Venturebeat
by Erick Schonfeld on February 18, 2009

Things are changing at DEMO, the startup and product-launch conference owned by IDG that competes with our own TechCrunch50 conference. After 13 years, conference organizer Chris Shipley will make way for Matt Marshall, editor of VentureBeat. The two will co-produce DEMO as Marshall gets up to speed, then he will take over. Marshall says he will focus on “injecting deeper themes” into DEMO.

DEMO could certainly use the new blood. And VentureBeat could use the extra cash that the deal will bring it. (VentureBeat will share in the profits of the conference). But Marshall is going to have to do a lot more than appeal to the chin-strokers in the audience. He is going to have to reinvigorate a dying brand. It is not so much about the themes of the conference as it is who goes to them.

Prepping For Mobile Web Wars At MobileBeat
5 Comments
by Erick Schonfeld on July 24, 2008

Today and tomorrow I am going totally mobile. And if you are in the Bay Area, so should you. It’s not too late to get tickets for MobileBeat, VentureBeat’s mobile conference that goes all day today. You can get a 10 percent discount on tickets by using using this code: TCMB08.

I will be there moderating a panel with Rich Miner (Google’s group manager of wireless), Matt Murphy (the Kleiner Perkins Partner who runs the iFund), Sam Altman (CEO of Loopt), and J.H. Kah (SK Telecom’s SVP of Business Development). We’ll be exploring all the big platform shifts going on in mobile right now with the iPhone and the coming Android phones.

I will be continuing that discussion at our own Mobile Web Wars Roundtable tomorrow, which will be a live-streamed discussion. But that’s sold out (the venue only holds 150 people). MobileBeat is much larger and you can still get tickets.

Here is the complete list of who is speaking:

Rich Miner, Android/Google, Group Manager, Wireless Programs
Matt Murphy, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers, Partner
Ross Levinsohn, Velocity Interactive Group, Partner
Mike Baker, Nokia Interactive, Vice President
Jeff Sellinger, CBS Mobile, EVP & General Manager
John Smelzer, FOX Interactive Media, SVP & General Manager
Michael Bayle, Yahoo!, General Manager of Global Monetization
Sumit Agarwal, Google, Product Manager, Mobile
J.H. Kah, SK Telecom, SVP, Business Development
Rick Segal, JLA Ventures, Co-Manager of Blackberry Partners Fund
Steve Hegenderfer, Microsoft, Group Manager, Windows Mobile
Brandon Lucas, MySpace, Sr. Director, Mobile
Jed Stremel, Facebook, Director of Mobile
Sandi Isaacs, Paramount Pictures, Sr. Vice President Interactive & Mobile
Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, Co-Editor
Dan Farber, CNET, Editor-in-Chief
Om Malik, GigaOmni Media, Founder
Sam Altman, Loopt, CEO & co-Founder
Omar Hamoui, Admob, Founder & CEO
Jason Devitt, Skydeck, Founder and CEO
Richard Wong, Accel Partners, Partner
Jeff Brody, Redpoint Ventures, Founding Partner
Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners, Principal
Shawn Carolan, Menlo Ventures, Managing Director
Lars Kamp, Accenture, Head of Wireless Practice
Gregory Gorman, Tertius, Founder
Matthew Fix, Vodafone Ventures, Principal
Satya Mallya, Orange Telecom, Director at Orange Labs
Dr. Richard Koo, Augmentum, SVP of Augmentation Services
Mike Rowehl, Skyfire

VentureBeat Takes $320,000 First Round
18 Comments
by Duncan Riley on February 11, 2008

venturebeat.jpgVenture focused blog VentureBeat has taken a seed round of $320,000. Investors include Georges Harik and Aydin Senkut (both ex-Google); Mike Brown, Philippe Cases, MHS Capital, Amidzad and White Sand Group among others. VentureBeat joins GigaOm, who’ve raised two rounds, in the “funded blog network” category.

VentureBeat was founded in 2006 by ex-San Jose Mercury News writer Matt Marshall and has as its goal “to provide insider news and data about the entrepreneurial and venture community that is useful to decision makers.”

Marshall said that the money would be used to take the site to the next stage, and will also presumably be used to pay Dean Takahashi’s salary, a new high profile signing for VentureBeat announced last week.

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