I am very excited to announce a new conference, called the TechCrunch20. This is a joint venture between us (TechCrunch) and Jason Calacanis, whobroke the news about this 
earlier today. The format is simple: Twenty of the hottest new startups will announce and demo their products over a two day period. And they don’t pay a cent to do this. They will be selected to participate based on merit alone.
Many tech conferences today allow startups to pitch and demo their products to their attendees, although there is almost always a hefty fee involved that ranges from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. DEMO, where I am currently, is probably the quintessential example of this model. The entire conference is paid startup demos. There are way too many to digest—60—and it is a well known secret that if you are willing to pay the $15,000+ fee, your startup will really need to suck to be turned down.
While conferences like DEMO are extremely lucrative for the organizers, I’m not sure the startups or attendees attending get much out of it other than a great networking event. There are too many startups for press to give even passing coverage to many of them, and attendees are lost in a sea of pitches that all begin to blur together.
And there is a serious conflict of interest at the conference level. The economics of the event dictate that a certain number of startups must be accepted for a certain fee. Attendees don’t know if they’re really seeing the best startups, or just the best startups that are willing to pay the exorbitant participation fee. A few (or a lot of) duds always make their way in.
Many of the hottest startups over the past couple of years—Digg, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many others—didn’t have the money in the early days to spend on DEMO and other conferences, and so they didn’t participate. We want to give the future YouTube’s a platform to announce those products.
The TechCrunch20 Conference
Jason and I are going to do something a lot different than the pay-to-demo model. The TechCrunch20 conference will be a two day event, held this fall (more details soon), where twenty hot startups will demo their new products—and they don’t pay a dime to do this.
The startups will be invited based on the recommendation of a committee of expert analysts, entrepreneurs and journalists. Twenty companies will be invited, plus a couple of alternates. If a selected startup isn’t ready to launch ten days or so before the event, they’ll be bumped and one of the alternates will take its place.
Jason is the perfect partner for us to work with on this conference. He’s a successful entrepreneur and has held large startup-focused conferences in the past. It is our hope that his experience and our access to new startups will be a winning combination.
More details on the TechCrunch20 conference will be announced soon.
and the follow up post when the website launched!
The official TechCrunch20 Conference website is live and has officially launched, and we are now taking company submissions and attendee registrations. The dedicated TechCrunch20 blog is published at techcrunch20.com/blog. GigaOm was the first to write about this, followed by Jessica Guynn at the San Francisco Chronicle.
Jason Calacanis and I first announced the conference in late January.
More today from our partner Jason Calacanis here. Our first sponsor is Sequoia Capital.
We’ve now finalized the dates (September 17-18, 2007) and the location (the Palace Hotel in San Francisco).
The format of TechCrunch20 is simple: Twenty of the hottest new startups will announce and demo their products over a two day period. And they don’t pay a cent to do this. They will be selected to participate based on merit alone.
We are also assembling an amazing group of twenty experts to assist us with the conference. These experts will help recommend the final startups to present at TechCrunch20. And they will also participate at the conference – they’ll watch company presentations and discuss the merits of each with robust audience participation.
Confirmed industry experts include Marc Andreessen (Co-founder, Ning), Chris Anderson (Editor-In-Chief, Wired Magazine), Roelof Botha (Partner, Sequoia Capital), Mark Cuban (Founder, HDNet), Om Malik (Founder, GigaOm), Robert Scoble (Scobleizer and Podtech), and Dave Winer (Scripting News).
See you there!
Update: Additional coverage of the event:
Dave Winer
John Furrier
Nik Cubrilovic
Vecosys
Frank Gruber
Rex Dixon
Dave McClure
Startup Meme
CenterNetworks
Jason Calacanis
Outside the Valley
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