Start-up Competition Contestants Selected!!!

This was hard.

More than 120 companies submitted applications for our competition, and the vast majority were really  good. But there were only 30 slots to offer, so we had to make some tough decisions.

Here's how it worked:

The process began with a review of the applications themselves. Applicants submitting to the competition found that every field was "required". This was done to ensure that we had the same set of data to review for each company. The form asked for background on the company, details about the technology/product and even a field that asked why they felt they deserved to be chosen.

While everyone put text into all the fields (because it was required to submit), there was a strong differentiation among candidates at this first level. Quite a few companies failed to provide the critical details that would allow us to consider the application in any depth, offering merely a few words or a short sentence in explanation and saying nothing whatsoever about what their technology did, what problem they solved and how they were differentiated in the market.

Without complete data it was impossible to consider these companies. That narrowed our list of competitors from about 120 companies to around 65-70 companies.

From there, a number of things were weighed:

• What was the problem the company was trying to solve? Is it a big existing market, a growing market or an emerging market?
• Does the solution the company offers merely echo other solutions on the market or is it truly differentiated?
• If it's in a crowded market, does the company clearly differentiate itself or its product, explaining how they will rise above the noise?
• Do they have a clearly delineated plan for revenue?
• Will they have something they can physically show in a demo?
• Will the company be either announcing itself or launching a brand new product or solution at LeWeb?
• Also in an attempt to give as many companies opportunity as possible, we also considered if the company was one that had participated at LeWeb last year and tried to give a chance to newcomers.
  

As we considered those factors, the list narrowed to 50.

It was at that point we reviewed again whether the company had someone registered for the conference. More than half of them did not. As explained in detail on the application as well as on the various posts we published about the competition, a key requirement for companies in this competition is that to be considered, someone from the company must be registered to attend the conference. There is no charge to enter, but the competition it is only open to registered attendees for LeWeb3.

All 50 of the companies selected at this point were sent an email stating clearly that they had to ensure at least one person from the company was registered to attend. They were asked to reply and provide the name of the person who had been registered (especially if it was different than the name of the contact on the application that had been submitted).  This email gave a deadline for completing that registration.

After the deadline for that registration passed, we reviewed the list again and checked it against registration. A number of companies opted to withdraw from the competition at this point, and others failed to respond or register.

This narrowed our list to 38 companies for consideration. 

We then reviewed the balance of market sectors and broke down the final 38 into groups -  B2B/enterprise, video, mobile, consumer - as we wanted to try for a fairly balanced representation across categories. Going back through the applications again, we considered the companies against each other in each of the categories and some of the companies slipped lower on the list against their category peers. We also at that point reviewed the geographic balance as we wanted to ensure representation from many countries.

After much deliberation and review, we narrowed the list further, and have now come to our final list of 30 competitors for the 2007 LeWeb3 Start-up Competition.

Thanks to all who submitted and congratulations to our finalists.

The selected companies will be contacted separately with details about the criteria for their presentations, explanations of the process, and information about a pre-conference rehearsal day that will hosted by one of our sponsors on December 10.

With that, we present to you, this year's competing class and the schedule for presentations:

Start-up Competition Schedule - December 11, 2007
11:00 - 11:10    Zyb
11:10 - 11:14    Wichro
11:20 - 11:30    Erepublik
11:30 - 11:40    Yooplus
11:40 - 11:50    RTGI
11:50 - 12:00    Yoowalk

12:30 - 12:40    Siteheart (Walk2Web)
12:40 - 12:50    Creative Ions
12:50 - 13:00    Semingo
13:00 - 13:10    Floobs
13:10 - 13:20    Adpay.tv
13:20 - 13:30    PLYMedia
13:30 - 13:40    Screenvision
13:40 - 13:50    SplitGames
13:50 - 14:00    CTXGames

14:30 - 14:40    LouderVoice
14:40 - 14:50    WooMe
14:50 - 15:00    WaveStorm
15:00 - 15:10    Wixi
15:10 - 15:20    Zoomorama
15:20 - 15:30    Alenty
15:30 - 15:40    DIGICorp
15:40 - 15:50    Holistis
15:50 - 16:00    CodaSystem

16:30 - 16:40    Babelgom
16:40 - 16:50    Caleido
16:50 - 17:00    eXo Platform
17:00 - 17:10    G.ho.st
17:10 - 17:20    BlueKiwi
17:20 - 17:30    SaleMiner

Comments

[Conor O'Neill]

Many thanks Cathy, Geraldine and Loïc, we are thrilled for LouderVoice to make it through.

See you in December!

[Abhishek]

Thank you very much LeWeb3, Cathy, Geraldine and Loïc. We are really really excited about the selection and can not wait to come to Paris now :)

Congratulations to all the finalists, Its pretty tough competition out there!

[Carlos Diaz]

So happy to be in the list, see you soon.

[Mikkel A Svane]

Let me say right away that Zendesk was one of the companies that didn't make the list. Congratulations to the 30 on the list, it seems like a very competent group of companies. Unfortunately I can't be in Paris to see your presentations.

It's not custom that a loser comments on the selection process. There's always the risk of sounding like a whiner or a bad loser. But here goes:

I think it's noteworthy that 60% of the rejected were sorted out because they "failed to provide the critical details that would allow LeWeb3 to consider the application in any depth". Where I come from we say that if everybody's giving the wrong answer, maybe there's something wrong with the question.

Looking at the application form (http://leweb3.seesmic.com) it does seem to ask for brief and to-the-point answers. But apparently that wasn't what the organizers were asking for.

We at Zendesk had expected some sort of response or reaction from LeWeb3 after applying. The only reaction we received was an e-mail asking us to confirm that we had indeed paid the registration fee. It was only coincidently that I today visited the blog to discover we had been sorted out.

On behalf of the 60% that apparently are unable to communicate their businesses in the required format, I feel slightly offended. You can tell us that we don't have the best startups, but don't tell us that we're too stupid to fill out a form.

[semm]

web 2.0

[life ra]

great! i will add you in the toolbar for sl!

[blabla]

I don't understand the criteria for selecting. Who are the judges?

Apparently Loic is going to launch his own web tv live solution, is it why there's no company in live video broadcasting industry been selected?

[Cathy Brooks]

Actually there are several companies in the web TV/live broadcast/video space included in the competition. There were, of course, among the applications many others but as noted in the explanation of our process, a number of companies did not make it past some of the other criteria selection. We also will be addressing quite a bit of content on the main stage and workshop track related to the evolution of television and have several companies represented on that front.

[Esenthal Prave]

I'm not sure what the hold-up is... maybe they have re-thought their stance on how this is going to actually make the company any money. Or perhaps their lawyers pointed out the liability of providing agents a platform to stick their feet in their mouth. Whatever it is, it's hardly something I'd claim as being "Well done".
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