TechCrunch50 is less than a week away, and we’re putting the final touches on what will be a jam-packed two days of startup launches, hallway pitches, and new ideas. We’re proud to announce new Twitter COO and FeedBurner founder Dick Costolo, RedPoint Ventures partner and Zimbra founder Satish Dharmaraj, Google’s social apps guru Bradley Horowitz, Charles River Ventures partner George Zachary and Perkins Cole attorney Lior Zorea will be rounding out our on-stage Panel of Experts at TechCrunch50. They’ll judge the fifty startups that will launch in front of a crowd of 2,000 or so eager attendees.
Each startup will present in front of a panel of successful entrepreneurs, VCs, and industry experts. In addition to these latest additions, we’ve already announced experts Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, Don Dodge, Paul Graham, Jason Hirschhorn, Reid Hoffman, Tony Hsieh, Marissa Mayer, Tim O’Reilly, Sean Parker, Kevin Rose, Mike Schroepfer, Robert Scoble, and Yossi Vardi.
Two days, 50 launches, I can’t wait. The startups are already being put through their paces in rehearsals at a secret location (okay, it’s Sequoia’s offices). Each one will be a surpirse, of course, but there will also be some special announcements scattered throughout the two days by AOL, Microsoft, and Google, as well as a Facebook Developer Garage. We just posted the official conference agenda, found here. The 50 presenting companies won’t be released until the day of the conference, and there are other details we’re just not going to tell you quite yet, but the agenda should provide an idea of what we have in store.
More conference info is available over on the TC50 conference website. The event will be held at the San Francisco Design Center, a huge and beautiful venue where nearly 2,000 participants roamed last year.
There are still some tickets for the event, which can be purchased here courtesy of Eventbrite. And if you’re interested in demoing your product, we can even squeeze in a few more DemoPit and Exhibitor tables (e-mail us for details).
More on the TechCrunch50 blog.
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Dick CostoloDick Costolo is the COO of Twitter. He has co-founded and sold 3 companies, the last of which was Feedburner (acquired by Google in 2007). Additionally, Dick has performed comedy routines in Chicago’s Annoyance Theater and has been involved with various improv shows and festivals. |
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Satish DharmarajSatish Dharmaraj is a Partner with Redpoint Ventures where he focuses on investments in SaaS, Software Infrastructure / Applications, Consumer and Mobile areas. He led Redpoint’s investments in VMOps and CloudStor and serves on the boards of those companies. Before Redpoint, Satish’s prior investments include Posterous, DimDim, Zelfy and Milo (sold to Voxeo) and is also an advisor to several early stage technology companies. He is also a founding board member of a Non-Profit Organization based in the bay area called HelpingHands and a charter member of TiE. Prior to Redpoint, Satish was the founder/CEO of Zimbra where he grew sales from inception to $20M in subscription sales in the first year of selling and nearly doubled sales the next year. He was responsible for the sale of Zimbra to Yahoo for $350M – a contract he negotiated directly, without using a banker, on behalf of the board. Satish has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Sciences and an executive management degree from the Harvard Business School. |
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<a href="Bradley HorowitzBradley oversees product management for Google Apps, including Gmail, Calendar, Google Talk, Google Voice, Google Docs, Blogger and Picasa. Before joining Google, Bradley led Yahoo’s advanced development division, which developed new products such as Yahoo! Pipes, and drove the acquisition of products such as Flickr and MyBlogLog. Previously, he was Co-Founder and CTO of Virage, where he oversaw the technical direction of the company from its founding through its IPO and eventual acquisition by Autonomy. Bradley holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Michigan, and a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab and was pursuing his Ph.D. there when he co-founded Virage. |
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George ZacharyGeorge Zachary is a Partner at Charles River Ventures. He provides more than 17 years of operating and investing experience in computing and consumer technology. George’s focus is on building great services and software technology companies. George led CRV’s investments in Areae, Geni.com, GoTV, Millennial Media, Skyrider, SocialMedia Networks and Twitter and is a board member at Twitter. |
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Lior ZoreaLior Zorea is a Partner in the Perkins Coie Menlo Park office and a member of the firm’s Emerging Companies practice group. Lior has a corporate and securities law practice encompassing venture capital, debt and other private financings, public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and general business counseling. Lior focuses on representing emerging growth technology companies and their founders in the information technology space including the internet, software, digital media and semiconductor sectors. |
Great partners make great conferences
We’re really lucky to have the corporate support of some of the best names in the business. Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures and Perkins Coie all returned quickly to support us for the third year in a row. Google, Founders Fund, Microsoft and MySpace are back for their second year of partnership, and this year Bing, Facebook and Redpoint Ventures stepped forward as first-time partners.
