Reflections on TechCrunch40, Part I
TechCrunch has entered the fold of must-attend confabs with its inaugural TechCrunch 20, err 40, held last week at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. As a newbie to the Bay Area, it was a quick study on the state of ideas and venture capital in Silicon Valley and globally. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head of it being a DECA competition for grown-ups and, as such, could have stuck to 20 companies. It was a lot like a web conference in 1999 or early-2000 — enthusiasm, opportunity and capital abounds. The questions I kept asking (both skeptically and optimistically) were:
How is this company going to get customers?
How will this company make money?
Is this company creating a need?
Why that name?
In thinking about the presenters, here are some thoughts around those questions.
Cubic Telecom will get customers because it’s a practical service — free international phone calls for the business traveler. The management team was smart, polished and experienced. If you ever travel out of the country, watch for the launch of Cubic Telecom later this fall.
CastTV and Mint are two different examples of companies that seem poised to make money fast. CastTV has impeccable search for video and will likely get acquired. That’s one way to do it. Create a service that outperforms any other and complements an existing company’s service and, voila, a couple hundred million (or more) could be yours.
On the other hand, Mint has a very smart, sustainable model that, most importantly, provides access to customers that advertisers want and has an excellent value proposition for its users — control your finances. I can aggregate all of my bank accounts and track spending, performance, payments and more with Mint. If I can get a better rate on a credit card than the one I’m using, Mint will tell me and direct me to the offer. This is the most basic example and one that shows you why the site is a win for user and vendor. Mint won the TechCrunch40 grand prize, so while I’m front running, it got my attention and had me logging on as a user by the end of its six-minute presentation
ZocDoc was another company with an idea that solves a problem I have: finding a medical provider. Around this problem, however, they’ve built a rating system and have gone deeper into the doctor’s profile than I find online with Blue Cross Blue Shield, for example.
The question I kept asking was, why can’t I just do this on Yelp, where hundreds of doctors are getting rated now? The only incremental value I could see was that it linked to a list of insurance providers and could tell me if that doctor took my insurance. But isn’t this something that I can cross-reference on Yelp in a five minute phone call?
Speed was also an issue with ZocDoc. It allows you to see who has appointments available that day so you can get right in with that nasty case of poison oak or a cracked tooth, but I wonder if the doctors will keep their scheduling info up to date? What I did like a lot was CEO Cyrus Massoumi’s vision and conviction about solving this problem.
Look for more TechCrunch reflections soon…
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