The latest from TechCrunch
- Countdown To TechCrunch50, And Some Advice From Veterans
- Social Media Guide to #TC50
- Shutterfly Buys Tiny Pictures For A Tiny Price
- Five Startups Present At Capital Factory's Demo Day In Austin
| Countdown To TechCrunch50, And Some Advice From Veterans | Top |
| It’s less than a day before the third annual (and third sold out) TechCrunch50 launch event in San Francisco. Fifty startups are preparing to launch their new products on stage in front of thousands of people. Are they nervous? Yep. But its all part of a rite of passage into the wonderfully chaotic world of being a startup entrepreneur. A bunch of good articles giving advice to launching startups have been posted over the last couple of days. We’re linking to them here, because when CNET and others look back at TechCrunch50 2009 and sort the winners from the losers, you want to be on that winners list. So take the advice of these grizzled veterans seriously. And then ignore most of it and forge your own path, like all good entrepreneurs do anyway: 22 Tips on How to Operate a Trade Show Booth : Jason Calacanis gives solid, useful advice on how to run your TechCrunch50 (or any conference) booth. An Open Letter To All TechCrunch50 2009 Startups: The TC "Bump", What It Really Means & How To Navigate It : Sean Power with Alistair Croll talk about their experience of launching Akoha at TechCrunch50 2008, and how to make the most out of the traffic and attention you’ll receive. Good advice: “Being Talked About Is Nothing. Being Remembered Is Everything.” Don't drink your own Kool-Aid (surviving TC50) : Mark Suster says not to get too into the hype and attention you’ll receive right around the conference. Memorialize it, but don’t believe too much of the hype. Use all that attention to build a sustainable business. See you all tomorrow! Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
| Social Media Guide to #TC50 | Top |
| With TechCrunch50 less than 24 hours away, and already the reviews and advice to startups are coming hot and heavy . For all of you who want to know how to keep on top of the latest Tweets, posts photos, and news from the conference, just remember one thing: #tc50. That is the hashtag we are encouraging people to use for all TC50-related posts, photos, videos, etc. The more people who use that, the easier it will be for others to find Techcrunch50 related content. You can also use the hashtag #techcrunch50, but that’s a whole eight characters longer. Here are some examples of how you can use these hashtags to connect with fellow attendees and folks on the web. Twitter: #techcrunch50 or #tc50 FriendFeed: #techcrunch50 or #tc50 Flickr: techcrunch50 or tc50 And for those social location fans, we’ve even made a venue for TechCrunch50 on Foursquare. Who will be the mayor? Hope you see you all on Monday morning! Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
| Shutterfly Buys Tiny Pictures For A Tiny Price | Top |
| After raising a total of $11.2 million since its founding in 2005, Tiny Pictures sold to Shutterfly on Friday for $1.3 million in cash and another $1.3 million in restricted stock to employees, which has some performance triggers. If you back out the earnout, investors only got back about a tenth of what they put in. Those investors include Mohr Davidow, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and angel investors Reid Hoffman, and Joi Ito. The company’s last venture round was $7 million led by Draper Fisher in February, 2008. But Mohr Davidow, which held preferred shares, might have been the only investor to see any of those proceeds at all. Shutterfly disclosed the acquisition in an SEC filing , which only mentions Mohr Davidow as a recipient of some of the $1.3 million in cash. It also mentions that Nancy J. Schoendorf, a managing partner at Mohr Davidow, sits on the boards of both companies. Although she did not vote on the acquisition, the connection raises the question of whether or not Mohr played a role in bring the deal to Shutterfly in the first place. Tiny Pictures operates Radar , a mobile photo sharing app which never got a lot of traction beyond a core following. The service is actually pretty slick , centered around a photo commenting stream. You snap photos with your mobile phone which instantly is shared with your friends who also have the app. They can then comment on the photos. It sounds simple enough, but the app never achieved a critical mass of users. The service is focused more on sharing life moments through photos with people you actually know than creating a public photo stream. So if you don’t know anyone who uses it, there is little reason to join yourself. The friends-and-family aspect must have appealed to Shutterfly, however, which is based on exactly that type of picture sharing. It already has a rich database of people who like to share photos with one another. Radar helps them extend that to mobile phones in a social and fun way. Update : Tiny Pictures CEO John Poisson confirms that he will remain with the company at Shutterfly as VP, Tiny Pictures. He says that Mohr did not broker the deal in any way and that other preferred shareholders, including Draper, Hoffman, Ito, and himself, also saw some of the proceeds of the sale. As to what he’ll be doing at Shutterfly, he is kind of vague, but it has something to do with mobile social media, sharing photos, and self-expression. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
| Five Startups Present At Capital Factory's Demo Day In Austin | Top |
| The startup incubator model pioneered by Y Combinator is quickly spreading across the country, with programs popping up in places well outside the Silicon Valley bubble, including Colorado and South Carolina . Earlier this week Capital Factory , an incubator based out of Austin, held its first demo day where the program’s five startups presented themselves to a number of potential investors and press. The demo day also included a discussion panel with six venture capitalists, who discussed some of the things involves in building a strong startup. We’ve embedded a video of the event below, along with a description of each startup. Cubit Planning — Cubit Planning is a service that allows agencies to automate some of the more tedious and time consuming parts of writing NEPA documents — the documents that summarize how a project will impact the environment as part of the National Environmental Policy Act. The startup says that you can get “cut and paste ready” data for these reports in as little as five minutes. Famigo is a gaming company that focuses on helping bring parents and their kids together. The company will soon be releasing an iPhone version of the game ‘hot potato’, which it plans to launch in the next few weeks. In the long run, the company plans to be a platform that other developers can leverage to help make family-oriented games. For more, you can see a video interview with the company here . Hourville is a marketplace for local service providers, who can offer anything from private tutoring to haircuts and more. The site lets these service professionals create a sharable calendar so potential customers can see when they’re available, and allows customers to book online (service professionals will get Email alerts and phone calls when someone books a timeslot). PetsMD is a new resource for pet-related health information. There are plenty of sites on the web that offer guidance for taking care of your dogs and cats, but these can be inconsistent and poorly organized. PetsMD looks to offer a comprehensive and accurate database of this data, and includes reports that have been approved by the site’s “Veterinary Review Board”. There’s also a Symptom Checker where you enter in the behavior your pet is displaying to see what the problem might be (the site recommends that you still visit a vet if there appears to be something wrong). Sparefoot is a site that lets you rent out any extra storage you might have around your house — be it a shed in the backyard or a room in your house — and also gives more traditional storage facilities another marketplace to present their available space on. The site also features a site that lets users who are looking for storage to browser through the available offerings. Over the course of the last ten weeks, each startup was given “up to $20,000″, along with mentorship, PR support, server usage, and legal help, while the incubator took a 5% stake in each company. Other incubators we’ve seen recently include Y Combinator (demo day coverage here ) , fbFund (coverage here ), and DreamIT Ventures (coverage here ). Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
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