TechCrunch 50: the day-one launches

TechCrunch 50 opens this morning in San Francisco, promising to launch 52 new companies and products into the Silicon Valley ecosystem. The build-up to the event has been dominated by the tub thumping of Michael Arrington, TC50 impresario and blogger extraordinaire, who has been stirring up the rivalry with Demo 08 (a similar event taking place simultaneously a few hundred miles down the coast in San Diego).

Following a Times Online story about the dispute, Arrington has been calling on the press to "calm down" and "remember what’s important" about the conference – the 52 companies – although it’s notable that he uses the same post to attack Demo and its organisers once again. In any case, the publicity probably hasn’t done either event any harm, although the decision to schedule TC50 for the same week as Demo probably has siphoned off some attention from the more established event.

In any case, now it really is time to focus on what’s important. It’s 6.30am on a beautiful sunny day in San Francisco and the TC50 team has just unveiled the names of the companies who will be presenting today. Each one, starting with Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg’s Blah Girls web media project, will have six minutes on stage in front of a judging panel and an audience of journalists, investors and tech enthusiasts. As soon as I’ve posted this, I’ll be heading off to the conference centre to start hearing the pitches, and as I do I’ll update this blog with details of the most interesting.

Adgregate Markets (Presented by Henry Wong and Du Nguyen)

AdRocket (Presented by Scott Milener and Andreas Svensson)

Angstro (Presented by Rohit Khare and Salim Ismail)

BlahGirls (Presented by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg)

Burt (Presented by Gustav von Sydow and Gustav Martner)

Connective Logic (Presented by Stuart Smith and Jeremy Orme)

Devunity (Presented by Alon Carmel and Leeron Shalev)

DotSpots (Presented by Farhad Mohit and Matthew Mastracci)

FairSoftware (Presented by Alain Raynaud and Eileen Long)

Hangout Industries (Presented by Pano Anthos and Lucas Smolic)

LiveHit (Presented by Jeanine LeFlore)

OtherInBox (Presented by Joshua Baer and Mike Subelsky)

Quant the News (Presented by Brett Markinson and Ben Goertzel)

Rinen (Presented by Hirofumi Manganji and Go Hagiwara)

Shryk (Presented by Shane Kempton and Kim Stroh)

Tweegee (Presented by Shay Bloch and Adi Brandwine)

Yammer (Presented by David Sacks and Adam Pisoni)