I was fortunate this year to attend the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco. It was a little bit of an odd fit for me because GeekStack isn’t ready to demo, so we weren’t presenting, and in current investment circles, you need not only a proof of concept project but also some market traction in order to get serious interest from investors, so I didn’t pitch much either. I just used the conference as an opportunity to meet people, network, have fun, and see some new tech companies. The whole conference was kind of up and down for me, so I’ll put the highlights in a non-chronological, roller coaster format.

GOOD: My GeekStack t-shirt was ready and shipped in time and it looked great!

BAD: My sample card/business cards did not get shipped to my house in time for me to bring them with.

GOOD: Debbie at the 24 hour FedEx Office location on Blossom Hill Rd in San Jose helped me print some improvised cards on glossy cardstock and cut them to size. They didn’t look as sharp as I hoped (the sides weren’t aligned right so I got some funky borders) but they were in my hand and not so expensive and they were a hit with the people I gave them to.

BAD: The Japanese guy who parked next to me couldn’t figure out how to get his demo materials out of the trunk (he had a valet key)

GOOD: I showed him how to fold down the back seats and his morning was saved.

BAD: There was little to no AC in the convention hall and 500 people + 499 laptops quickly made the room uncomfortable and thus began 2 straight days of wiping sweat from my face every 5 minutes.

GOOD: Some of the companies were really awesome!

BAD: My eyes glazed over every time someone started talking about advertising or social media (that was a lot).

GOOD: Lots of people think adding game-like features (leaderboards, levelups, scoring, etc) is a good way to motivate people to use their apps.

BAD: This will get overused and people will get sick of it. Do I hear “Web64” coming?

GOOD: The judges on day 1 were awesome! Yossi Vardi kept the audience laughing and kept his fellow panelists from being too stuffy in the morning, and Paul Graham asked on or two oddball questions that kept all the startups on their toes. The day 1 afternoon panel of Marissa Mayer, Roelef Botha, Marc Andreesen, Paul Graham, and Tony Hsieh was flat out impressive.

BAD: I didn’t really care for any of the day 2 judges. Partly they were boring, partly I was tired, and partly the heat sapped the enthusiasm out of everyone.

GOOD: RedBeacon did a very impressive demonstration of their product that included delivering 500 cupcakes to the audience (delicious, sweet delicious cupcakes at that).

BAD: Judges kind of skewered them because while they did an effective demonstration, they didn’t answer the key “chicken and egg” problem they faced. pg coined an useful rule: “If you have a chicken and egg problem, you should spend the bulk of your presentation explaining how you will deal with the chicken and egg problem.”

GOOD: The RedBeacon guys are super sharp, did have answers to the concerns the judges expressed, and ended up winning the whole kit-and-kaboodle of the TechCrunch50 prize, the $50K, and $1.3M in advertising, a ton of pub, plus the last sumtuous laugh.

BAD: iMo came out with a high energy demo, dressed in a racing suit and helmet with “Eye of the Tiger” blasting . . . and he had a tech glitch so his demo didn’t work. Despite vigorous applause and encouragement from the crowd, led by Yossi Vardi, he couldn’t get it working in time and they had to move on. Keep in mind that this is a 20 year old kid who came from India by himself. It was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve seen in a long time – it was like watching a basketfull of kittens get fired from their kitty jobs and evicted from their basket.

GOOD: iMo returned in the afternoon to thunderous applause and demoed his iPhone app that lets you use the iPhone as a controller for PC games. He used it as a steering wheel for a racing game (in red racing suit and helmet to “Eye of the Tiger”, a joystick to control a flight sim (in a flight suit to “Danger Zone”, and to control a thug shooting up a house and throwing a grenade (in baggy jeans, a tank top, and swinging a baseball bat at a Sequoia VC to the tune of “In Da Club”). He brought the house down, and even though the judges didn’t think there was much of a business, they were all intrigued because he was so gutsy to fail, come back on, light up the crowd, and electrify the whole audience. He ended up winning the Best Presentation award.

BAD: Did I mention it was hot? I tried really hard to care about what was going on the second day but I couldn’t sit in the main hall for more than 30 min at a time.

GOOD: I got to meet people in the exhibition space, played with a MSFT Surface table, played Beatles Rock Band (but the yellow drum pad didn’t work so I kept losing) and found some more of RedBeacon’s cupcakes.

BAD: I didn’t win the free iPod that SalesVu was raffling off, but I did get to see the SalesVu demo – Point of Sale Software as a Service. I probably didn’t get all of the finer details, but it’s a point of sale terminal and app for restaurants for $1K instead of $10K it usually costs.

GOOD: Lots of people gave encouraging words about GeekStack and a couple of people wanted me to get back in touch with them when we have a demo.

BAD: I found out about Challenge Games, a Sequoia-funded company with $15 million and a team of cagy internet gaming veterans. Their CEO wrote the first book on online gaming communities. He wrote the freaking book. This knowledge put me into a little bit of a tailspin because my whole “no one else is doing trading card games online” myth went up in a FAT pile of smoke. Challenge looks awesome and I felt like the fat kid with no date to prom after looking at their site.

GOOD: I had a nice alcohol-fueled chat with some cool guys from Spawn Labs during the cocktail party who thought GeekStack was AWESOME and that I should be glad that Sequoia funded someone, because Sequoia investments tend to precede huge success. What better kind of validation could you ask for? This especially meant a lot because they had an awesome demo themselves.

BAD: I had to leave early to walk to catch BART to SFO.

GOOD: I found a group of guys driving to the airport, and one of them lived in the dorms with me in my freshment year of college. Hadn’t seen each other in 12 years and we met in the TechCrunch parking lot.

BAD: The fast ride to the airport meant that I had over two hours to wait for my red-eye flight.

GOOD: I had time to write this report of a great trip! Thanks to everyone at TechCrunch50!!

Summary of thoughts on the startups:

Ones I’m most excited about as a consumer: AnyClip (find any clip from any movie), Clicker (the ultimate guide to TV on the internet), Spawn Labs (play console games one any PC over broadband), iTwin (plug and play folder sharing over the internet – like DropBox but with a dongle instead of a download) and StorySomething (personalized bedtime stories delivered daily to iPhone).

Interested in as a business customer: Yext (pay-per-useful-call), CrowdFlower (Like the RightScale of Mechanical Turk).

Most likely to be an enormous, economy-changing company: RedBeacon. The judges nailed it with this pick. There’s a lot of work ahead and the usual ways to stumble and fail, but they could be as big as the Yellow Pages mixed with eBay. And as I mentioned, the guys couldn’t be nicer or sharper. In 10 years I’ll be saying I knew them when they were just starting out.