Day One of the TechCrunch40 is over. The news across the web is that for $2,500 you received little more than a Saturday morning Techmeme Valley love-a-thon. Through it all, were there interesting points to note? Of course.

The Summary

  1. It turns out that many of the VCs and panelists (including Mike Arrington) were financially linked with the companies presenting. Example, Mike is invested in MC Hammer’s DanceJam.

  2. Much like his keynote at F8, Mark Zuckerburg’s presentation left something to be desired. Steve Jobs he isn’t.

  3. For the Crowdsourcing Session: Cake Financial lets you track your investment portfolio. It’s sort of like Mint but for securities, making it one of the only really practical products in the session.

  4. For Community And Collaboration: TripIt helps you plan your next trip from beginning to end. We’ve seen similar before, but it wins the session for ease of use.

  5. Nothing in the Mobile And Communications Session jumped out at me. Interesting, yes. Revolutionary, no.

  6. For Search And Discovery: Powerset, with their natural language search and Cognitive Code, with their AI offerings seemed the most interesting. If you want to review any of the sessions in detail, this one is the one worth your time.

  7. The folks in the DemoPit had some of their time cut, and the place was apparently a ghost-town. C’est la vie.

  8. The event was oversold by 30%, meaning that many people found themselves without seats.

  9. As is to be expected, TechCrunch collected most of the scoops of the day. A wave of quiet indignation falls over the tech journalist community.

Web 2.0 Roundup

My take? I only wish there were a few more interesting companies picked to present. Many of the 40 simply refactor tired Web 2.0 cliches. This is not to say that they can’t be successful doing so, but for an event that had every startup imaginable beating down its door you feel that they could have done better.

What will tomorrow bring? We can only wait and see. Congratulations to everyone who presented.

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