Jason Calacanis writes this in his announcement of the panel appointees:

“Company presentations will be kept private under NDA until the event. If for someone reason you don’t want me to know about it you can pitch Mike Arrington directly and I will stay out of it (I trust his judgement on these issues).”

Full post:
http://www.calacanis.com/2007/.....-the-team/

It doesn’t answer all your questions (fair ones, I think), but it’s a good start. As far as the the first mover advantage goes, attention can be a double edged sword in this situation. If your product is compelling enough, Google or Yahoo could eye you for a quick acquisition, which they’ve both come to be skilled at doing. But yes, they could also choose to compete. Either way, I don’t see how you could expect to avoid attention at a conference like this. Even without the impressive panel, Mike and Jason alone wield a huge reach in the tech startup blogosphere. It sounds like your startup should stay stealth for now and try to gain traction at a grassroots level.

Are you saying is that Marissa and Brad get to see our TC20 company submissions, including private information you’ve requested like funding, backers, usage statistics, business model, planned features and competitive advantage?

And since the TC20 conference is not until September, do they get to see all this information 4 months before the service is even launched?

If this is the case can you please:

1) Tell us if you have already forwarded company submissions to these folks?
2) Tell us how do we can withdraw our submitted applications?
3) Put an explicit warning to companies on the TC20 submission page that their submissions are going to be directly forwarded to their potential #1 and #2 competitors?

For the record I can’t see how on earth you thought that this would be a good idea. The most difficult question we entrepreneurs face from investors these days is “what are you going to do if Google/Yahoo start doing what you are doing?”… At least with a first mover advantage our startups might have a fighting chance to get traction before we get run over by “the new Microsoft” (aka Google).

The next problem is, can you promise Marissa’s and Brad’s opinions on participating companies won’t be swayed but what features and products they have planned for the future? No you can’t.

I was really looking forward to this event because of it’s promise of being non-political and purely based on merit. Now I think this is going to be the most BS event ever.

Frankly, I’m very disappointed.

2 Legit, 2 Legit to Blog.

- yah know the other fellas dont know how to act …..

(sorry Mc-Hammer got me in a music mood) …

- The more people you ad; the worse MC looks; I hope he doesn’t speak much at the conference

…now about this Em-See Hammer fellow…

Just be interesting to find out how is applying ?

I was just kidding. I just remember MC Hammer playing on the radio NON STOP (not that it was a bad thing). Hammer is one of the only rappers out there who managed to keep a clean image and become very successful while doing so, unlike most one-hit-wonders out there today. He’s also dabbled in tech (Dance Jam)…

http://techcrunch20.com/panel-of-experts/

TechCrunchは、9月に開かれるTechCrunch20カンファレンスに、新たに2名のエキスパートを招くことを本日（米国時間5/16）発表した。GoogleのMarissa Mayer（検索およびユーザ経験担当VP）と、Yahooの…

Cheers

This announcement wasn’t even about him, and you’re getting 80+% responses about him instead.

Again, I bet he actually brings something worthwhile to the discussion, just not to the marketing.

the Hammer, on the other hand, was too legit to quit.

I’m on a roll, it’s time to go solo.