There are lots of folks live-blogging TechCrunch50 in San Francisco, so I’m here mostly to conduct video interviews, take photos, meet people. I’m really enjoying the vibe and the energy
Here are a few snippets I took away from Day 1 of the conference:
• VC Chris Sacca (formerly of Google): "75% of my portfolio is within a skateboard ride of my house at Third and Townsend in San Francisco. "That’s where stuff is beginning to build right now."
• Quote of the Day from Israeli VC Yossi Vardi: "I’m sorry that 97% of the lawyers are giving a bad name to the other 3%."
• Props to Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, for two dead-on suggestions during the VC feedback sessions on tech startups. Benioff suggested "cause marketing" — a cause dear to his heart — as a way to get the word out.
• Something I’ve been longing for for a very long time: targeted advertising that’s relevant to me an my interests without compromising my privacy by knowing who I am. That’s still a few years away in any serious way on the Web, I suspect, but in the realm of email, AdRocket is providing a microtargeting network for email (without using cookies) while maintaining users’ anonymity by putting data into a "black box." "The publishers do have data but they’re not so good at using it," CEO Scott Milener told the audience.
• Just a few of the people I bumped into today: Marc Andreessen, Paula Gould, Robert Scoble, John Furrier, Christine Herron, Om Malik, Liz Gaines, Chris Saad, Frank Gruber, Cathy Brooks, Loic Le Meur, hosts Jason Calacanis and Mike Arrington, Ayelet Noff, Orli Yakuel, Marc Benioff, Ariel McNichol, Barak Hachamov, Casey Georgeson, Chris McGill, Fred Davis, Rick Skrenta, Alex Williams, Slava Kritov.
• On the minor celebrity front, Ashton Kutcher popped in and out all day and promoted his new startup, blahgirls.com.
• 2,500 people watched the live stream on uStream on Monday afternoon.
• A dozen of us, including Om Malik, Liz Gaines, Frank Gruber and Orli Yakuel, had dinner at Koh Samui & The Monkey Thai Kitchen. Thanks to Kismetrics for picking up the bill; hadn’t heard of the company, but I’ll remember them now.
• San Francisco taxi service sucks more than any other big town I know. At least 50 cabs passed me while I tried to flag them down while walking a couple of miles to BART tonight.
• I did video interviews with reps from Mixx.com, uStream and Delver, among other sites.
I’ll post photos by the end of the conference (I’m fussy about the quality) and videos throughout the next week or two.
For more on the conference:
Washingtonpost.com: Announcing The TechCrunch50 Finalists.
Brad Stone at the NY Times Bits blog: Startups that stand out.
Rafe Needleman at CNET News: TechCrunch50: New ways to read and react to news.
Blog posts on Technorati
NY Times: TechCrunch50: Ashton Kutcher Blabs About the Blah Girls
Flickr: TechCrunch50 most interesting photos
The TechCrunch site and TechCrunch blog
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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