After watching SAP CEO Bill McDermott, HP CTO Phil McKinney, and Square Co-founder Jack Dorsey give their conference spiel today, I took a stroll into the DEMO pit in order to find the seven best startups at DEMO.
While the presentation junkets split all 67 worthy startups into Mobile Technologies, Cloud Technologies, Consumer and Social and Media Technologies, I’ve culled the seven that caught my eye (and ear) and presented them here in no particular order: → Read More
Things are changing at DEMO, the startup and product-launch conference owned by IDG that competes with our own TechCrunch50 conference. After 13 years, conference organizer Chris Shipley will make way for Matt Marshall, editor of VentureBeat. The two will co-produce DEMO as Marshall gets up to speed, then he will take over. Marshall says he will focus on “injecting deeper themes” into DEMO.
DEMO could certainly use the new blood. And VentureBeat could use the extra cash that the deal will bring it. (VentureBeat will share in the profits of the conference). But Marshall is going to have to do a lot more than appeal to the chin-strokers in the audience. He is going to have to reinvigorate a dying brand. It is not so much about the themes of the conference as it is who goes to them. → Read More
Today and tomorrow I am going totally mobile. And if you are in the Bay Area, so should you. It’s not too late to get tickets for MobileBeat, VentureBeat’s mobile conference that goes all day today. You can get a 10 percent discount on tickets by using using this code: TCMB08. I will be there moderating a panel with Rich Miner (Google’s group manager of wireless), Matt Murphy (the Kleiner Perkins Partner who runs the iFund), Sam Altman (CEO of Loopt), and J.H. Kah (SK Telecom’s SVP of Business Development). We’ll be exploring all the big platform shifts going on in mobile right now with the iPhone and the coming Android phones. I will be continuing that discussion at our own Mobile Web Wars Roundtable tomorrow, which will be a live-streamed discussion. But that’s sold out (the venue only holds 150 people). MobileBeat is much larger and you can still get tickets. Here is the complete list of who is speaking: Rich Miner, Android/Google, Group Manager, Wireless Programs Matt Murphy, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers, Partner Ross Levinsohn, Velocity Interactive Group, Partner Mike Baker, Nokia Interactive, Vice President Jeff Sellinger, CBS Mobile, EVP & General Manager John Smelzer, FOX Interactive Media, SVP & General Manager Michael Bayle, Yahoo!, General Manager of Global Monetization Sumit Agarwal, Google, Product Manager, Mobile J.H. Kah, SK Telecom, SVP, Business Development Rick Segal, JLA Ventures, Co-Manager of Blackberry Partners Fund Steve Hegenderfer, Microsoft, Group Manager, Windows Mobile Brandon Lucas, MySpace, Sr. Director, Mobile Jed Stremel, Facebook, Director of Mobile Sandi Isaacs, Paramount Pictures, Sr. Vice President Interactive & Mobile Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, Co-Editor Dan Farber, CNET, Editor-in-Chief Om Malik, GigaOmni Media, Founder Sam Altman, Loopt, CEO & co-Founder Omar Hamoui, Admob, Founder & CEO Jason Devitt, Skydeck, Founder and CEO Richard Wong, Accel Partners, Partner Jeff Brody, Redpoint Ventures, Founding Partner Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners, Principal Shawn Carolan, Menlo Ventures, Managing Director Lars Kamp, Accenture, Head of Wireless Practice Gregory Gorman, Tertius, Founder Matthew Fix, Vodafone Ventures, Principal Satya Mallya, Orange Telecom, Director at Orange Labs Dr. Richard Koo, Augmentum, SVP of Augmentation Services Mike Rowehl, Skyfire → Read More
Venture focused blog VentureBeat has taken a seed round of $320,000. Investors include Georges Harik and Aydin Senkut (both ex-Google); Mike Brown, Philippe Cases, MHS Capital, Amidzad and White Sand Group among others. VentureBeat joins GigaOm, who’ve raised two rounds, in the “funded blog network” category. VentureBeat was founded in 2006 by ex-San Jose Mercury News writer Matt Marshall and has as its goal “to provide insider news and data about the entrepreneurial and venture community that is useful to decision makers.” Marshall said that the money would be used to take the site to the next stage, and will also presumably be used to pay Dean Takahashi’s salary, a new high profile signing for VentureBeat announced last week. CrunchBase Information VentureBeat Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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