta, former chief revenue officer, Facebook
• Greg Lee, CFO Lance Armstrong Foundation (Livestrong)
• Mike Butler, CMO HomeAway (formerly CMO of T-Mobile USA)
• Morgan Warstler, CTO & Co-Founder, SaysMe TV Inc.
• Clay Nichols, Chief Creative Officer, DadLabs Inc
• Bryan Menell, Austin StartupBlog
• Naveed Lalani, co-founder Piryx
• Chris Pacitti, General Partner, Austin Ventures → Read More
Today, we are releasing 100 tickets for “The Web Starts at the Grassroots” Roundtable Discussion prior to the TechCrunch Austin Ventures Meet-Up at Pangaea. Tickets are $50, with all of the proceeds benefiting the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
The Roundtable will be held at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center located on the University of Texas at Austin campus, starting at 3:00 p.m. (Austin Time) on Thursday, September 25. This will be similar in format to the Mobile Web Wars Roundtable I hosted in July—two dozen founders, CEOs, VCs, and execs in a room talking about a single issue, live streamed over the Web. The Roundtable will focus on how to use the Web to build grassroots support for startups, brands, politicians, and social causes. → Read More
TechCrunch meetups are happening nearly everywhere. There is no reason they should not happen in France either, where there is a vibrant TechCrunch community (TechCrunch France is one of the main French blogs). The idea of a Paris meetup started actually very casually a couple of weeks ago as I was just twitting about it.
The event is now sold out but we might have a few more tickets to give away in the next couple of days if some of you are coming to Paris (just shoot me an email and I will confirm in return: ouriel at techcrunch.com with your name and company). The Meetup will take place next Tuesday, 23rd of September in Paris, in a cool wifi-ed location. About 250 people including French and non-French VCs, entrepreneurs, and bloggers, will show up to enjoy live DJ music and an open bar. With a little bit of luck we will have a couple of celebrities showing up in Skype Live. → Read More
Today, we are releasing 100 additional tickets for the TechCrunch Meet-Up in Austin, Texas with the team from Austin Ventures. As previously reported, we are in town on Thursday, September 25 just in time for the Austin City Limits music festival.
Get your tickets now, as we only expect to release one additional round of tickets prior to the event. We do have a handful of three day ACL passes, including backstage access and admission to the Austin Venture tent, to give away to sponsors and designated attendees.
Also, I will be hosting a Roundtable Discussion prior to the Pangaea Meet-Up, at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center located on the University of Texas at Austin campus. This will be similar in format to the Mobile Web Wars Roundtable I hosted in July—two dozen founders, CEOs, VCs, and execs in a room talking about an issue, live streamed over the Web. The theme of the Roundtable will be “The Web Starts at the Grassroots”. It will focus on how to use the Web to build grassroots support for startups, brands, politicians, and social causes. Look for a post from me later in the week with details on participants and access to tickets. If you are interested in joining as a participant, please reach out to me via email this week. → Read More
It’s been about a year since TechCrunch UK relaunched under the capable hands of editor Mike Butcher, and his hard work is paying off. Readers of the Computer Weekly have voted it the best Web 2.0 and business blog in the UK. Congratulations, Mike. He was also named one of the top 100 media personalities in the UK by the Independent and invite-only, hoi-polloi social club the Hospital. At No. 47, he even beat out Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, No. 58 (who is British, but lives in New York City). We regularly highlight some of Butcher’s posts here at TC Central, but if you are interested in the European Web scene, we hope you’ll bookmark TCUK or add it to your feed. And for those of you who read French, Ouriel Ohayon at TechCrunch France often scoops us on news. Both blogs have really helped us raise our visibility in Europe, and help us keep tabs on Web startups over there. (Photo: Steve Bowbrick) → Read More
Greg from MobileCrunch here. I’m in Singapore for CommunicAsia and would love to sit down with some CrunchGear/TechCrunch readers for a meet-and-greet. Drop me a line at greg@crunchgear.com or call +1 201-951-6516. Update: We are meeting at Zouk at 8 pm, contact me for further details → Read More
San Francisco, CA
