Exclusive – SeatGeek, one of the finalists of TechCrunch50 2009, has raised $1 million in Series A funding led by Founder Collective and joined by NYC Seed.
The funding brings SeatGeek’s total investment to over $1.5 million, and it intends to use the new capital to hire more engineers and business developers. → Read More
To all those startups who made it to TechCrunch50 this year, whether it was on stage or in the DemoPit, congratulations and thank you. We wouldn’t be here if there weren’t so many creative entrepreneurs out there trying to build something worthwhile out of nothing but ideas, sweat, and a little risk capital. A little risk can go a long why. And while it is true that this year’s crop brought fewer wild ideas than in the past, it is also true that by and large there were a lot more solid ideas as well.
One of the best things about TechCrunch50 is not what happens on stage, but what happens before companies even get there. Startups that don’t even have a working demo or a product are forced to build one just to be considered. So many startup founders at TechCrunch50, even those who don’t make it to the final 50, have told me how valuable this selection process is. There is nothing like a deadline to focus your ideas. And once you are there, the dealmaking in the DemoPit was intense.
Over the course of the two-day conference, we covered all 50 finalist demos, put up more than a dozen video interviews, and reported announcements made at TC50 from Bing, Facebook, Google, AOL, and MySpace. Even the TC50 winner from two years ago, Mint, had its own little announcement. If you weren’t one of the nearly 2,000 people in attendance, perhaps you were one of the 97,855 unique viewers who caught some of the presentations streamed live on video.
There was so much happening at the conference, even if you were there you missed half of it. After the jump is a handy list of links to all of our TC50 coverage, including every company demo, announcement, backstage interview, and commentary. There is also an extensive list of links to other coverage (if we are missing something, let us know) and, at the very bottom, to Crunchbase profiles of each of the 50 finalists. → Read More
I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world. There were too many people building safe businesses, too many companies just trying to make existing things slightly better, and too many people wanting to be the next Mint.com, not the next Google. Nothing against Mint, but Silicon Valley wasn’t built on $170 million exits. → Read More
Nearly 130 million people use the web in Japan and Korea combined, with Japan itself boasting the world’s third biggest Internet population (94 million users). But getting exposure on an international scale is a big problem for globally positioned web startups in these (and many other Asian) markets.
TechCrunch50 has always been very welcoming towards companies from countries other than the US. Last year, for example, a total of five companies from Japan made a showing at the event (three startups presented onstage, two were in the DemoPit).
This year, Korea sent four promising companies to TechCrunch50 (finalist Sealtale, and DemoPit participants UniQube, touchring and FillThat), while Japan had two startups exhibiting in the DemoPit (LIFEmee and Spysee). → Read More
The conference is over, the winner has been announced (RedBeacon), and the drinking has begun. Thank you so much to all of the companies (both the finalists and in the Demopit), the sponsors, and the attendees who made this year’s TechCrunch50 possible.
We’ve put up more than a hundred posts in the past two days, covering every single launch, and then some. So there’s a lot to absorb. But for now here’s a video that captures some of the spirit of the event.
(Animoto video after the jump). → Read More
Here’s the thing I love about Reid Hoffman. There’s no “We-don’t-comment-on-rumors-and-speculation” BS with him. You ask him a question and he gives you an answer.
So you don’t need a bunch of words from me, just go to the jump and watch our final backstage interview of the conference where Hoffman talks about whether LinkedIn will buy Xing and whether it’ll file to go public this year.
Also, Hoffman names the three other tech companies he thinks can price pretty much whenever they want. (And lucky him, he’s an investor in two.) → Read More
It’s 5 p.m. and we’re in the homestretch! The experts and the Twitterers seem to be less impressed with the companies this afternoon than the ones this morning. That or we’re all just getting tired after 40-something demos.
So lucky for us that some of the most influential and interesting judges were left for the final panel. I caught up with one of my favorites, Dick Costolo, who most people know as the new COO of Twitter, others know as the former co-founder of Feedburner and far fewers know as a former improv comedian.
Costolo and I talked about why he gave up a plush post-acquisition Chicago life to move to Silicon Valley and run the day-to-day Twitter operations, when it’s a good idea to hire your friends and when it isn’t, Twitter’s magic acquisition number, and why startup M&A is like teenage crushes.
Also, Twitter CEO Evan Williams has been outspoken about not enjoying his time at Google after the Blogger acquisition. Others have cited that as a reason Twitter may not sell to Google in the future. I asked Costolo whether he had the same experience.
Video is on the jump. → Read More
We’ve all been there: the classic group photo, with twelve friends side by side doing their best to look as happy as humanly possible. The first shot is easy — but wait, the guy next to you has their own camera, so it’s time for another one. And then another. Soon muscle fatigue kicks in, and those happy smiles fade into grimaces as everyone wonders why isn’t an easier way to share their photos. Cue Clixtr, a new location-based photo sharing platform that’s launching today at TechCrunch50. The app is available on the App Store now, and you can download it now for $2.99 here. → Read More
The idea of adding a social network to any site is a compelling one. Currently, most sites do this by creating their own networks using service like Facebook Groups and Ning. But those obviously aren’t actually your own site, they are other sites set up under your site’s name. Stribe’s goal is to move the network back onto your site.
The service, opening to the public today at Techcrunch50, provides a free and easy way to place a social networking layer over any site. This layer exists on your site in the form of a bar at the bottom of the page. This is not unlike the Meebo chat bar that you may have seen on this site and others recently. But Meebo was really only about chat (and sharing), Stribe wants this bar to be a full-fledged social network on your site, including members, comments, and yes, chat. → Read More
While Facebook continues to grow, and some companies are getting more comfortable with using it for things like Pages, LinkedIn still fills the gap for users who want a more professional setting for social networking. A new service launching in public beta today at TechCrunch50, Radiusly, wants to take the idea of Twitter and put it in more of a professional setting, as well.
But unlike Facebook and LinkedIn which exist as two totally separate networks, Radiusly wants to integrate its service with Twitter. Users will be able to publish an update they leave on Radiusly to Twitter (and Facebook, as well). But the key selling-point is that in the Radiusly environment you can also do much more, such as have a professional profile, resume, sample works, and photos. → Read More
A lot of people use Twitter to have conversations with others, but that’s not really what it was built for. Initially, Twitter was just supposed to be a place to update what you are doing; the @reply only came around because people started using it to direct a conversation at another user. Now conversations are one of the most interesting things about Twitter, and a new startup launching in private beta today at TechCrunch50, Lissn, wants to build a new platform from the ground up with conversations in mind.
If you’ve seen the video demos or had a chance to use Google Wave at all, Lissn may seem familiar — it has the same type of real-time conversation aspect. The difference, of course, is that this is the main function of Lissn, while Wave is trying to be a lot of different things wrapped into one. Lissn is all about having conversations with people, and allows others to watch, and join in as they’d like. → Read More
Email. Twitter. Instant Messaging. Facebook. Those are just four of the most popular ways to communicate online. And actually, the average 23-year-old has 6 different accounts that they check for messages each day. Maintaining and keeping up with that is either basically impossible, or flat-out impossible. That’s where Threadsy comes in.
Launching its large beta today at TechCrunch50 as a free web app, Threadsy wants to take all of your online communication and shove it into a single service. All of the messages directed at you (email and Twitter @replies, for exmaple) will be put into a single stream of message, called the “inbound” column. Meanwhile, all of the activity streams that you simply follow (Twitter, Facebook, etc), will be put into a single activity stream, the “unbound” stream. The result is one service to rule them all. → Read More
Hark, a new startup that’s launching today at TechCrunch50, is looking to help friends share media and webpages with each other with as little friction as possible. The company offers a browser plugin that makes it easy to share links with friends, as well as interact though an integrated chat room.
The company says that there are plenty of link sharing apps, but when it comes to sharing a link from a webpage, there isn’t really a good way to do it — Emailing, Twitter, and other services can be a hassle. Hark’s plugin sits at the bottom of your screen, with a handful of buttons for sharing and a chat window that slides out of the bar. When you want to flag something as interesting, you can send out a ‘flare’, which immediately sends out a small notice to the rest of your friends that have the plugin installed. → Read More
Darth Vader’s fatherly coming out. Tinanic’s King of the World moment. There Will Be Blood’s sobering lecture on milkshakes.
Whether you want to poke fun at something, embellish a love note, or just prove a point, there’s probably a movie scene out there that can help you do it. People reference scenes all the time in their daily lives, and on the web it’s not uncommon for a blogger to accentuate their post with a particularly relevant clip. But for their popularity, there still isn’t an established site that’s known as the place to find a movie clip — YouTube and Hulu are always worth a shot, but they can be very hit or miss. AnyClip, a new startup that’s launching today at TechCrunch 50, wants to be the solution, with a searchable database of movie scenes. → Read More
Conference organizer, publisher and investor Tim O’Reilly doesn’t mince words. In this video he talks candidly about what he hated at TechCrunch50 today, what he loved and what excites him about the Web right now.
O’Reilly is a consummate thought leader in the Valley so the interview is interesting for anyone. But if you’re planning on actually pitching O’Reilly on anything this is required viewing.
Oh, he also explains what he and the Cookie Monster have in common. Video is on the jump. (Sorry for the abrupt edits. Trying to keep these interviews on the short-side.) → Read More
One of the best things about the web — its constantly evolving, easily modifiable nature — can also be one of its most frustrating faults. Because usually when a website modifies its content, any changes overwrite what came before it, sometimes without leaving a trace of the old content. Perpetually.com, a new site launching today at TechCrunch50, is looking to solve this problem by offering companies a way to easily back up their sites.
The company says that every year, 5-8% of ‘bookmarked’ content vanishes from the web as pages are modified and removed. Perpetually helps solve this problem by recording a history of every change on your site. And Perpetually doesn’t just keep a copy of this content in an ugly search engine archive — you can actually view the content in context, as it originally appeared on the site. → Read More
Twitter has established itself as the best place to find real time information, but anyone who has tried using its native search engine at search.twitter.com has probably found that it leaves a lot to be desired — aside from the day’s ‘top trends’, Twitter does very little to help surface results that are worthwhile. TC50 finalist Instattant may have the answer. The startup has built a new engine for monitoring real-time news, that can also be leveraged to track brands, ad campaigns, and basically everything else that pops up on Twitter.
The site features an analytics platform that can perform semantic analysis on Tweets as they come in — in other words, it can tell what a tweet is talking about, and if it has a positive or negative sentiment. The site can also identify links and media that are rapidly rising in popularity, and displays headlines in real-time as they come in. For Tweets with media, the site allows users to view photos and play videos inline. → Read More
By now TechCrunch50 judges and companies know there’s no safety zone here at the conference, least of all backstage. The smart ones just run, but Google’s Bradley Horowitz is too polite for that. In this behind-the-scenes clip we talk about what exactly this Internet man of mystery does at Google, his thoughts on the cultural difference between Google and Yahoo, and how big companies can still innovate. (I’m still dubious on that one.)
We also talk about Affective Interfaces, a TC50 company that got mixed reviews from the judges this morning, but one of Horowitz’s favorites of the day.
Clip on the jump. → Read More
I chatted with Kevin Rose backstage in between TechCrunch50 judging. For those who think he’s still the wacky Diggnation party boy, I want to point out he beat most of the TechCrunch staff to the conference this morning.
This video is longer than most of our behind-the-scenes glimpses, but we covered a lot of territory. Rose tells us the single most important product move Digg has made in the last year, whether his company is worried about the Twitter threat, what’s coming next for Digg, his favorite company that launched today (HINT: CitySourced founders may have a potential angel investor), and whether or not starting Pownce was a mistake.
Video is on the jump. → Read More
The online medical records space is growing fast; with Microsoft, Google and others trying their hand at products that could eventually become the go-to platform for accessing health records online. TechCrunch50 startup Glide Health, which was spun off from Transmedia, is hoping to give these tech giants a run for their money with its web, desktop and mobile apps that provide a centralized repository for patient records. Glide Health’s web and desktop apps hold patient profiles (which can be created by the patient or doctor) that contain pertinent medical information such as insurance information, family medical history, doctors, past test results, past surgeries and procedures, x-rays and more.
This browser app is based on the same synchronization engine that powers Glide’s previously launched collaboration OS software; however, this product has been specifically designed for the healthcare space. Today, Glide Health is launching an application for patients, doctors and healthcare professionals to access and manage healthcare from their desktops or mobile phones. All the data syncs no matter where it is updated across legacy patient management systems and databases. → Read More
