Techcrunch40: Day 2 Full Transcription

Tantek Çelik was kind enough to send over his full transcription of Day 2 of TC40. You have my notes and opinions, now you can read the full transcription. And no Mr. Messina, there are no microformats on this page.

Google Docs update
- Jennifer
- now with Presentations

Q&A

Mike: What do you think of Yahoo's acquisition of Zimbra?

Jennifer: competition helps everyone, especially the users.

Jason: What keeps me in Excel is the speed, online is too laggy, are you going to fix that?

Jennifer: We are always working on improving the performance.

Shannon Clark: I have had problems with large files in Google docs.

Jennifer: limitation is 10MB per presentation.

Oliver Ryan, Fortune Magazine:  What about backuping for webapps like this? If you lose all my documents, what am I going to do?

Jennifer: No one yet has lost their documents, not even one AFAIK.  We take very good care, make copies, redundant systems etc.

Oliver: Do you envision in the future some contractual obligations, there is a .00001 probability? etc.?

Jennifer: I don't know about contractual obligations, not my area of expertise.  We do have a user agreement that people sign.  People's assetts that they put into google docs are precious and theirs and we need to enable people to get to them.

Jeremy(?):  What about version control?  if someone editing a document with me, I have no idea what they did.  Is there a plan?

Jennifer:  We've had a feature for 2 years, called revisions.  That's good feedback for me.  You can click on the revisions tab, we are literally saving your document every 10-30 seconds.  You can literally see the entire history of your document, you can revert back to an earlier version.  We need to make it more discoverable.

--- break ---

Philip Kaplan
- founder of Adbrite
introduces Spottt
similar to LinkExchange
- started in 1996
- eBay used LinkExchange, was credited with
- 1998 MSFT acquired LinkExchange for $250million
- Linkexchange.com today is dead (showed some error page)
- Tony Hsieh, co-founder Linkexchange, advisor to Spottt
- 1-for-1 swap
- one spottt per web page, above fold
- all sites reviewed for quality
- blog and MySpace compatible
- private beta, signup at Spottt.com
- demo
- enter URL
- upload your Spottt - 125x125
- put in email address, password
- title name of site
- choose category, you swap with other people in your category

Clickable
- founded in July 2006
- series A by Union Square Ventures and Pequot Ventures
- 30 FTEs headquarterd in New York
- TechCrunch40 announcements
- Jonahtan Miller joins BoD
- Partnership with Adbrite
- Public Beta launches today

GotStatus
- think of it as Google analytics but for the server side of web sites and web analytics
- demo, say i'm a small business with SugarCRM deployed
- i want to know what is going on on the back end
- when was my database backed up
- how many user accounts are being created
- how many emails are being sent out
- email traffic going in and out of SugarCRM
- status widget embedded in a WordPress blog demo

(just had first water pitcher spill just behind me to my right. )

PubMatic
- PubMatic's Auction System Maximizes Revenue for publishers
- PubMatic eCPM auction google adsense/yahoo publisher network/value click media / komli / bluelithium
- asks for password for each one to "verify account" (YIKES!), link account

ZocDoc
- Dentist and Doctor Appointments
- personal anecdote of sinus infection on plane, followed by ear drum bursting
- skit with a person tripping on stage, needing an emergency dental appointment
- US healthcare system is fundamentally broken.  ZocDoc is trying to make it simpler.

expert panel

Jason: Guy - your favorite?

Guy: Spottt was my favorite - only one I could truly understand.  It was like deja vu for me as I remember Link Exchange.  Life is all about traffic.

Jason: Esther?

Esther: Clickable.  You give them the answers that Google doesn't want them to see.  The one my heart is with though is ZocDoc.  Solves a huge problem. Big challenge is getting out there.  Have to deal with ratings fraud that all the review sites do.  I want to know the background.  If you can deal with all these problems, you've got something.  People are fleeing the United Healthcare site that you showed.

Jason: Can you talk a bit about the ratings fraud.

ZocDoc: We've looked at some of the leaders in the online ratings space, hired some of the same legal counsel.  We are committed to make sure the feedback is fair.  We are going to do that two ways:  1) if practitioner thinks feedback is unfair, we will give them an opportunity to respond.  2) if feedback is factually incorrect, we'll pull that from the site.

Jason: Who will judge facts?  You?

ZocDoc: Yes.

Guy: It would not occur to me to go to any site to pick a doctor.  I would ask the concierge at the hotel.

Esther: You're one of these rich people that stays at hotels.

Guy: If you're not a rich person or at a hotel, wouldn't you call a friend instead?

(funny moment of exchange between Jason and Guy, involving rashes, and insinuation of personal experiences with)

Esther: meta comment about Pubmatic, Spott.  The ad market is going more and more towards behavioral targetting where you're selling the audience, not just random clicks.  I would focus more on behavioral targetting.  Track people as individuals.

PKaplan: biggest growing part of our business is behavioral, but biggest part is clicks.

audience questions.

Q from panel: to ZocDoc - why can't you be a general solution for service providers?  E.g. OpenTable only solved it for restaurant reservations.

ZocDoc: Lots of complexity to the healthcare process.  We have a inhouse doctor.  I don't think a generic system would cut it.

Esther: I would not invest in something general.

Guy: I would take the opposite stance of Esther.  You have a very interesting technology.  Become a platform.  License to others.

Shannon Clark tries to interject and interrupt panelists.  Jason Calacanis asks him to please let panelists finish speaking.

Jason to Shannon: ok question, or *brief* comment please.

Shannon: OpenTable works because there is a backend piece that talks with restaurants.  Similarly ZocDoc is probably building a backend for doctors etc.  General solution is very difficult.

(singing of happy birthday for Roelof)

audience question: ZocDoc are you doing anything for mobile?

ZocDoc: thinking about for the future. many people have asked use for that.

--- break ---

expert panel on funding
- funding often comes by way of referrals
- Jeff Clavier is wearing a "mint" shirt

Jeff Clavier announcement:  after 3 yrs of investing my own money, I'm now starting a fund.  I'm announcing a $12 million seed fund.

Jay Adelson is the only expert on the panel wearing blue jeans Jason is also wearing blue jeans

Financing is not the biggest bottleneck right now in Silicon Valley, it's hiring engineers.  Money will flow, internationally, than people will.

bad stories:
Jeff: clipping nails during a meeting
....: an entrepreuner looking at their butt on a video conference (they didn't know the other side was on)
....: too many people from your team talking over each other.
....: both entrepreuners and VC need to be on time.

Jason announcement: if you are offended by nudity, you may want to skip the afternoon sessions.

--- lunch ---

(discussion of tokens)

Mike: This has been like the Jason show so far.

Mike: introduces experts, the guy at Yahoo that bought Zimbra, MC Hammer, Sarah Lacy, Loïc Lemeur, Caterina Fake

company presentations again

Extreme Reality
- pseudo-minority-report, UI.

BroadClip
- cheesy voiceover with SW theme music in background
- MediaCatcher for FaceBook
- played "Suspicious Minds" (an apropos clip)

Jason: Ok, times up.  You're done.  It wasn't a press play on the VHS thing when I saw it.

mEgo - created to save the pain of filling out the same profile information over and over on all your social network profile information and then having to update it all when it changes mEgos are personal, portable profiles.  An avatar that takes and organizes
all your personal feeds and information.  An avatar with utility.
- because it is vector based, you can make it any size you want
- mobile mEgo
- as of 4:00 PST mEgo is live and open for anyone to use.

wixi
- stumbles while trying to create a new folder in the user interface
- a universal wixi player
- every file you upload will be converted to be played from anywhere
- plays a clip from "Can't Touch This"

befunky
- shot of Michael Arrington in Istanbul
- cartoonizer: turns any video into a cartoon.

expert panel

Hammer: I enjoyed mEgo, and befunky.  Started off slow, but showing changing a photo of a kid to a cartoon, it looked cool.

Brad: I tend to agree with Hammer.  Didn't get BroadClip.

Jason: I apologize for the BroadClip video presentation.

Brad: I would use mEgo.

Sarah: I liked Extreme3d.  I'm not a fan of the name.  Extreme was overused10 years ago.  I really like the idea though.  Software only is good.  Demo looked a bit clumsy.  I didn't really get BroadClip.  I kind of find music easily.

Caterina:  I liked Extreme3d - having a Wii thru your webcam is powerful.

Loïc: It was a bad idea to give a pitch with video.  I liked befunky, I can see my kids playing with it.  I also like the idea of wixi to collect everything in one place.  But there is a challenge because Google is doing it with Google Docs.

(...)

Brad: wixi might be good for private porn sharing.

audience questions:

Shannon Clark: wixi, broadclip, raising copyright questions issues.

BroadClip: we actually do increase the revenues of the record companies.

Hammer is mocking the BroadClips guy (who claimed to be an IP lawyer)

Don Dodge, VP of Napster: I've lived that life, you're wrong.

Sarah: About befunky, one thing I like about it, is that so many of the web apps I see online is targeted at someone like me, early adoper.  What I like about befunky is that it is targeted at parents, grandparents etc.

Jason: I think people would pay for it.  Send DVDs to people like here is my cartoon.

Jason: Ok 10 minute break.

--- break ---

flowplay
- a social entertainment platform
- virtual demo from "moonbeam" - http://stealth.flowplay.com
- oh cool I got a friend request (accept, reject, cancel) [argh]
- "Ooops. I forgot.  I'm supposed to meet T-Man.  We're going dancing.  At the Starlight lounge."

metaplace
- shows slide about proprietary virtual worlds
- shows slide of HTML hyperlink, web is open etc.
- you can use stylesheets
- http://fattire.metaplace.coim/alphatest
- all the cool web2 buzzwords, blogs, wikis, tags, reviews, ratings
- Tools are currently alpha, not on the web yet, but will be in a couple of wweeks.
- open standards

woome
- enjoy the minute!
- speed dating
- http://george.woome.com:8000/session/
- shows demo between george with Michelle
- running out of time, jumps to next person
- shows someone "Nicole" who is not a girl, is actually nick zenstrom
- real time social networking

Zivity
- founder is a woman
- these are our content creators
- Pearl, Samantha, Heather, ??
- pays over 40% of revenue to content providers
- founder hands dollar bills to content creators
- PG 13 part of presentation is now over
- zip file upload
- scrolls thru a photo-upload UI
- licenses are model/photographer friendly - non-exclusive.
- all licensing/transactions done digitally.
- digital proof of age verification - one of the things that sets them apart.
- dashboard with which sets are making how much money.
- demos user view (URL bar has been hidden)

Mike Arrington - I was actually a little uncomfortable with that.

Onto the 40th company.

DanceJam - was 3rd.
Tangler - was 2nd.

The winner is an Israeli and New York startup called Kaltura.

Kaltura enables of users of social networks to engage in group collaborative creation of rich media, similar to what wiki platforms have done in text, we do in rich media.  Youtube meets wiki.

expert panel

Jason: Caterina which one did you like the most?

Caterina: woome - A+.  Loved it.

Brad: Is it a company or just a feature.

Sarah: My least favorite.  Though I've been with same man for 8 years, so never used online dating.  Social networking has changed the market. Launching a new dating app, I don't know.

Caterina: It's not dating it's scoping.

Sarah: You can scope on social networks.

Loïc: I won't try it [woome] because my wife will hit me.

Mike: You're supposed to not try it because you're married, not because your wife will hit you.

Loïc: Metaplace is trying to Facebook SecondLife.

Brad: I thought Kaltura was pretty compelling.  I don't understand exactly how you are going to create a business around it.  But user participation, good.  Woome, good.  Contrarian on metaplace.  There's a platform and it's called SecondLife.  I wasn't buying that there's going to be a migration. Hard for me to think about how metaplace is going to disrupt that.

Hammer: I liked Kaltura.  Big believer in video.  I see a lot of people creating films, collaborating on films.  Passing them around.  The business model, injecting ads at certain points, putting it into peer-to-peer space. Zivity, good.  I don't know if that was PG13, if that was PG13, what's R?

Mike: Too much nudity in presentation.

Sarah: It [Zivity] was actually my favorite of the 5.  It's very apparent that the old model is broken. What has Playboy done online? I think it makes sense.

Hammer: How do you vett the process of who uploads photos?

Zivity: We do photo, age verification, each model takes photo of headlines with ID.

Hammer: And we all had fake ids in highschool.

Loïc: I'd like to merge Zivity and Woome

(anonymous audience member: it's called Doome )

Jason: What was that split again?

Zivity: 60/40 split on subscription model.  Each additional vote is $1. 20¢ of that goes to Zivity, rest is split between model/photographer.

Jason: Caterina how does that compare with Flickr.  Revenue sharing with Flickr?

Caterina: Brad can address.

Brad: There is demand from heavy Flickr users.  Flickr wants to meet that demand.

metaplace: comparison to SecondLife is not correct.  They still own all the servers.

Caterina: About flowplay - I'm a big believer in the socially networked game.  You play along with other people.  I'm not sure flowplay execution hits it, but I'm a big believer in the idea.

Sarah: My problem with Flowplay, I wonder about the authenticity there.  If I were a young girl I would feel very talked down to.

Flowplay: The voiceover talent was more for this audience than for an actual teen audience.  It was probably over the top.

Jason: lesson to presenters, when you hit the play key you lose the audience.