Left: Microsoft in Mountain View hosted the Launch: Silicon Valley event, promoted by SVASE

The Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE) and Microsoft helped to host yesterday’s Launch: Silicon Valley event in Mountain View. It started with a keynote presentation (where Guy shared the success/failure of Truemors) and went into pitches from many entrepreneurs in the tech industry.

I took a few notes while listening to these companies, and will list out my observations below. If I didn’t cover your company, it’s because I was extremely bored, you failed to give a value proposition up front (thereby losing me) or I simply wasn’t in the room at the time.

Attention startups: Learn how to put the value proposition right up front. There are quite a few companies who presented where I simply had to figure out in my mind (or ask someone around me) why do I care, what are they fixing, what do they do. I wrote this list of “10 things to know before your Pitch at STIRR (or anywhere else for that matter)” for STIRR where similiar events occur. If you still haven’t figured out how to pitch, you should contact Shel Israel, who’s helped many companies present at Demo.

Reviews: Startup presentations at Launch Silicon Valley

Guy Kawasaki’s Truemors
While not a pitch, Guy shared his experiences with Truemors, (see his thoughts and slides) and how $12,000 of investment got him a hell of a lot of press and buzz. There’s no such thing as bad press he says, and he would like you to trash his company, so I will: Guy, Truemors sucks! While Guy comes across as arrogant and is frequently a topic of discussion, I’ve got to give him credit for being one of the first Asian Americans in Silicon valley to break the image that we can only be quiet software engineers, and for that, thanks Guy. Rafe at Webware has additional coverage. Update, Shel Israel has a great review of Guy’s presentation.

BooRah
While having an interesting name (they say it was one of the worst rated) they help to provide “social media parts” for newspapers. This is one of those companies that I really didn’t understand the value prop, and asked folks around me, they shrugged too.

Catalog Data Solutions
I could tell the founder John Major has spent years in corporate, that was very apparent by his densely packed presentation and corporate presenting style. I myself have spent 90% of my career in corporate, so it takes one to know one. My colleagues often tell me I’m very corporate too. Catalog appears to connect designers of 3D CAD models to sift through a knowledge repository –saving time and money.

EyeJot
This was captivating and interesting, instead of email, one could send video short messages. I really enjoyed the pitch, it was well delivered, on-message and clear and easy to understand from the live video demos. Eyejot also sports a video widget component for blogs or social networks. The one concern I have for the eyejotters is that there are hundreds of players in this space.

Fix8
Interesting ‘add-on’ fun module on top of your existing video cam, a “soul transformer” as the founder suggested. Anyone using a webcam can have additional graphics and personas layered on top of your image. Logitech has this feature right out of the box, although Fix8 suggests they can provide an appliance to make it ‘web-ready’. I see opportunities for corporate branding, or for user gaming interactions. Imagine instead of doing voip only to your teammates while playing Warcraft, you can now emulate your actual 40th level elf paladin warrior.

Jaxtr
A phone widget that let’s users leave voice messages to provide privacy to a user and their company. I’ve questions of why use this instead of Voip or is it odeo?. There’s a cost saving benefit as you can dial a local number which will redirect to a international number, but there are also many tools in existence that can already do this (a list of other players in the space, and some useful reviews by Jim). They have 120,000 users and had a big increase due to word of mouth marketing.

TelID
Think Tinyurl for phones. A phone and url solutions that issues a ‘primary key’ that will convert your phone number to a unique url, or anything else you want. I see the applications for sales, realtors, and others that want to drive users to their buried webpage, and this service has some SEO and SEM implications. Great little feature, I expect 37 signals or someone like that to launch a feature like this.

Divinr
This ties to the wisdom of crowds mantra as it helps social networks, communities, and friends benefit from community search. This was even discussed in yesterday’s keynote at the new media summit. This tool could help drive revenue to ecommerce solutions, although it’s not entirely clear on how it’s done. According to their fact sheet: “a web-based advertising platform, integrated into user forums and ecommerce websites.”

Kongregate
If I had to invest my money in one company it would be this one. They provide a user geneated games community, games are created by the community, and users are rewarded. There’s quite a few other hooks and nice features that encourage user interaction and community. One of the lead investors is Reid Hoffman, in a market space of over 2 million in 2005. Most impressive, the average web session length is 40 minutes, users are clicking, chatting, and typing away –highly engaged.

Here’s some other folks that have reviewed companies and products:

Jim Panttaja: New companies viewed at Launch Silicon Valley sponsored by SVASE