More good news around the upcoming TechCrunch20 Conference in San Francisco this September: Ron Conway, Loic Le Meur and Sarah Lacy have agreed to join the Expert Panel, bringing the total number of experts who’ve agreed to participate to 16. The full list of experts is here.
The deadline to submit applications to launch a startup at the event ended last week - and we had over 600 submissions that we are reviewing now. If you are one of the companies that doesn’t make the cut into the twenty finalists, don’t worry. We’ve got a cool program that we’ll be announcing that will give you the opportunity to have a presence at the event.
The early bird registration discount ends on July 16.
More on the new experts:
Loic Le Meur
Loïc Le Meur is a well-known French serial entrepreneur who has created and sold multiple Internet startups, including B2L (sold to BBDO), RapidSite France (sold to France Telecom), Tekora (sold to Access-Commerce) and Ublog (merged with Six Apart.) Working on his next venture, Loïc continues to be an active investor. He organizes Europe’s largest annual web event, LeWeb3, that gathered 1300 participants from 37 Countries in 2006. Loïc’s blog is one of the most popular in France, read by more than 250,000 unique visitors per month.
Ron Conway
Ron Conway is one of the Internet’s pre-eminent angel investors. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Red Envelope, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail. Ron was named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “dealmakers” in 2006. He is an active advisor for a number of Internet companies and also very active in community and philanthropic activities, including Vice Chairman of UCSF Medical Foundation in San Francisco. Most recently, Ron has been leading the “Fight for Mike” Homer and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD.)
Sarah Lacy
Sarah Lacy has been covering start-ups and venture capital in Silicon Valley for the last seven years. She has been a contributor to the San Jose Business Journal. Most recently, Sarah was a reporter and blogger for Business Week. She co-wrote last year’s famous magazine cover story on Digg’s founder Kevin Rose titled “How This Kid Made $60 Million In 18 Months.” She is currently taking a year off from reporting to work on a book covering Web 2.0.
A special program?
I would rather present at the conference, but if I can get free entrance that would be good too I guess. =^)
Make sure Le Meur doesn’t bring Sarkozy with him…he has a history of hijacking conferences for his own political ambitions.
Good guests. You’ve got a nice diverse panel.
Great idea Mike, looking forward to it.
Can I ask one question…
Why MC Hammer?
Hmmm….
Now that I read about this Le Meur character I am not sure if this is such a plus.
“Loic Lemeur has sold out his european peer group for some cheap headlines in french politics - if at all. He has destroyed trust and confidence in a way I have never seen this before”
http://crueltobekind.org/archi.....g_1000_att
Hammer is a savvy dude. Don’t let the baloon pants fool you. This guys knows his stuff and he is tied in with the Valley shakers.
This is an excellent panel of experts. Although I am in no position to attend this year, I look forward to the updates and details from the conference itself.
I wonder if Sam Sethi will log in afterwards and call Loic an arsehole.
Can we participate if we had already showed our product in couple of smaller events, not many noticed it.
We would love to participate in techcrunc20. Any comments please ?
Mark- I’ll do it myself, and ask again for my money back for LeWeb 3.
By the way, I agree that it is B*llSh$#t to hijack a tech conference and fill it with political propaganda.
My 2 cents.
Don’t take this as any displeasure with having the guy on the panel here. Who knows, maybe that kind of stuff is normal in France. That’s not important to me.
If they hijack TechCrunch20 to bring Bush on stage though…
Thanks Michael.
About last years’ controversy started by a few participants about my conference, before believing that I hijack everything, please read this:
http://www.loiclemeur.com/engl....._blog.html
to make it short, politics was always on the program, a full afternoon, the only thing I did was to bring real politicians that took about an hour in total in a two day conference, President Shimon Peres, President Sarkozy and Central party François Bayrou who was “the third” candidate. Socialist candidate Royal was invited and could not make it. I did it in the context of the French elections approaching as it was in France, thought doing good and most participants liked it.
In order to reassure you about my political ambitions, I have not blogged neither been interested in politics since the enf of the French campaign…
I am collecting a huge feedback/suggestions for the 2007 edition and will build the conference on this feedback. Think I’m evil ? feel free to email me at blog (at) loiclemeur.com
Good luck with the conference!
This is the best blog and source of technology news on the web. You guys are great!
What’s the matter with some of these people? Got nothing better to do other than throw rocks?
Listen up - Loic made a mistake. He acknowledged that at the time. If you don’t know him then don’t throw rocks. I do know Loic. He’s a decent man who has helped me on more than one occasion. I am PROUD to be lending a hand with the next LeWeb.
Otherwise - get over it and move on - or don’t turn up. Either way, this is history.
Dennis,
Getting a little worked up over there? =^)
I think we are entitled to comment on what we like. This is an open forum.
I am glad you are PROUD of Loic though.
Tim, it’s an open forum to a point. Anonymous comments pushing alternative agendas don’t usually stay up very long.
Well thanks for creating a place where we can do this, even if it is up to a point.
I always find the conversations here very interesting. It makes sense though that people would bring up the issues from LeWeb, as it was quite a public issue.
But again, I have no problem with Loic. I am sure he will be a great person to have on the panel and it just pushes TechCrunch20 further into the limelight.
And hey, a little controversy never hurt anybody, right?
I am curious for your input though. Loic makes sense, but MC Hammer? Is he involved in web 2.0? I am not discounting on him, this is a serious question. Is he involved in things I am not aware of?
I am sure he is, but how are they relevant here?
The so-called “hijacking” of Loic’s conference involved two leading candidates for the French presidency along with Shimon Peres speaking about their views on the role technology.
Of those “hijackers”, one is now president of France (Nicolas Sarkozy) and another is president of Israel (Shimon Peres).
If you don’t think that politics has a role to play in the future of technology, I invite you to visit Burma, Iraq or Afghanistan.
I sympathize with those speakers displaced at the last minute (and Loic apologized to them on stage and afterwards), but the room was packed when each three of the “hijackers” spoke.
What surprised me about the fuss on the blogosphere is that it contradicted the packed room and showed a reluctance among tech people to embrace improvisation!
Sarah Lacy is cute! She should do a shoot for Maxim.
I Wonder what they would call her layout (~ponders for a bit~)
Rockstarlove!
Tim - You’re right. And for reason. I get worked up over people who either harbor resentments (a sure sign of unresolved conflict) and who choose not to take them up with the person concerned directly, those who do not know the person at whom they’re pitching rocks and those who take every opportunity to have a crack because they think the blogs give them that freedom.
I hold to the view that freedom comes with a condition - accountability. Unfortunately, that’s not universally shared.
FYI - Tom Raftery - who was one of Loic’s fiercest critics last time around - recently did an exceptionally fine vidcast with Loic which proved to me once and for all there is such a thing as forgiveness and reconciliation. And the blogs are a great place to demonstrate that.
Time to move on.
I am also most excited about Sarah Lacy among the 3 new panelist, not just because she is cute, though that has something to do with it, but I would like to see more press on the panel. More press never hurts
That said, you have a fine panelist, MA.
I forgive you Dennis. =^)
Ron Conway is a great choice. He invested in us early, and we will always be grateful to him.
http://www.merchantcircle.com
Ron Conway typically invests only 50K! Why give equity for such small amounts?
Ron also thinks that investors need to make money before founders do.
Having said that, I would love to hear what value he adds.
feedback guy…
50K can mean life or death to some companies. Remember this is the internet age, where you don’t need $1 million to have a successful company. This has been proven time and again.
Entrepreneurs launch sites here because they are displaying it to a community of like-minded people. The others here are likely to understand and give real feedback, even if it doesn’t all appear here in the comments section.
The contacts you make here can be extremely important in making a site successful. Like I have said many times, the value of a site is not the technology it is built on, but its (or its founders) ability to build a community around it.
This should be clear since TechCrunch itself is not built with some earth shattering technology. The value is from the people and the interaction.
I was at LeWeb 3. If a US tech conference had invited the leading candidates for the presidency, and if 2 out of 3 of them showed up to talk about tech policy, I think we’d count it an hour well-spent. I thought Loic’s interview with the candidate he did not favor (Loic made his preferences clear) was not only fair, but made that candidate seem more attractive than the one Loic did favor.
BTW, I believe no one was bumped from the schedule to make room for the politicians. Not much of a hijacking.
Thanks Tim. Your feedback also helps with my second comment (the one that disappeared from here
Mike, it was a genuine question which I though would help TC20 and entrepreneurs. Sorry, if I offended you.
Tim & the rest, in today’s market $50K or more can be easily raised. Just talk to 5 investors and 2-3 will invest.
Specifically, I am interested in knowing what value Ron Conway adds. Feedback from anyone who had him as an investor would help very much.
Ron has been one of the most helpful investors I have ever had and I have ever seen. He works tirelessly for the companies in which he invests. I call him “the human router” — he knows practically everyone and is hugely helpful in meeting customers, partners, new investors, you name it.
Marc
Thanks Marc. Very much appreciate feedback from a great person like you.
Cheers!
Mike is passionate about startups more than anybody I know. He is trying to help 20 startups without charging them a penny with the best help he can get.
If you have problem with any member of the panel, there is a “Disclosure Limitations section in the application form.” to limit who can view your company profile.
Hope that helps
I’m looking forward to the “the opportunity to have a presence at the event.” Unless of course, we make the cut. =)
I ended up having the privilege of MC’ing LeWeb3 to allow Loic to manage the inclusion of the politicians in the program. I confirm David’s comment on the speakers: no one was kicked out of the program, some people did move from a keynote spot to a panel, and to the best of my knowledge, did make a fuss about it. Everything happened too fast to properly warn our attendees about all the changes, and that’s regrettable. At the same time, involving two future state presidents (France and Israel) in the conference was the right thing to do - even if I was pissed off that Sarkozy gave us a monologue as opposed to engaging in a conversation like his opponent Bayrou did (and I voted Sarkozy just to put things in perspective).
Quoting some of the people who reacted negatively is fine, but you are giving a biased view of what happened You also need to mention the outpouring of support and positive comments that Loic received after the event.
And give us a break on Ron, he has been - by far - the most active angel investor in the Web 2.0 space, and has most likely met more entrepreneurs than any of the “Web 2.0 Kingmakers”.
Leweb3 was a great conference and made for once Paris shine and stand out of the world on the tech scene. Loic learnt a lot from what happened last year and i believe this year will be an even better conference. People seem to forget to out of 3 politics present there were 30 other panels and a startup show room plus great networking opportunities. It seems to me there will always be a minority of complainers shouting louder than the rest of the crowd
Mike great choice for this panel, Loic is probably one of the best internet icon in France and in Europe and this will serve well TC20
who is Loic?
We demand more like Index Venture guys to be on the panel.
I. Index Venture Rimmer brothers
II. Martin Varsavsky (fon)
III. Janus Friis (Joost)
TC people from Europe we want these guys to be on the panel.
All the love from Yahoo in Sverige
Loic Le Meur is with no doubt the main European business blogger, so having it in your expert panel will surely improve your conference and establish bridges between Europe and America, which is very important in a 2.0 collaborative world.
As of LeWeb3 and politicians, it was a 2-day conference with lots of people taking part. Having for 15 minutes a French politician speaking was probably not the best idea, but as any human being, he has the right of making mistakes. In fact, he admitted it.
I was at Le Web 3. I wrote my defense of Loic here:
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Move.....03532.html
“Having gotten to know Loic these last few years, and seeing first-hand what drives him, I find the lynch-mob that has emerged since yesterday utterly appalling. Anyone who thinks Loic just used the conference solely and selfishly to feed his own vanity and political career…
…is an utter fool.”
Of course, when one takes anonymous swipes at someone, it only begs the question, “Yeah, and what is it you do that is so frickin’ interesting and wonderful…?” Any fool can have an opinion etc.
And she’s cute!
(sarah lacey, I mean)
Welcome to the group all…I am looking forward to reading your articles. Techcrunch is my #1 favorite tech blog.
Sarah is cute; no lie.
- offsets hammers not worthiness - by her hotness
-RB
Hey,
Glad to see that Loic’s arguable political choices are following him all the way to the west coast. You can run, but you can’t hide man!