What’s a good strategy when about 1,000 developers and startups converge on one point? Throw a Techcrunch party of course. So it was with some relish that we threw an end of conference networking event for startups following the Web 2.0 Expo Europe O’Reilly / TechWeb conference in Berlin. We decided to call it LateCrunch, opened up tickets and over 300 people turned up. Result!
But, there was method to this madness. If European startups are going to weather the coming nuclear winter they are going to need eachother, for support, advice and connections. That’s a harder environment to create when the European tech scene is so spread out. So we did our best to network everyone to death – even to the point of subjecting them to an Air Guitar competition (see the evidence in the pictures and movie below – Berliners really know to to play Air Guitar! Our winner won an iPod Shuffle and we also raffled an iPod Nano). There are lots more pitctures of Facebook, such as Pavel Neuman’s Buzzboot collection.
Held in the HomeBase Lounge, LateCrunch was graciously given the status as the official Web 2.0 Expo Euro After-Party, and generously sponsored by the following companies. A huge thanks to our sponsors!
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services, providing Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), and Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Aventiv
Aventiv created NomaDesk, the world’s first virtual fileserver for nomadic businesses.
Blurb
Blurb is a creative publishing platform which enables every blogger, artist, marketer, photographer, traveler, entrepreneur and poet to create and sell their own book.
Gimahhot
Gimahhot is Amazon Marketplace with bargaining. Users can either buy at the merchants’ offer prices or they can also enter a price that they would buy the certain product for.
Plista
Plista, a user-centric personalization and recommendation network that works across multiple websites. It allows enhancing online experience by recommending more relevant content, products and advertising in real-time. It works as a widget, per API integration or browser plug-in. plista delivers on-site as well as cross-site recommendations. It allows the publishers to monetize websites, promote items and target customers individually.
Quidco
Quidco is an online shopping collective where members earn cashback on their purchases and connect with other like-minded consumers.
Rummble
Rummble makes it easier to find people and places nearby that you will like. It works anywhere – you can use it at home or on the move via your mobile.
Sun Microsystems
Exclusively for startups, the fee-free Sun Startup Essentials program offers deep discounts on industry leading systems and storage products, massively scalable Web hosting services, plus free training and technical advice. Build your business on an infrastructure that scales right along with your success. Sun Startup Essentials Programme is now expanding across Europe, if you are a startup and want to build your business to scale now, then sign up here today.
Winston & Strawn
Winston & Strawn is an international law firm with over 950 attorneys in the across the USA as well as in London, Paris, Geneva and Moscow.
zanox
zanox is a leading company for performance-based online marketing and provides a global platform for efficiently marketing products and services on the Internet. zanox offers global solutions for efficient commercialisation of products and services in the Internet for advertiser and supports publisher in achieving sales out of their traffic.
Zendesk
Zendesk provides on-demand Web 2.0 help desk solutions. Using turnkey SaaS delivery, Zendesk deploys in minutes and provides a complete support community portal that lets customers communicate directly with the internal help desk. 500 customers from all over the world already use Zendesk. Love your help desk!