On March 20 2008, three hundred and fifty people will meet at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, CA for the 10th installment of Under the Radar, a one-day event, featuring 32 emerging startups.
Under the Radar is organized by Deal Maker Media and its considered as one of most respected and attended Silicon Valley conferences. I’m proud to be part of this year’s Selection Committee, along with Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb), Pete Cashmore (Mashable), Robert Scoble (Scobleizer), Jon Burke (alarm:clock) and many other respected colleagues.
How can you participate?
I’d like to invite early stage Israeli startups to hurry up and apply for the conference – Submissions are due by January 16, 2007.
To submit your application, fill in the form at: http://www.undertheradarblog.com/utr_nomination_form.html
International companies are welcomed to apply – so for all of the Israeli startups that wanted to make it to Silicon Valley this year – the game is on.
Under the Radar has proven to be a spring board for many early stage companies. In 2007 alone, 16 companies that took part in the conference made an exit through acquisition including Zimbra, who was sold to Yahoo earlier this year for $350 million in cash, ten times the original investment.
The categories for application are:
* Collaboration
* Communication
* Development Tools
* Mobile Apps
* On Demand / Web Services (Apps)
* Storage
* Productivity
* Publishing Tools
* Rich Internet Apps
* Search
* Social Networks
* Sync
Criteria for Company Selection:
* Unique value proposition
* Ability to monetize product/business
* Large market opportunity
* Must still be considered “under the radar” – launched within the year
* Company must be an actual startup – not a new product from a large company
* Beta and beyond – must have a customer/beta testers/or using the product in the market
I hope to see you all in March this year. Stay tuned for additional coverage on this year’s Under The Radar companies, exclusive interviews and product reviews both on VC Cafe and UTR’s blog.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
