TechCrunch50 – Star-Studded Tech Sundance

“We’d like this to be the Sundance Film Festival” for the tech industry – said Jason Calacanis—to over 1700 attendees, partners and press that rocked the San Francisco Design Concourse Center. Sterling sponsors including Fenwick & West, Google, The Founders Fund, MSN Money and Yahoo! made it possible. 52 top startups were selected from 1038 hopefuls and earned coveted 8 minute spots to present before the A-list audience. Short pitching sessions were judged by Valley icons like Google VP of Search and User Experience Marissa Mayer, MySpace Founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe, Angel Rockstar Ron Conway and Youtube Co-founder Chad Hurley. See our ValleyZen Flickr set HERE. Check out ValleyZen’s exclusive interview with Chad Hurley. Chad gives a warm shoutout to our ValleyZen audience:

Thank you to Jim Hornthal, Venture Partner at CMEA Ventures for shooting.
Angels Say Cut Clutter
ValleyZen gave top points to the panel “The Role of the Angel Investor” which featured Ron Conway, Yossi Vardi, David Kidder, Chris Sacca, Matt Coffin, and was moderated by Jason Calacanis. Each of the panelists were asked—What does the ideal email from a hopeful entrepreneur look like? We liked Conway’s ruthlessness when it came to cutting clutter in email.
“One paragraph in the body.
One page executive summary.
That’s it!”
Yossi Vardi seconded the notion of removing as many unnecessary ingredients from e-mails and business plans as possible. “Do you want to know what sausage and business plans have in common? Only people who don’t know how they are made eat them.”
Chris Sacca revealed to ValleyZen his secret technique for clearing his mind of Valley clutter – “running and juggling simultaneously!”

Blah Girls Glorify Drugs, Poop and Silicon(e) Breasts
TechCrunch50’s starting lineup of startups included four centered on youth, namely Shryk, Hangout Industries, BlahGirls, and Tweegee. Ashton Kutcher’s BlahGirls was indeed one small step for man, one thousand steps backwards for womankind. The new web property by Katalyst Media aimed at girls and women 13-35 did its world premiere for a TechCrunch audience that was 90%male.
Blah girls features three girly girl cartoon characters on a “Krackintosh.” In his own words, Kutcher describes Blah Girls as an “interactive animated web series focused on celebrity culture.”

Culture Watered Down
To give you a sense of the Vitaman water sponsored animated cast, Britney introduces herself as different from the Britney who “shaves her coochie.” Krystle drools over “SiliCONE Valley” and yelps “We should totally get boob jobs!” This is interesting for a site that Kutcher promises is “designed just for teenage girls.” Poo is launched into the air and Pop culture becomes poop culture in a fav segment called Celebrity Crap. Later Krystle describes women after pregnancy as getting “GI-Normous Va-JJs.”

Calacanis noted that TechCrunch50 should be like Sundance, where everything is judged on merit. The merit of the scatalogical “blah blah blah” of the Blah Girls remains to be seen. However Kutcher’s intuition to position himself in the middle a new budding romance between Hollywood and Silicon Valley is smart indeed. We should all keep an eye on those first awkward embraces.

Two Thumbs up
Overall ValleyZen gives the conference and many of the exciting startups from DotSpots to OpenTrace two thumbs up. Arrington and Calacanis successfully cultivated a Sundance-like vibe. Creativity crackled in the air as entrepreneurs, VCs, engineers, lawyers and journalists rubbed elbows and looked towards the next big thing. Ron Conway put it best in expressing the crunchy energy beneath the multi-colored lights: “When you meet an entrepreneur you are looking into the future. You are talking to a crystal ball. That is how I felt when I first spoke with Larry and Sergey.”

Even a wifi crisis and chair shortage were handled with aplomb. Calacanis helped attendees personally with the chair shortage, while Michael Arrington kept calm 1700 anxious people for whom an internet connection is oxygen. Arrington played it cool with his remark on imperfection, “The conference is still rough around the edges. That’s part of its charm.”