Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Soluto wins TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield Competition

New York, NY - (Zennie62's trip to TechCrunch is sponsored by Christine Smith Associates, Inc., the Premier Female Contractor in NYC.) TechCrunch Disrupt New York City Day 3 has the final round of what the tech blog calls it's "Startup Battlefield." The idea is for a startup to give a pitch to a panel of judges, who then evaluate the company.

UPDATE: The winner of the competition is...Soluto, which receives a check for $50,000.

Today's panel has John Borthwick, CEO of betaworks, Ron Conway, Angel Investor at SV Angel, Marrissa Mayer, VP of Google, Samuel Schwartz, EVP of Comcast Interactive and Quincy Smith, Founding Partner of CODE Advisors.

You can watch the livestream for this event now below:

Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com

Right now, a startup called Publish2 is up. The idea of Publish2 is to have a news exchange that replaces "the hated Associated Press" according to its CEO Scott Karp. It enables newspapers to install content from any source, from blogs to other news websites, into their print newspapers and websites.

In the questioning, Marrissa Mayer of Google says Publish2 is a good idea that "this is an area that needs to be looked at" as journalism is changing. But she's concerned about reliability and the business model. She's also concerned about distribution of the content.

Ron Conway mentioned Twitter as a competitor and the fact that Twitter itself is breaking news.

UPDATE: Soluto's a software company that promises to " bring an end to the frustrations PC users encounter" by finding the problem in your computer, then using "crowdsourcing" to connect you to a whole community who can help you.

The panel likes the company, but has concerns about privacy; the founders of the company, Tomer Dvir and Ishay Green are explaining that they are not going to collect private data.

UPDATE: Betterment is up next and my personal favorite. The idea of Betterment is to make it easier for people to invest online. Many companies have websites that are just plain hard to use. The founders call Betterment "the replacement for your savings account."

The panel is getting down on the concept of the "simplification" of data on the Betterment website. Personally, I agree with TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington, who said that there was a bit of looking down on Betterment because it's "cute."

Betterment does need to work on its SEO.

UPDATE: MovieClips, which allows you to make a mashup of videos clips from movies, is up now. MovieClips Richard Raddon presented a set of clips (one that will make your stomach turn). He explains that he has deals with six movie studios, which is how they're able to use the 12,000 clips.

Ron Conway said, "imagine how big YouTube sales would be if you were one of the founders." John Borthwick is skeptical as to how many people will use MovieClips. Plus, he feels that the studio deals can be done by others, not just the founders of Movie Clips, but Conway disagres.

Samuel Schwartz of Comcast Interactive likes MovieClips and wants to talk to Richard Raddon and Zack James about how they can work together. Marrissa Mayer focused on the need for a better search technology system to facilitate clip discovery.

Ujam, the conference favorite, is up. Ujam allows you to make original music from different sounds and instruments. Very simple. Very exciting. Movie Composer Hanz Zimmer is one of their partners.

The panel generally likes Ujam but focused on the problem of monetization. Currently, it's free.

The judges went backstage to decide the winner.

UPDATE: The winner of the competition is...Soluto, which receives a check for $50,000.

Stay tuned for updates.

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