Dealmaker conferences: a model for innovation?
June 5th, 2008The Dealmaker “Under the Radar” conference that just took place in Mountainview, at its usual Microsoft campus location, is now a well-oiled machine, right down to the quite decent catering.
Under the Radar is the American Idol of early startups looking for seed or round A funding: the fat lady has 6 minutes to sing, but then it ain’t over, judges and audience grill you till you look like a 4th of July hot dog. Finally, everyone texts their vote to a set address.
I want to say that Dealmaker is a great model for disruptive innovation: great VCs, interesting companies, cool-looking media types pecking away on their keyboards (actually, everyone is doing that, and it’s an annoying habit: why go to a conference if you’re going to spend your time on email? Although to be fair, many people are checking out the presenting companies online as the pitch is being delivered). Also, Dealmaker helps, for a fee, the start-up CEOs make the best pitch possible, so all in all this is the apex of venture capitalism, right?
Well, not so sure. Look at the list of this year’s winners:
http://www.undertheradarblog.com/wp_blog.html?fb_2042860_anch=4171647
All of these are interesting concepts. None of them rocked my world. My neighbor, Prafull Nayak of Webex, resonated. “I find the companies to be pretty soft this year” was how he summarized it before leaving early. This doesn’t invalidate Dealmaker in any way, but it does bring to mind two things:
- There is a start-up flocking behavior: projects are congregating in the social media space at a dizzying rate, but the technology and revenue models are sounding more and more tired; which tells me that we are at the top of the logistics curve and returns will be diminishing
- Innovation happens elsewhere to borrow from Goldman and Gabriel.
This second point relates to the first.
From my standpoint, innovation happens at Ted, the “ideas worth spreading” show. I’m not important enough to be an attendee, but like the rest of us, I watch the videos.
That’s where I found out about Jeff Han’s touch screens, which I’m sure inspired the Iphone; and definitely reminded me of the very cool interface in Minority Report. I also found out about Blaise Aguera’s amazing Seadragon photo-linking program; and Theo Jansen’s spookily beautiful “new life-forms”, which I think should invite the robotics crowd to reconsider their designs.
At Ted, you won’t see bumbling CEOs subjecting you to inane slides or crumpling under a barrage of equally inane objections from dyspeptic judges: you will be awed, inspired, and quite moved. Moved by human creativity before it is reforged in the crucible of business.
That’s the stage, I believe, when a project is worth looking into. Not the Dealmaker stage.