TechCrunch50 vs DEMOFall08, what about the startups?
Ever since Mike Arrington of Tech Crunch and Jason Calcanis of Mahalo announced that TechCrunch50 would be going head to head with DEMOFall08, blogs have been running periodic stories comparing the two startup conferences and speculating on how the contest would play out for the conferences. My question has always been how it would affect the startups, however. Would the head-on conference collision give them more exposure or siphon off exposure they need to have a real chance at success?
TechCrunch50 offered the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. With Ashton Kutcher opening the conference, the buzz was high that it would be a grand event. Even so, the startups featured got mostly lackluster response from the people reporting on the conference. The winner of TechCrunch50 is a corporate microblogging (or microsharing, as some prefer) service called Yammer. Yammer allows companies to have a completely private way to microblog within the company. It is like taking the direct message feature of Twitter and tying it to a corporate email structure to limit access and ensure privacy. Neat, but not much “wow” for me.
DEMOFall08 is Chris Shipley’s startup conference, and it has been going on for a decade of successful (and not so successful) startup launches. DEMO definitely has more startups (72, as compared to TechCrunch50’s, well, 50), but what does that matter? We won’t know who won the DEMOGod award until later tonight (I’l come back and update this post then). With 72 startups each with a mere 6 minutes to present their case, you might wonder how they get seen or heard. DEMO does a great job of breaking them into categories and getting the word out about them early and often – it helps their startups with their first hurdle – a conference launch.
The biggest difference between TechCrunch50 and DEMOFall08 is how the startups are nurtured. Both before and after the conference, the folks at DEMO invest a bit of themselves in making their fledgling startups form the conference have a better chance at success. Sure, it costs money to be in DEMO, but there is more payoff. TechCrunch50 launches their startups like tossing them of a cliff and hoping they fly. It might work for a few, but there is definitely no touchy-feely alumni association nonsense in Arrington’s corner. Some argue that a great startup doesn’t need the help of nurturing and promotion. If that’s true, why did the winner of TechCrunch50 need so much verbal prodding from the announcer to get votes?
It’s a toss up for me whether the mostly free TechCrunch50 (there is a cost for those losing the entry battle to get in on the Demo Pit to have a chance at catching spillover attention from the main 50) or the vastly more expensive DEMO produce better startups. So far the few startups I’ve been intrigued by have come out of DEMO, but I’m still reviewing and evaluating – at a grand total of 122 startups between the two conferences, it’s a lot for the social media and technology writer and early adopter to take in. I’d be interested to here what you thought had the most impact in the comments.
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