Congratulations to the dotSytax/Digsby team for winning TradeVibes Fever Pitch and the opportunity to meet Ron Conway!
We had 34 startups participate and strong shows of community support. Kudos to all the startup enthusiasts who contributed their opinions and votes. You all made the final stretch an exciting finish!
…user georgebounacos! Congratulations!
We are jazzed about the community response to our TrV points roll-out and look forward to seeing TradeVibes fans sporting their new t-shirts all over the world.
Huge thanks to everyone for contributing to TradeVibes - keep racking up those TrV points!
A big thank you to TradeVibes users for aggregating company information and offering insightful dialogue on the latest startups. It’s only right to reward you for these good deeds!
You may have noticed TrV Points, a newly launched feature, on your account page. Accrue points as you add and update company profiles, share your opinions, jump into community discussions, and post news! The actual amount of TrV points awarded each time differs based on the type of activity and the quality of the activity.
As part of the TrV Points debut, we are hosting the Pay It Forward promo! For every 50 TrV points accumulated by adding company profile content, opinions, discussions, and news, you will gain one entry into our Nintendo Wii raffle. The first 75 users to accumulate 200 TrV points will receive an exclusive TradeVibes t-shirt!
Let’s keep the momentum going and keep building TradeVibes as the most dynamic community for startup enthusiasts and entrepreneurs alike!
Official rules here.
Summer’s here, and the time is right for our TradeVibes Fever Pitch contest. We’re out to find the hottest new companies on the planet that are just starting out and offer them the chance to win a one-hour meeting with Ron Conway, the “Godfather of Silicon Valley“. It’s a great opportunity and they need your help!
Check out a list of participating companies here and vote Bullish for the companies that you think deserve a shot. Voting starts on July 15th, and the company that’s ranked the highest by August 15th will win the prize. Remember, only Bullish/Bearish votes count for the contest, so if you add an opinion, make sure to vote as well!
If you work at a company that would like to participate, just go to your company’s TradeVibes profile and add “feverpitch2008” to your company’s list of tags. Then, reach out to your friends and fans and get them on to TradeVibes to vote. Help them catch the fever, and you might win the chance to make your pitch to Ron. Check out the rules here!
Drum roll please…
Based on the TradeVibes community’s votes, the five startups that are most likely to succeed are (not in any particular order):
Based on the community’s most bullish five, the winner of our contest (and the iPhone) is dknight, who accurately picked 4 out of 5 of the companies above. We also have 4 honorable mentions, who accurately picked 3 out of 5 of the companies - rmowery, eliang, tpringle and drapaport.
Congratulations dknight!
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…
TradeVibes will be participating at the Web 2.0 Expo SF Launch Pad next Thursday at Mascone Center. We’ll be presenting to the audience as well as a panel of VC’s (Michael Jung – Panorama Capital, Maha Ibrahim - Canaan Partners, David Hornik - August Capital). After all six companies present at the Launch Pad session, there will be real time voting via SMS to choose the People’s Choice winner for Launch Pad.
Given TradeVibes is actually a platform for aggregating community opinions about startup companies, we thought it would be fun to run an unofficial Community’s Choice contest for the Launch Pad companies. Given our unfair home court advantage, we’ll be excluding ourselves from the contest. Please vote for your favorite Launch Pad startup by voting “Bullish” on the opinion poll for your favorite company between now and the end of the conference on Friday 4/25. You can vote bullish on multiple companies if you like more than one. We’ll announce the unofficial winner in our blog once the results are out. In case you didn’t know, the Launch Pad participants are: