Eighteen thousand five hundred dollars

Techcrunch/Calcanis announced TC50 will compete directly with DEMO 08. DEMO replied, with a very PR-speak reaction. I'm not sure why they tried to sound like a Microsoft press release, but this morning's follow on had a lot more pew pew. Neither tack helps their case, but they probably weren't going to "win" over the startup set against techcrunch anyway. The only approach that doesn't sound disengenuous is "Dude... ouch."

Frankly I'd have some sympathy. DEMO isn't evil, and Techcrunch is gunning for them like they were sacrificing kittens at the keynote. "Demo must die." they say. But balancing TC50's agressive posture is the unavoidable figure, the cost for a startup to present at DEMO - $18,500. Their excuses for this are myriad, and frankly seem to boil down to "because we can get away with it".

Presenting at DEMO means you haven't gone live yet - a soft rule of the show is that you go live during the conference. Therefore it's reasonable to assume that that $18k isn't coming out of revenue - so it's somebody else's money. Money you could have left on the table and held onto another smidge of equity. Money that could have paid for all sorts of things that would improve your product.

DEMO says that that money proves you're serious. I'd argue that it implies you aren't - if you have the option of a similar conference, TC50, for free.