$50,000 Prize For Top Company At TechCrunch20

If you aren’t one of the 200 companies who’ve submitted their application to launch at our upcoming TechCrunch20 conference, now’s the time to do it. The deadline is tomorrow, July 6. We will begin to announce some of the selected companies next week.

Not only will launching companies attend and present for free in front of an audience of hundreds of press, bloggers venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, we are also awarding a no-strings attached $50,000 prize to the startup judged “best in show” by our panel of experts. Some startups will find this prize a very useful way to fund further operations. Others, who are venture or angel funded, may see it as more symbolic. But our intention is to give even more of an incentive for the best startups to launch their products at the event, and give something back to the startup community.

Some of our sponsors will be donating additional goods and services to the winner. More on that on the TechCrunch20 blog later.

We are going to be making many more announcements about the conference over the next few weeks. This is going to be a very fun event. Register to attend here before it sells out; the early bird discount expires on July 15. Some of the venture capitalists who’ve already purchased tickets are listed here.