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I could not disagree more. "Attendees looking to invest in new companies probably like DEMO because the presenters are convinced enough they have a great produ

by aberman 17y ago

I could not disagree more. "Attendees looking to invest in new companies probably like DEMO because the presenters are convinced enough they have a great product that they'll come up with the funds to go there." Or they are desperate enough to pay $20,000 for some attention from the tech blogs and one month of hype with the VCs. All those online networks with "over X many angels and VC's" prey on the same kind of startups. Pay to pitch some angel network. "At TechCrunch50, investors can see a different sort of startup. One who has a lot of potential, but may not have had the drive/opportunity to gather any real money in the first place." Empirically incorrect. A lot of them have raised quite a bit of money before TC50. "From a purely investment risk perspective, companies that are already finding capital with a good idea and a good demo have more going for them than startups that merely have an idea and a good demo." True. But if your first two premises are wrong, this one is moot. Definitely appreciate the playing devil's advocate -- this is not a personal attack.

thorax 17y ago
> Empirically incorrect. A lot of them have raised quite a bit of money before TC50. You can't say that statement is incorrect (and be right) as the devil's advocate said "may not have had the drive". The argument wasn't that TC50 companies have no investment, but that DEMO companies must have investment. In other words, with DEMO you're assured that the companies had, at some point, $20k (and probably more if they can survive with paying a $20k fee). With TechCrunch50, the company only had to impress some judges with sweat and there was no guaranteed monetary bar they had to meet (though many do have money, of course). So there's a guaranteed filter applied to every single presenter at a DEMO conference that the company had enough money to afford it-- which might be a filter that some larger scale investments/partners would prefer to be assured of to strip out most (if not all) solely bootstrapped companies that might not be companies they prefer in their portfolios.

by aberman 17y ago

thorax 17y ago

> Empirically incorrect. A lot of them have raised quite a bit of money before TC50. You can't say that statement is incorrect (and be right) as the devil's advocate said "may not have had the drive". The argument wasn't that TC50 companies have no investment, but that DEMO companies must have investment. In other words, with DEMO you're assured that the companies had, at some point, $20k (and probably more if they can survive with paying a $20k fee). With TechCrunch50, the company only had to impress some judges with sweat and there was no guaranteed monetary bar they had to meet (though many do have money, of course). So there's a guaranteed filter applied to every single presenter at a DEMO conference that the company had enough money to afford it-- which might be a filter that some larger scale investments/partners would prefer to be assured of to strip out most (if not all) solely bootstrapped companies that might not be companies they prefer in their portfolios.