Last Tuesday, 30 startup’s competed to win the judges’ and audience’s votes at the Web 2.0 Expo’s Startup Showcase. To theme, these companies featured both mobile and traditional “Web 2.0” technologies, at various product stages -- from barely-launched (3 weeks ago!) bootstrappers to those already established by venture funding.
Held in the mezzanine space on the Moscone West’s keynote floor, a teeming milieu of conference attendees crowded from one startup’s cocktail table to the next, to discover each of these various technologies. An attempt at one-line summaries for each goes like this:
- blaze.io – website performance analyzer as a service
- BugHerd – debug system with integrated firebug-style website frontend annotations
- CannedBanners – banner-ad creation platform
- CrowdSauce – hyperlocal deals and rewards via crowd-demand and check-in’s
- DemDash – a facebook-like system for political issues and campaigns
- FlixLab – turn pictures and videos on the iPhone into movies
- Giggo – Groupon for the Latino scene
- Give2Gether – fundraising campaign platform
- Gopollgo – platform for creating, voting on and sharing polls
- Gulu – social dining app
- ifeelgoods – promo platform via virtual goods
- keepsy – create a photo album online with friends and then print it
- lovewithfood – food-only groupon with food donations
- Moglue – Interactive storybook creation
- Noosbox – meta-organizer for enterprise gmail
- PlaceHero – social media marketing service for local stores
- Project Noah – exploration-based crowdsourced database of wildlife
- Real Life Plus – virtual entertainment space
- room77 – on-demand microlocal details about your hotel room
- Scribblebee.com – scribble-based learning
- SocMetrics – connect companies with metrics-based influencers
- Sparkbuy – features-based consumer electronics search engine
- SpeakerText – video transcription as a service
- Tello – app to rate customer service
- The Email Game – a game for sorting through email
- Transit Treasure – loyalty rewards for using public transit
- Tripping – a social network for travellers
- WeMakeItSafer – crowdsourced product recall and product checking service
- WebMynd – browser add-on developer tools
- Zite, Inc. – personalized iPad magazine
The range above includes specialization of existing successful business models, such as Giggo, lovewithfood, SparkBuy and TransitTreasure -- to those that capitalize on an untapped resource of crowdsource data and customers, such as CrowdSauce and WeMakeItSafer -- to those that provide a fresh, new value, to the general population beyond the Web 2.0 crowd, such as Room77 and DemDash. Also included are startup’s tailoring to more technical crowds, such as developers (bugherd and blaze.io) and browser-app creators (WebMynd).
Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Robert Scoble of Rackspace served as judges. The judges chose ifeelgoods and Keepsy as the winners. With votes tallied live by SMS messages to MOZES, Room77 received the most votes from the audience.
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