Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis kick off the event announcing that 1/3rd of the companies presenting are not funded having received less than 500K thus far.
A short history of Tech Crunch 40 was provided starting with the two organizers meeting through participation on the Gilmor Gang podcast. In a discussion of the Demo Conference, the issue of startups paying thousands of dollars to be on stage along with Steve Gillmor’s encouragement for Mike delivering a conference the two came together to launch Tech Crunch 40.
Judges will assess the companies and award a $50,000 cash prize at the end of the conference. One slot has been left open for the selection of a company by the TC 40 audience. Poker chips were handed out at registration and are to be given to one’s favorite company presenting in the Demo Pit. The Demo Pit company with the most chips at noon tomorrow will be the last presenter tomorrow and eligible for the grand prize.
I’m happy to report that there are a number of excellent mobile companies here both on stage and in the Demo Pit. You’ll know you’ll here more about them all this week.
First company on stage is Powerset Labs. Stay tuned for more from TC 40.
The second annual TechCrunch conference, TechCrunch50, is set to debut 52 startups next week in San Francisco. Along with the startups, TechCrunch has planned an amazing line up speakers from Silicon Valleyand Hollywood. The conference is content rich with the schedule for each of the three days, September 8 -10, running from 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM.The schedule for TechCrunch50 has just been released today and the details are availableI attended and covered TechCrunch40 last year and it was an outstanding 1st time conference with interesting companies on stage and in the demo pit. This year will be even bigger and better. The Demo Pit allows companies already launched or who didn’t make the cut for stage appearance during TechCrunch50 to demonstrate their products. A new addition this year is the Exhibit Hall. TechCrunch50 Exhibit Hall will feature 23 early stage companies and will be located in the West Hall of the venue at The San Francisco Design Center Concourse.MobileJones coverage of TechCrunch50 will include a collection of feeds from Twitter, Qik and Flickr by those attending the conference. MobileJones will, also, feature video streaming powered by Mogulus and Qik. If you are attending TechCrunch50 and would like to be added to our feed of feeds, send an email to mojo _at_ mobilejones dot com. The TechCrunch50 site for MobileJones will be launched tomorrow morning and the site plus the streaming video next week are sponsored by Mogulus, Cradlepoint, Qik, Winksite and Windows Mobile.
Intersecting with TechCrunch50 is CTIA FAll in San Francisco September 10 – 12. Some of the special events around CTIA are on the schedule for mobilejones. Showstoppers which hosts invitation only events at both CTIA and CES along with MobileFocus produced by Pepcom always offer great demos of the newest devices, applications and technologies.Are you attending CTIA next week? Then check outEric Chan’s CTIA Party List to fill your social calendar.To get ready for the coverage of TechCrunch50 next week check back here tomorrow for the preview of TC50 @ mobilejones.com. The URL will launch at http://tc50.mobilejones.com during the day tomorrow. The link will be live when the site is live.