TradeVibes Blog

If you are in, or plan to be in, the San Francisco Bay Area this up coming Thursday, October 2, 2008, then consider attending the STARTonomics.com Conference put on by DealMaker Media and Dave McClure. The 1-day conference is dedicated to teaching entrepreneurs how to create and use Startup Metrics to promote startup success.

Register here through Wednesday, October 1, at 3:00 pm. For all of you non-students out there, use the promo code START208 to receive 20% your registration fee.

Want to learn more about the Conference? Then head over to the STARTonomics.com website, and check out  the session schedule and list of speakers.

Part of the mission of TradeVibes is to provide a platform to aggregate the wisdom of the crowds to filter the most promising startups from the rest. To this end, we have launched a number of products today: My Bullish 5 and Company Top Bulls (and Bears). We have also announced a special contest where our users can test their VC investing skills to win an iPhone.

My Bullish 5 is a way for every user to show case their opinions about companies on TradeVibes. Users have always been able to vote on whether they are bullish or bearish about certain companies. With My Bullish 5, TradeVibes users can now feature the 5 startups they are the most bullish on. Here’s an example. Companies you vote bullish on will automatically be added to your My Bullish 5 list until you have voted bullish on five companies. If you have voted bullish on more than five companies, you can log into your account and go to your My Account page to edit your list.

The Company Top Bulls list is a way for users to see which companies have received the most bullish votes and opinions of late. The default time window is 7 days, although you can adjust the time period to look at just the last 24 hours, or the last 30 days. The default list shows 5 bullish companies and 5 bearish companies, but you can expand the list to see the top 20 of each list.

Last but not least, in honor of our selection to the Web 2.0 Expo Launch Pad and our participation in the Expo (we’ll be at booth 26 in the Long Tail Pavilion), we’re hosting a “Be the VC Contest: Web 2.0 Expo Edition”. Using the My Bullish 5 feature above, conference attendees and all TradeVibes users will be able to play VC by picking their most bullish 5 companies out of the 100 startups we selected (out of ~200 exhibitors at the Web 2.0 Expo). Since you are more likely to win if other people vote for the same companies you voted for, you may want to convince your friends or other community members on why they should vote bullish on your Bullish 5. You can read about the contest overview and official rules at your leisure, but the winner of the contest will win an Apple iPhone!

May the best investor win…

We are very excited to announce that TradeVibes was selected as one of six companies presenting at the Web 2.0 Expo Launch Pad 2008. We feel very fortunate for the opportunity, given there were more than 150 companies that applied for the six spots. We will be presenting our demo between 1:30 and 2:30 on Thursday 4/24. If you are attending the conference, please come by the session and vote for us for the Launch Pad People’s Choice award. We will also have a small exhibitor booth in the Long Tail Pavilion (LT 26) during the Expo, please come by and say Hello!