Prediction market startup Hubdub is running a market on which of the 50 companies launching at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco will win. Although Hubdub is based in Scotland, they are actually a news prediction market aimed largely at the US. In fact, CEO Nigel Eccles recently wrote a great guest post on how to aim your startup at the US, without leaving Europe.
At the moment, Adgregate Markets and Akoha are the top two in the lead, but the market keeps changing minute by minute. I asked Eccles if the startups could “game” their lead. He said: “I’ve been watching the Twitter wires and a few have been sending it out to their followers. OtherInbox and Akoha appear to have built heavy support… Even then our big market makers bring the prices back in line pretty quickly. I think it is clear that Adgregate, Yammer and OtherInbox should be in the top five given what is being said on blogs and Twitter.”
One of the TechCrunch 50 will win the $50,000 Best in Show prize. You can see all the companies and their ideas here. Meanwhile I and the rest of the TechCrunch team are providing live updates here.
