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I completely agree with your analysis. That said, this comment and your blog post seem to have avoided (probably unintentionally!) the two questions that seem

I completely agree with your analysis. That said, this comment and your blog post seem to have avoided (probably unintentionally!) the two questions that seem to me to be most salient. 1. If you ranked the startups in attendance, do you think a 50th percentile startup would have gotten something useful out of Disrupt? A 90th percentile startup? (If so, in softer benefits like pulling together as a team or in something measurable?) 2. Do you think your traffic numbers for Trello would have looked substantially different on launch day without Disrupt? In 6 months? In the first case, I wonder if there really are unfunded, 90th percentile tech startups that represent some sort of Cinderella story that just need the spotlight to get funding and attention. In your case, I wonder if 6 minutes on stage compares to a decade of organic SEO and trust (via your blog), running the most popular programming Q&A site, and cross-promotion opportunities from FogBugz, Kiln, Copilot, and others.

david927 15y ago
Can you imagine Larry and Sergei taking PageRank to something like TC Disrupt? They would just get rolled eyes. 6 minutes on stage would have done nothing. So, not only do I think it's possible; I think it's the rule for strongly disruptive technologies.
- suking 15y ago
  Considering the companies that have won - I have little faith in whomever picks them to go on stage. qwiki (dead on arrival wikipedia reader) and shaker (virtual world with social graph, wow). Give me a break, not disruptive at all.
- akmiller 15y ago
  I disagree. Larry and Sergei wouldn't have been on stage demonstrating PageRank. They would've been on stage demonstrating a brand new search engine that returns much more relevant results faster than anything out there. That would've been exciting and held people's attention. PageRank was simply the technology that helped power it. Therefore, I think the moral is, know your audience. If Larry and Sergei were to demo to others in Computer Science they may focus on PageRank and the technology around it. If presenting to news outlets and VC's you'd better find a way to show the power of your technology in a way that they can comprehend the value of that piece of tech.
  - iqster 15y ago
    For a case in point, consider CloudFlare. They made it to the final round in SF last year. Who is to say it is similar to PageRank, but when I heard what they did I instantly thought ... wow ... a company that does deep tech and has already implemented their infrastructure ... this is going to kick everyone's behind. I was shocked that the panel of judges didn't get it. What makes it worse is that cloudflare lost to Qwiki! After I thought about this for a while, I concluded that perhaps that panel of judges wasn't equipped to evaluate a deep technology company.

david927 15y ago

Can you imagine Larry and Sergei taking PageRank to something like TC Disrupt? They would just get rolled eyes. 6 minutes on stage would have done nothing. So, not only do I think it's possible; I think it's the rule for strongly disruptive technologies.

suking 15y ago
Considering the companies that have won - I have little faith in whomever picks them to go on stage. qwiki (dead on arrival wikipedia reader) and shaker (virtual world with social graph, wow). Give me a break, not disruptive at all.
akmiller 15y ago
I disagree. Larry and Sergei wouldn't have been on stage demonstrating PageRank. They would've been on stage demonstrating a brand new search engine that returns much more relevant results faster than anything out there. That would've been exciting and held people's attention. PageRank was simply the technology that helped power it. Therefore, I think the moral is, know your audience. If Larry and Sergei were to demo to others in Computer Science they may focus on PageRank and the technology around it. If presenting to news outlets and VC's you'd better find a way to show the power of your technology in a way that they can comprehend the value of that piece of tech.
- iqster 15y ago
  For a case in point, consider CloudFlare. They made it to the final round in SF last year. Who is to say it is similar to PageRank, but when I heard what they did I instantly thought ... wow ... a company that does deep tech and has already implemented their infrastructure ... this is going to kick everyone's behind. I was shocked that the panel of judges didn't get it. What makes it worse is that cloudflare lost to Qwiki! After I thought about this for a while, I concluded that perhaps that panel of judges wasn't equipped to evaluate a deep technology company.