Techcrunch UK's Christmas Party 2008 - The Pitches

Techcrunch UK held a good party tonight with some interesting panels and debates. Well worth attending in my humble view. I met some interesting people which is definitely a plus as well ;)

The pitches were a mixed bunch tonight but below is a 1 or 2 sentence review of each of them. Before I start - I cannot believe how difficult it was to get logos for some of these guys - talk about making life more difficult for bloggers!

booking bug - interesting software as a service play looking to provide booking services to service providers. Great unsexy idea but with difficulty getting to their customerbase, approaching listings/directories would be low hanging fruit (difficult to obtain logo!)

cardcode.net - make business cards more useful - creates a code that allows you to retrieve the information quickly and easily. I am sure I have seen business card scanners that grab information direct from a business card - that strikes me as one less step and therefore a better option. (difficult to obtain logo!)

jupidi - these guys made everyone smile - a service to allow you understand the opposite sex (SMS a question asking for advice and receive a human response). They did not seem to know what they would do if someone sued them for bad advice.. a little worrying considering their target audience. I also was not sure if they were using psycologists or not?

rendezview - the icelandic guy ;) - makes meetings more productive - though the presentation was good, I just was not convinced by the pitch - its a good idea but I could not see why people would use it, and those who did would suffer the same issue with those using pen and paper - not enough time to prepare and follow up effectively. They also really need a better URL. Am I wrong?

socialibrium is a great concept I think - it is a relationship tool for your contacts, basically telling you who you are not talking to. They are talking to the consumers unlike socialminder which is for the business space. I love the idea of the tool, I really want to get a closer look . The interface seemed more advanced than socialminder - I’ll give a more in depth review after I take a look. In today’s environment, I think the business market is probably a better one mind.

soundcloud is the flickr for audio - it sounds such a weak pitch until I realised I know few others like it, everyone else seems to be doing video. It sounds like a great idea and if its as easy to use as they make out then they could be onto a winner. They have MC Hammer on board (who’s knowledge is impressively adept online) and they came second tonight. Worth checking out. (but their logo was not easy to get hold off)

Quick.tv - before they stood up my expectations were low - another tv startup here we go. And then the pitch started. This was a well presented pitch - they make video interactive in a way that looked very easy, allowing advertisers and content providers to interact with their audience. The interface looked good and very easy to use so it was of no surprise to me that they won tonight. I am waiting for Google to buy them and use it to monetise YouTube.

Worldeka was the only startup I had heard of before, they are a social network for change - allowing charities to connect with activists and crowdsource to achieve their aims. It is an interesting concept though I struggle to see how they will be profitable without charging the charities - they said advertising was enough, I am not so sure.