Well this was inevitable I guess. mEgo has been booted out of the DEMO conference. The reason? They showed their stuff at TechCrunch40 last week. Our coverage of them is here.
That’s a bit rough on the company, since many of the presenting startups at DEMO are already launched and have tons of press out there about them. In this case, mEgo may have simply been the sacrificial lamb in DEMO’s desire to prove a point.
The worst part about the whole ordeal is that mEgo has been told they won’t get the $18,000 back that they paid to participate in DEMO. mEgo says that while DEMO has the right to kick them out of the conference, they don’t have the right to keep the $18k under the contract.
Frankly, this is probably good news for mEgo, who’ll now get far more attention than they would have if they had actually gotten on stage. But it’s also a warning to other startups: Don’t screw with DEMO – they hit back.
Just an aside – mEgo was one of my personal favorites at TechCrunch40. Make sure to check out the service.