TechCrunch 50 Finance Session: iCharts, Me-trics and Emerginvest All Winners

PersonalRIAMark Cuban: "I hate the idea but it still could work." How do you vet investment advisors and protect from fraud? Roelef: reminds me of Cake financial. You take advantage of sloth and greed: people want to make money and they are lazy. Primary question is customer acquisition?

Emergeinvest: Enabling foreign investments and trading information finding. Roelef: likes it alot. Solves personal frustrations. Cuban: Disagrees with Roelef. Sources of information are critical and this is not unique content. "Why would I come to you unless I am just window shopping?" Kevin: why can't Yahoo be the Yahoo of emerging markets?

ExchangeP: Virtual fantasy stock market for private companies. Think fantasy markets and protrade for web 2.0. Roelef: important question is can you have cash work here instaed of fantasy. users need to have a real ante and skin in the game; without that, I wonder if users will behave appropriately. Mark: interesting idea but wrong business. You won't have enough users to make real money. Become the toolset for people to create their own exchanges (ala Ning). Interesting... I agree here Don: value is in other verticals. what is business model here?

Me-trics: Google Analytics for you. Kevin: needs to be automated. The fun will wear off over time and difficult to keep people posting / updating. Don: interesting idea and takes advantage of our focus on health and fitness. But lots of these sites are popping up. Getting people to input data is tough - and implausible for things like blood pressure. Kevin: integrating with products like Wii Fit is a no brainer. And the marginal cost to consumers is low enough that people would buy as value-add.

iCharts: 40,000,000 onlne charts. 900,000,000 charts printed each year (really?). Trying to MS Excel + SlideShare. Roelef: Interesting idea because I spend too many hours slaving over Excel. Intrigued by the idea but we are dealing with an explosion of information and there is value in distributed inforamtion. Don: I love it. Search-ability is the big win and advancement. This might be a feature - not a company though. Kevin: I like the idea but spend time with the design. Critical here. What do you think of Google Charts API? Mark: you have the easiest business model of anyone we've seen todady. License the proudct to all of the other presenters today. People forget to follow the money - this is easy.

Favorites from this morning from the panel Roelef: iCharts and Emergeinvest / PersonalRIA. All three can get a Sequoia meeting. Don: iCharts is the best. Emergeinvest is second. Financial market is so huge. Kevin: Me-trics for what they could be. Mark: Me-trics has best long term opportunity. iCharts has quickest to money opportunity. ExchangeP can be big if they become ExchangeEngine.

TechCrunch 50 Mobile Session: FitBit and Tonchidot Steal Show

Best session of TechCrunch 50 so far... tons of innovation in the mobile space and it would have made sense to expand this 'vertical' with more companies.

MyTopia: Helping the mobile web play together. They are running a single game being played natively on all phone systems: Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian, Palm, Android, etc. This is Widgetbox for Mobile. Wow. This is amazing.

Tim OReilly: what is performance of the apps? Benchmarking? Josh Kopelman: Do you see yourself as a tool provider or a content provider? Answers: tool. Tim: Who pays you? I didn't hear the full answer... Tim says they need to figure out which angle to take quickly as it determines the product path. Evan: solves a need but there is a focus problem.

The demo for MyTopia was amazing... the Q/A session is quite confusing and dampened the excitment.

Tonchidot / Sekai Camera: bizarre presentation but freaking awesome product that I would use immediately but would kill the iPhone in about 15 minutes of usage (less their problem / technology than Apple's need to fix). It's a tag / social alerting system based on the iPhone and GPS.

Josh and Tim ask about where the current tagging data is coming from: internal and/or user-generated?

The founder has said loudly that he rejects a Google acquisition and the crowd went wild. He is hilarious.

Tim: wonderful concept but, "can you build it and are you building it the right way?' Also wonders how much of what they built is in aggregating what is done elsewhere so that they don't have to build it entirely themselves.

They are the clear fan favorites... this session is hysterical. Standing ovation.

MobClix: analytics and logging for mobile applications. Big need for mobile developers and the UI looks powerful. Think Google Analytics for your mobile apps (primarily iPhone Apps... exclusively? I cannot tell). They also have an ad system built in to help monetize apps.

Tim: Who pays you? What's the rev-split on the ad system? Where's the growth? The iPhone is great - but its not big enough to sustain a large enough audience. Tim: You need widespread adoption... why do developers choose you? You need developers with winning apps to make money. Josh: an investor in Pinch Media and therefore cannot comment. He says its critical to be cross platform / carrier.

FitBit: think Nike Fit on steroids.... a little device that clips on to your pocket, shorts, etc and monitors your activity. It's wireless and it uploads data to the bay station. Will sell for $99 and hit stores in December. Preorder available starting today. I am in.

Why not a subscription model? Answer: we plan on having premium subscriptions over time.

Tim and Evan: love it and want one. Josh: Form factor is slick. How do you differentiate from Nike? Answer: form factor is the solve. Tim: Do you make money at $99? Answer: yes.

It is not using GPS so it will not give pace. It is not the ideal running solution - but for general health it is ideal.

TechCrunch 50 Finance Session: iCharts, Me-trics and Emerginvest All Winners

PersonalRIAMark Cuban: "I hate the idea but it still could work." How do you vet investment advisors and protect from fraud? Roelef: reminds me of Cake financial. You take advantage of sloth and greed: people want to make money and they are lazy. Primary question is customer acquisition?

Emerginvest: Enabling foreign investments and trading information finding. Roelef: likes it alot. Solves personal frustrations. Cuban: Disagrees with Roelef. Sources of information are critical and this is not unique content. "Why would I come to you unless I am just window shopping?" Kevin: why can't Yahoo be the Yahoo of emerging markets?

ExchangeP: Virtual fantasy stock market for private companies. Think fantasy markets and protrade for web 2.0. Roelef: important question is can you have cash work here instaed of fantasy. users need to have a real ante and skin in the game; without that, I wonder if users will behave appropriately. Mark: interesting idea but wrong business. You won't have enough users to make real money. Become the toolset for people to create their own exchanges (ala Ning). Interesting... I agree here Don: value is in other verticals. what is business model here?

Me-trics: Google Analytics for you. Kevin: needs to be automated. The fun will wear off over time and difficult to keep people posting / updating. Don: interesting idea and takes advantage of our focus on health and fitness. But lots of these sites are popping up. Getting people to input data is tough - and implausible for things like blood pressure. Kevin: integrating with products like Wii Fit is a no brainer. And the marginal cost to consumers is low enough that people would buy as value-add.

iCharts: 40,000,000 onlne charts. 900,000,000 charts printed each year (really?). Trying to MS Excel + SlideShare. Roelef: Interesting idea because I spend too many hours slaving over Excel. Intrigued by the idea but we are dealing with an explosion of information and there is value in distributed inforamtion. Don: I love it. Search-ability is the big win and advancement. This might be a feature - not a company though. Kevin: I like the idea but spend time with the design. Critical here. What do you think of Google Charts API? Mark: you have the easiest business model of anyone we've seen todady. License the proudct to all of the other presenters today. People forget to follow the money - this is easy.

Favorites from this morning from the panel Roelef: iCharts and Emergenvest / PersonalRIA. All three can get a Sequoia meeting. Don: iCharts is the best. Emergenvest is second. Financial market is so huge. Kevin: Me-trics for what they could be. Mark: Me-trics has best long term opportunity. iCharts has quickest to money opportunity. ExchangeP can be big if they become ExchangeEngine.

TechCrunch 50 Collaboration Session: Tingz, Mixtt, Imindi, Popego

Tingz: cross platform widget system. Nice UI. I cannot get over the name Tingz - he keeps saying "you can share your Tingz with friends." Quite confusing.

Don Dodge: getting adoption will be very difficult as it is a crowded market. Kevin Rose: "invite system via email is done. People are over it." Kevin is the first judge during the conference to be really frank and harsh.

Both judges have questioned teh monetizability of the widgets.

Roelaf: you are trying to do too much. Difficult to start off being a platform. Companies become platforms over time - not on day one.

Mixtt: Seems like a social network for dating (they mentioned Match.com and Facebook quite a lot)

Kevin Rose: why not build it as a Facebook App? Don: I like it because online dating is HUGE. Big market. Your challenge is, "why is this not a widget?" Building a stand alone social site looks easy but getting adoption is incredibly difficult. Hyper local identification is incredibly difficult.

I'd add that hyper local content is difficult because it slices your community too thin and requires huge audiences. For Kijiji and Craigslist, go to Nashville and select a category - the depth of inventory is very limited. This will be worse for a new local social network and dating community.

Mark Cuban: how do you prevent the 'creep' factor? I agree - major challenge.

Imindi: "The world's first thought engine." I just heard a whisper: this will either be really cool or really disastrous.

First question: "what's the business model?"

Response: "Great question. It's an advertising centered model taking lessons from Google but going one step further."

Mark Cuban: "That sounds like the biggest pile of bullshit ever."

Don: "this is rocket science applied to the wrong problem."

Kevin Rose: "I consider myself fairly geeky and this is *way* out there."

Roelaf: "to be candid, I don't understand what problem you are trying to solve."

Popego: "bringing you a more meaningful web." Not sure if this is a product that belongs in TechCrunch50's Collaboration track or Meme track... seems like a mix of yesterday's Angstro and FriendFeed.

Kevin Rose: Streams and feeds are crowded - tough to stand out and it's an unproven space. Facebook has featured their feed front and center - tough to compete there.

Roelaf: Design and interface are very well done. Attractive site. "I worry about distribution." Business model is second "critical question."

Mark: Joining the "network management tools" space and the ones who won over time were the ones with a "sexy look". You need something to stand out. Figure out whats exclusive to you.

ComScore Announces Self Service Model - Coming After Quantcast?

At the poorly-attended breakfast session at TechCrunch 50 (maybe because its 8am) - ComScore has announced quietly that they are releasing a self-service model "in the next few days". A publisher will be able to tag their own site and then collect standard ComScore reporting metrics.

This places them directly across the table from Quantcast and opens them to smaller publishers who traditionally cannot afford to work with ComScore. It is yet to be seen how ComScore will treat their self-service (supposedly free) model with their revenue-based model (which is prohibitively expensive for most).

Quantcast is the clear leader in the self service space. Compete is trying to differentiate themselves through premium data. To date, ComScore has served the large publishers... interesting to see what traction ComScore gets with the smaller publishers... there is only room for so many tracking pixels on each webpage.

Also interesting to note that ComScore has now mentioned Quantcast in passing a handful of times during their presentation.

TechCrunch Advertising Session: OtherInbox Popular, CopyBox Interesting

CopyBox - dynamic ads created with APIs / intelligence. They aren't focused on small business - they are instead focused on ad agencies. *If they could focus on small business and make it consumer fronting*... I love it and it would have saved me hours (while improving conversions) while running paid search on Kijiji and beRecruited. Seems like a Google acquisition - scales ad building immensely.

Adgregate Markets - In-widget commerce including the entire transaction.

AdRocket - targeted ad engine for emails and delivery. Will it get through Spam filters? My non-advertising ads don't even go through routinely... major hurdle here.

OtherInbox - email organization tool to move the clutter from your primary inbox to your "other" inbox. Seems pretty slick but I am not sure that I would actually check back and get to those 'archived' emails. I guess its a blessing and a curse. Great presenter. The audience seems to *really* like the product - a third of the audience raised their hand when asked if they would buy the product.

TechCrunch 50 Enterprise: Yabber and Open Trace Are Winners

FairSoftware - revenue sharing / structuring for small companies Yammer - think Enterprise Twitter. Very slick UI. Reminds me of a slicker Trac / Collab. I love it. Very simple presentation but the product makes a ton of sense and I am really impressed. Going to be tough to beat Yammer in the enterprise group.

Connective Logic - 'scale on demand'

OpenTrace - tracing environmental impact of products and items. fascinating with remarkable UI but it is very complex and I am not sure what the use case is (manufacturers or consumers). Nonetheless, they have developed a fascinating system / product.

Marc Andreesen: "all the stuff that is going to work in public world will make its way into companies." Right on.

Marc Benioff: FairSoftware needs more robust product because they claim to be very broad. If you built this on our [SalesForce.com] platform, we'd sell this. I like Yabber the best. Name is not corporate to match the product. I would invest in this. OpenTrace is powerful and serves a major need - needs a consumer interface (Marc echoed that as well) - killer app for the next decade.

Everyone loves the OpenTrace product and "killer app" has been used twice. It's unique, innovative and important. I am not convinced that it will have widespread usage (or a use-case) - but everyone likes their chances.

TechCrunch Session 2: Dotspots, Angstro, Live Hit and StockMood

Dotspots - a lot like BlogRovr (which I love)

Angstro - 'news about your network'... could use some UI but very useful assuming your friends are in the news. Not sure market size is here. The demo was on Robert Scoble and he's not the common web presence. The product's search intelligence does look quite powerful / unique.

Live Hit: Buzz word overflow!

StockMood: Like the concept a lot but its a tough economic environment to launch in. Might be scalable into other mediums.

Marissa: I love Dotspots. Very ambitious undertaking. I think there will be business model issues - but I like the idea. Angstro is interesting (we know Google Alerts is person-watching driven) but major business model issue. Live Hit has a UI issue - too much hunting and pecking. I have to do too much work to find the interesting content. Stock Mood is an interesting "mash up" but my concern is whether an audience exists.

Cnet: Dotspot has an interesting feature that is important for the web. StockMood is a simply a fetaure. Angstro is an 'interesting feature that LinkedIn could probably use'.

We've now heard CNet call Dotspot, Angstro and StockMood features and Marissa call StockMood a mash-up.

Conway: the big question for each of you is how will you monetize the sites? It's a big issue.

Major theme thus far is the difference between a feature and a destination / core service. And, tied closely to that, the ability to monetize. The panel doesn't seem overly bullish on any.

TechCrunch 50: Hangout.net Wins First Session

Sorry for the brief blog posts but the wifi here at TechCrunch 50 is a mix of unstable and unavailable. The first session featured four companies and my ranks are as follows:

1. Hangout 2. BlahGirls.com 3. iThryv 4. Tweegee.com

Hangout.net was outstanding and the demonstration was perfectly put together. The ecommerce integration is slick and provides an immediate business model.

I thought Ashton Kutcher's Blah Girls had terrific content - but they will need to be updating the content on a very routine basis (tough to scale). Interesting opportunity for Blah Girls to become a mixture of Sugar Inc + YouTube + MTV-quality production.

Chad Hurley: blah girls has best opportunity for advertising model. content is scalable based on distribution. Clearly two learnings out of YouTube.

Marissa: Hangout. questioned all of the business models. iThryv doesnt seem realistic - doesn't seem practical as to how kids save and spend.

Conway: would most likely invest in Shrynk but not without a couple major deals signed (ie Wells Fargo, Intuit). Dilemma for other companies: for their users they have to get allocated time on existing social networks and reduce time spent elsewhere - currently well saturated in networking offers, mindshare, etc.

CNet: Hangout is innovative. Blah Girls needs more content than couple times a week.

Conway: product placement is the next multi-billion dollar advertising platform.