Four members of our team attended the first ever Launch event orchestrated by Jason Calacanis February 23-24 in San Francisco. Special thanks to Airbnb for reasonably priced accommodations on Fillmore Street with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. We were there wearing our TechDrawl hats and also introducing our O2O product Flipcha to potential investors.

Allen Nance and Charlie Paparelli were fellow Atlantans at the conference, and we enjoyed comparing notes with them. Allen in particular challenged my earlier writings about the relative youth of the entrepreneurs in that area, and, in truth, many of the Launch presenters were mature (>35) and into their second or third gigs. But, this crop of companies was required to be in market at least with Beta products, and my observations pertained more to the incubator crowd of 20-somethings.

You can get a full listing of the presenters, their URLs, and considerable video on the Launch site, so I’m going to make a few overarching conclusions and then just give you my raw notes on the companies along with my opinions on some. You can look up all their URLs if you wish, but I thought giving you a quick overview of each might best give you the flavor of the event.

On now with the general observations:

First and foremost, this event was about matching companies with investors, and we witnessed several deals getting done more or less on stage. The rather colorful but incredibly insightful Dave McClure sat as a judge for two sets of companies and interrupted one presenter to tell him he would “write him a f**king check.” (McClure was wearing a shirt that said “Believe in Your F**king Self” – enough said.) Another deal for $500K was reportedly closed on Friday. I’m guessing $2M+ in investment was consummated in short order as a direct result of Launch, with more to follow.

Second, the Valley ecosystem often came into play as judges noted that particular ventures would be perfect acquisition targets for established companies in the region. I suspect that many of those presenting who didn’t get funded on the spot might have had doors opened for them to talk about cashing in early. In general, the stage worthy judges just know personally all the movers and shakers, and it’s easy for the right connections to be made.

Third, we looked at 40 companies preordained to present plus about 18 grabbed from the Launch Pad for impromptu presentations. Most of those went pretty well, and from that segment GreenGoose won the BEST OVERALL prize. The format of demos followed by interactions with on-stage judges and the “grand jury” in the front rows was pretty effective at creating an understanding of each company’s offering and its position in the market and in the fabric of ventures there. There were some wacky presentations (“Boom”), but only one left the panel with a complete “duh?”

Fourth, a big deal was made about design. Many of the presenters were subjected to withering criticism about UI and UX issues. In a crowded market, particularly with respect to consumer plays, design makes or breaks a deal.

Fifth, the measure of success for many companies continues to be about user counts not revenues. There is an assumption that revenues will follow if a venture can grab a crowd of loyal followers. There were questions about business models in some cases, but the preponderance of discussion was about “use cases” to be sure that in fact there would be users for any given concept. (For those of you who keep bingo cards at these events, the top three terms were use case, friction, and mommy blogger.)

Sixth, there is clearly a war for talent in the Valley. A good percentage of the presenting companies advertised for developers as part of their pitches. There was much discussion about that.

Seventh, you should not take Ambien before boarding your red-eye flight. As schedules worked out, we had a few hours in SFO to kill before our return flight. A gentlemen sitting close to us, about my age, was eating Chinese takeout with chopsticks (deftly), when he pitched forward at the waist, spilled his food on the floor, and began snoring. After some time passed, I became concerned and sought help from gate personnel, who could not rouse him and did nothing. Shortly thereafter he fell forward onto the floor, abrading his face, cursed, then resumed snoring. This time the gate personnel took a bit more interest and summoned the airport paramedics. A Jet Blue flight attendant tried to assist him, with no luck. After what seemed like a 30-minute wait, the medics finally showed, roused him, and carted him off not to his intended destination but to a nearby hospital. He may have been a bit intoxicated, but he admitted he had taken an Ambien also. Not a good idea. Better to knock yourself out after you are on the plane to home than in an airport gate.

If I haven’t lost you yet, here are my notes on the companies. These were taken using Evernote on an iPad. The auto-complete feature often generates strange results, so I hope I’ve caught them all. Keep in mind this is a mixture of what the conference called 2.0 established companies announcing a new product and 1.0 virgins never before shown to anyone.

Stack Overflow expands into employment. Huge audience, easy way to evaluate skill sets. Fill jobs. Show me the code. Careers.stack overflow.com. $500 to employer for one week. $5k annual subscription. Provides handy first screening to determine who is a real coder. (Looked like a slam dunk to me.)

YouEye - eye tracking testing, web came eye tracking to test UX, video reply with graphic display of tracking, monthly SAAS

Gobbler - organize music files for artists, a vertical DropBox idea

HiveTrader - investment management made social, follow high performance details and strategies (Would you share your 401(k) performance with your co-workers?)

Overstat - <1% of Internet pages are optimized, heat map, on-page analytics. B2B play

Cabana - mobile app dev tool, layout, make your own app, tool business, collaboration, like WordPress, also can put out bounty on needed pieces like 99 designs

Five and fifty - addressing those who can't get deals into Groupon, create an instant deal sent to phone, show txt msg to cash in, good for perishables; Q about customer acquisition, not a tech deal, $5 flat fee to send out txt msgs, very segmented, smaller deals, targeted, deals only last 5 hrs

Zepp - motion sensing, golf sense, swing onto iPhone, 3d view, face angle, pro guidelines, tracks wrongs too, web app also, $200+ for sensor gadget (Things like this, in my opinion, can ruin the best of golf swings.)

Karma Key - loyalty cards, tracks points, restaurant gets data, ties into POS, sell through POS vars, 5 locations in pilot

Adzerk - direct sell ads, used by Stack Overflow, pay by usage, Durham NC based, ad serving in the cloud

Docstoc - docs to grow biz, 25M/mo users, standard docs on line, introducing Premium, 10K best of breed, includes Legal Zoom, plus in-house custom support, $20/mo for access to every doc, or $20 per doc

Appconomy - group message txt to members, emails to others, manage groups across many platforms, also enterprise, brands, fundraising use case, Dave McClure Wow!

Disconnect - health and financial info collected by search engines and social networks, browser extension. Blocks things you want blocked; Premium later. McClure thought 1% market actually cares about such privacy, said target is C- to B+ students; (Leaves me out I guess.)

Jibe - social recruiting, 1M users in Jan, integrates with recruiting software inside companies and brings in social graph, who the job seeker knows, mobile app new today

Daqri - Create augmented reality, as easy as YouTube, QR code drives changing 3D graphics on an app, free or $20/mo, puts relevancy back into print by bringing ads to life

Hipmunk - air travel sorted by agony - time in air, layover, price, new iPhone app: our intent is “kindness”, hard to copy that says presenter, app emails info to computer to reduce agony of mobile booking

Dar.fm - DVD for radio, categories, talk shows, specific stations, all in the cloud, Q about copyright, OK, brand and design criticized, free for now, seeking 10M users

Top10 - everybody makes a top 10 list, easy to share and remix, battles?, affiliate monetization, competition, need game mechanics, how to categorize

Volta - AB testing framework for live outbound calls, took 1% email response to 4.4%, test scripts and agents, Q about integrating with call mgmt systems, VoIP do not call, This is the on that got the “f**king” check

Chute - easy way to get photos from your phone to computer, personal photo mgmt, Q about Instagram, Dropbox like backup, sync, and share, also good to gather photos from friends, competition fierce, eg iTunes, fb

Domo - shows people and interests here and now, chicken and egg, scale?; rather forceful presentation “Boom”

Addroid - video banner adds, authoring environment, nor flash or coding, 15 cents for video vs. 40 cents, Html5

FaceCash - pay by phone, POS integration necessary, bar code, instant top up, categorize, receipts, transfer < $5K per day

Mougg - listen to music from cloud, sync all devices, launched web apps 1.5 months ago, now going mobile

Gamers Portal - social network for gamers

Greenhouse - sensor technology to tie gaming into everyday activities - meds, etc. Web hardware, raising $500k notes, 15% disc, $3M cap, also exercise pedometer in a credit card

Sinkable - flexible USB cable to mount phone to Mac

Room 77 - ranks all rooms in hotel based on preferences; show view based on Geo, 425K rooms in database, 2500 hotels, change room from mobile app, sleuthing rewarded, money from leads, up-sells, and license data, Q re cruise ships

Lockify - encryption, log in with phone number, code sent via txt or phone, API available, Q compliance, privacy laws, one-off case vs. system use, marketing?

FTW - bookmark for video games, API based, sync across devices, getftw.com, free thru beta, maybe $2 per user per month?

Screener.co - Wall St caliber data for Main St, global, free until April 1 then $24.95/mo, complex views, customizable, Q 3% of US could use, why worth more than simpler stuff? Consumers can't handle the data, prosumer not consumer always a tough sell, UI very dense, visualization of data?

Stomp.io – “squirrel fishing,” accept or reject adventure ideas, upload photos to Facebook etc and stays in adventure log, Q jackass for nerds, how big is market? Between college and kids, feature or standalone?

Storkbrokers - resell baby and kid items, log into app, load photo, form, send? Community, rating, trading via email, Atlanta based, not clear the model

Life Proof - magic show provided for interesting demo, protective case for phone $69.95

MingleBird- check in, meet people, the more you meet the more points, add to address book, pro: mingle words, find people nearby, Q chicken or egg?

Savings.com - launched 2007, deal overload, launching personalized deal feed, add or delete followers, brands, stores, blogs, etc., affiliate type fees

Shopsquad - 24/7 people on call for product info, affiliate relationships, fee shared with expert, experts sign up and get rated, expert motivated to sell, targeting mommy bloggers for customers

140Fire - interactive ad overlaid on movie, shares with Facebook, viewer may select interest up front which determines what is shown, real-time CMS, ad inserted into action, allows interaction like quizzes and voting

Audiomicro- 179k customers CMS for stock music, 2.0, launching new sites, tattoos, trade credits, pay 40% royalty; next cartoons; celebrity pix; infographics; white label, like a WordPress for content licensing

Graphite - tracks interactions for business networking; rank individuals by importance to you, personalized call sheet on smart phone, Q above the funnel, not a sub for Salesforce.com

Junar - follow data sites, continuous updating, shareable, Q freemium

Neuaer - ToothTag, scan all wireless devices in the room, Bluetooth headset, alert on connect or disconnect, locate car, auto check in, Google voice

Openspace - html5 store, opened NYT in html5, referral fees?, Q developers upload apps, personalized on your local device, nobody got this one !!!!

Pad Companies - Meeting Burner, easy mtgs; TourWrist, look inside places, 3D, 17k places; Explorence, outdoor activities; gripe line, from Ghana, SMS for customer service; Brand Yourself, manage Google, etc.; pen.io, Australia, publish text online

More pad companies - Tripbod, Australia, over one yr, local experience inventory; fluidinfo, shared meta data, Barcelona; eEvent, reward influencer of an event to max attendance, Indonesia, charge per ticket; EchoEcho - where are you, shows map, easy to connect, 300k downloads in 3 weeks!; Shoefitter, compares current shoe with purchase, launched in June, reduce returns 25%.

With that it was on to the awards and the airport.

If you see something you like, best to act quickly to get your “g**damn” check accepted. It’s a different world out there. You snooze you lose, especially if you take Ambien at the wrong time.