With all the furor around the battle of the launch conferences (that we kinda got involved with too) let’s remind ourselves what it’s all about: the start-ups. They’ve slaved away for months for this important moment, and every company can only launch once so it’s hugely important to get as much from all that effort as possible. We know, we’ve done it.

Several awards will be given to lucky members of the 52 hopefuls judged by impressive panels of the industry elite (including Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Mark Cuban, Om Malik and Marissa Mayer amongst others). The top award is the TechCrunch50 Best in Show winner, and all 52 companies are eligible.

Think you know what makes a good start-up? Can you predict who the judges will pick? Make your predictions here. The current forecast is shown below.

TechCrunch50: Which company will win Best in Show?

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TechCrunch50, the start-up launch conference brought to you by Mike Arrington and TechCrunch, kicks off this Monday. From the 52 hot technology companies that will unveil themselves to the world there, only one can win the $50,000 Best in Show prize. Despite sounding more like a dog prize than a coveted industry accolade, all 52 companies will be clamoring to be the chosen ones and join Aaron Patzer, last year’s winner with Mint, on the Internet start-up A list.

Who will win? Hubdub will be forecasting it live from when the companies are announced on Monday morning (PT), throughout the pitches, right until the winner is announced. You’ll be able to make your predictions and see whether you’ve got an eye for a hot start-up.

If you’re a company launching at TechCrunch50 who thinks you’re in with a chance, or an armchair tech pundit who thinks they can predict who the judges will choose, watch this space. The Hubdub prediction market on the winner will be live from Monday morning and linked to from this post.

Update: Question is live here: http://www.hubdub.com/m15609/TechCrunch50_Which_company_will_win_Best_in_Show

In the meantime, check out how the war of the launch conferences is going with TechCrunch50 taking on DEMOfall08 head to head:

DEMOfall v TechCrunch50: Who Will Win?

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  By Nigel

Three weeks ago today we launched Hubdub into public beta at DEMO. DEMO was an amazing event, the organization was slick and there were some great companies launching there are as well. It was an honor to be there launching with them. It is difficult to really pick one or two out as the selection was so diverse. Tech Confidential did a great write up listing all the companies in order of best investment opportunities (well we particularly like it because it placed us third!)

Off the launch we managed to get some great PR online, in print, on radio and even on local TV. We put together a sample of some of the press coverage on our Press page. A big thanks goes to Miiko Mentz and Brian Solis from our PR company, Future Works, who did such a fantastic job. Thankfully when the TechCrunch surge hit the site held up. Like a lot of start-ups we have found that TechCrunch drives a ton of traffic however the engagement and conversion levels are much lower than other traffic sources. All in all however, we’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much of the initial surge we have retained. Thanks again to all the journalists that covered us.

After DEMO we travelled up to Silicon Valley and San Francisco to suck up the vibe and meet up with lots of people. We managed to meet up with some seasoned entrepreneurs who gave us excellent advice (my measure is how many pages of notes do I take in a meeting - these guys are all four pagers plus). Steve Larson, at Krugle, is I believe on his fifth start-up so knows a thing or two about them (and also advised me to walk instead of taking a taxi, I’ve never had an American suggest that to me before!). We also caught up with Mark Fletcher, formerly of Bloglines and now at Startupping, who previously knocked out development at Hubdub for a day after a late night bender with the team in Edinburgh! Finally, we managed to see Dave McClure of 500 Hats who in passing introduced us to Kiva which is a great service that lets you lend money to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

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We’re currently holed up in a Best Western in Palm Springs. It is blowing a squall outside however we have just pushed Hubdub to public beta. It’s been just over 6 months since Hubdub came into form as a scribble on the back of an envelope. Tomorrow morning we may get some publicity in line with our attending DEMO and then on Wednesday morning we present to the DEMO audience (and the world - live streaming at www.demo.com).

It is going to be a fun couple of days!

BTW A big thank you to Mike Masnick, Mike Clouser and everyone at the Techdirt Greenhouse on Friday. It was a great session on how Hubdub can focus on attracting power users to the service. Thanks guys.

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We’ve just released the great news that we’ve been selected for and are going to DEMO 2008 at the end of the month. Here is the press release. (Although, if you’ve been on the beta site you would probably have figured it out given the banner! We’re a bit rubbish at keeping secrets.) DEMO is an amazing technology product conference held in the US every year. They select about 70 companies out of around a 1,000 applicants to launch their products there. Great products like the Palm Pilot, Tivo and the Pleo have launched there. Also our friends at YuuGuu launched there last year and said they had an amazing time.

The format is that we get 6 minutes on stage to pitch our wares and then there is a pavillion session afterwards where you can do one-on-one demos. The 6 minute presentation gets posted to the web so any goof-ups will be recorded for posterity!

The team are still pinching themselves that it is really happening and are working flat out to make sure every thing goes smoothly. Additionally, to coincide with DEMO we will be taking the site into public beta on the 28th of January.

I’ll let you know how we get on.

Nigel

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