The Ultimate Guide To TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2011
TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco has just wrapped. In the feverish air of anticipation we carefully cultivate during the Disrupt season, you may have missed some of the talks, panels, launches, or startups that have taken place here at this incomparable conference. Don’t worry. We’ve collected all the content by our writing and video teams here in this handy omnibus post. If you only share one item today, make it this one.
Almost everything that happened on stage was captured by the unblinking eye of TechCrunch TV, so there is video at the bottom of most posts and many even have crowdsourced transcriptions. More video can be found here at the TCTV archive for the event. Literally thousands of photos from our capable photographer can be found here, including most of the companies in the startup alley, and my photos (which appeared in the posts) are free to download from the TechCrunch Flickr page. And of course, all news relating to this and other Disrupt conference can always be found at disrupt.techcrunch.com. Read on for links to the rest of our coverage.
- The Hackathon begins – The Hackathon continues – The Hackathon doesn’t sleep
- Hats of the Hackathon
- Meet ten Hackathon hackers
- TCTV: John roams the Hackathon hall
- TCTV: Jason interviews more hackers about their projects
- Our picks for most interesting hacks
- And the Hackathon winners are…
- Hackathon highlights on day three
Launches, panels, and Fireside Chats
- Mike Arrington officially leaves TechCrunch
- Flipboard’s Mike McCue on the future of tablet publishing
- Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn on repurposing Yahoo and helping underprivileged kids
- Gowalla semi-pivots into a “social guide” app
- Rovio’s founders discuss plush toys and their plans for Facebook
- Ford and Bug Labs show off a new platform for vehicle research, OpenXC
- Sequoia’s Doug Leone in a rare discussion of his investment philosophy
- Dustin Moskovitz on Facebook’s early scaling and fixing Google+
- Paul Graham’s Y Combinator office hours, delightful as ever
- Max Levchin and Peter Thiel say innovation is in dire straits
Battlefield
Session one: Disrupting traditional markets
Tonara: a tablet-based sheet music program that listens and adjusts as you play
Farmigo: community-based growing and selling of fresh local produce
HouseFix: tracks home repairs and enriches relationships with home contractors and services
Openbucks: cashless and bankless payment using major gift card providers
CakeHealth: sophisticated but user-friendly tracking of insurance costs, claims, etc.
Session two: Moving the web forward
Spool: saves full webpages for mobile consumption later using an intelligent content scraper
Verious: a marketplace for mobile app middleware
Pressly: HTML5-based, tablet-friendly, quick-deployment web apps for online content
Bitcasa: infinite cloud-based storage for all your data with predictive syncing and caching
Everpix: collects all your photos online and offline into a single online meta-album
Session three: Entertain us
Shaker: a social, network-agnostic mingling environment
YouNow: crowd-rated live web broadcasting
Amen: an opinion-rating engine of sorts (simple to grasp, difficult to explain)
IdleGames: developing next-generation games for social networks
Quest.li: gamifying everyday life (startup alley audience pick)
Launches, panels, and Fireside Chats
- SF Mayor Ed Lee explains his political decision to embrace tech
- Turntable.fm’s founders discuss their funding and growth
- Shervin Pishevar has created a new venture fund and a “jedi council” of VCs
- Vinod Khosla has a secret meat startup and loves the post-PC era
- Twitter drops a boatload of analytics and introduces new tracking tools
- A group of VCs discusses what makes an effective investor
- Kevin Rose spars with Arrington while discussing Digg’s declining relevance
- Instagram and Inuit founders talk lean startups and pivots
Battlefield
Session four: Customer-friendly enterprise
TalkTo: contacting local businesses for appointments, feedback, etc. via text message
Rewardli: lets companies do group purchasing by leveraging the social graph
SizeUp: provides rich local metrics for small businesses to help them grow
Trello: a universal workflow and task management platform
Prism Skylabs: processes security footage to produce powerful analytic information on physical spaces
Session five: Local networks
Postmates: a sort of ad-hoc courier network for excess bike messenger capacity
Trippy: friend-sourced travel planning and trip sharing
LocalHero: finds people around you who can help with things you need now
Grow the Planet: a sort of real life Farmville that helps you grow your own vegetables
Meexo: gamifies online dating and tries to solve some of the persistent problems in that space
Session six: Increasing understanding
JiffPad: a platform for facilitating useful communication between doctors and patients
Vocre: mobile app that provides near-instant translations of spoken speech
PlaySay: a language-learning platform using Facebook that has you translate status updates and comments
GoInstant: simple, instant browser sharing between two or many people
RentLord: suite of (very useful) tools and rich data tracking for landlords and tenants
CardFlick: rich, clickable “cards” on mobile phones that can be traded by flicking them (startup alley pick)
Launches, panels, and Fireside Chats
- John Biggs hosts a panel on making open source hardware profitable
- Major VCs square off on the state of angel investing
- Imagine K12 shows off a plethora of extremely compelling education-related startups
- Marissa Mayer explains how to say “Zagat” and is pleased with Google keeping a secret
- Gokul Rajaram discusses the success Facebook’s social ad strategy
- Kevin O’Connor loves entrepreneurs who break rules, though he phrases it slightly differently
- John Doerr waxes political on the subject of tech investment
- Facebook’s Mike Schroepfer defends against accusations of imitating Google+ with new FB features
- Sonar adds LinkedIn and a visual overhaul
- Qwiki shifts to HTML5 and opens up user-created content
- Miso Media gets $2.4m, adds hundreds of songs to its app
- Elon Musk on the importance of real problems
And the winner is…
Our hundreds of applicants were reduced to 29 battlefield companies (plus two selected day-of by the audience) then to the last six, who were given an extended period in which to re-pitch their companies to a new set of judges. After an hour’s retirement and consideration, they returned, with the news that Shaker would be awarded the $50,000 prize and prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt Cup. Prism Sky Labs, the runners up, received a gilded shoe.
Congratulations to the winners! We would also like to extend our thanks to everyone who applied, attended, sponsored, or supported Disrupt this year. We look forward to seeing you all again here in San Francisco next year, or earlier, in New York or even Beijing.
On another note, this summary wouldn’t be complete without an acknowledgement of Mike Arrington and his contributions to tech journalism. For years TechCrunch has grown bigger and better under his leadership. I’d like to extend a personal thanks to Mike, but I think the standing ovation prompted by Ron Conway’s closing comments is more eloquent:
Best of luck, Mike.
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