by Julie Blaustein
What is a start up company to do that is on a limited marketing budget or perhaps even overseas planning to launch? Why not enter to win the Web 2.0 Expo’s Launch Pad where they will receive instant and incredible amounts of exposure of their products or services to the Web 2.0 market. That is exactly what over 80 companies did but only 6 finalists were chosen to present before a panel of judges and were voted by the audience to be the winner. On Wednesday, May 5th. at the Web 2.0 Expo, the six finalist had just five minutes to present their company and if they went over that time they were gonged. Three judges included Ellen Park, VP of Marketing at Elance, Brian Singerman is a Principal at Founders Fund and Marshall Kirkpatrick is the lead writer at ReadWriteWeb.com and previously with Tech Crunch provided instant feedback and questions on the spot. Brady Forrest, Web 2.0 Expo Co-Chair, hosted the program.
Based on the people’s choice as determined by the audience’s clapping volume, the winner was Rhomobile. They create cross-platform native applications for all major smartphones with Rhodes, the open-source smartphone app framework. Along with RhoHub, the first hosted development as a service for mobile and RhoSync, a standalone server that keeps enterprise application data current and available on users’ smartphones, Rhomobile’s suite of products provide a complete mobility solution for businesses of all sizes.
The Finalists:
AskYourTargetMarket.com is the web’s first self-service online survey tool that includes a built-in consumer panel to fulfill all your market research studies on demand. No phone calls no delays, this pay-as-you-go service starts at only $29.95 and takes just a few hours to get delivered. This is an an offer that will save you or your company major money and will gather you serious market research.
Pearltrees came all the way from France to compete, is a social curation and discovery tool and that gives users a social way to organize, discover and share stuff they like on the Web.
Strings is an online service that empowers users to effortlessly discover interesting and relevant content. Users of strings.com automatically track their interests, share their tastes with friends, and discover new content based on their expressed personality. The Strings platform enables a new generation of discovery applications that can leverage the power of Strings to help users discover content both on and off the web.
Stupeflix is an automated video creation web service. It is unique in its ability to create highly produced video in real-time, at high volumes, with a highly programmable R/W API. With the Play Platform, Stupeflix makes it easy for any website to instantly transform its content into broadcast quality videos.
EnglEasy is the winner of StartUp Weekend which impressively only came into existence a few days before the contest. This is an Online Game solution that helps teach children English. Through advanced analytics and Fun games, they hope to Improve Learning through Play. With a little bit more time to develop their strategy they may have gone further in the contest.
More Pictures of Launch Pad here!
The Winner of Launch Pad: Adam Blum of Rhomobile
Mike Courtney of AskYourTargetMarket.com
Francois Rocaboy of Pearltrees
Edward Balassanian of Strings
Jeff Boudier of Stupeflix
Ahmed Siddiqui of Engleasy
Women 2.0 PITCH Night
