Friday, June 1, 2012

    Startup Weekend Santa Barbara: Hopes

    It is 30 minutes till the first Startup Weekend in Santa Barbara (SWSB). I have been told that the weekend is close to 100 people showing up, meaning that this is going to be a pretty busy event.

    Why am I here?

    Julian the head organizer of Startup Weekend San Diego is the facilitator for SWSB and he invited the SD organizers to come.  I figure I needed a break from SD and this would be a good excuse to visit a friend in SB who was leaving for Taiwan.  Of course, I am also here to hear product pitches from Santa Barbara's best and brightest.

    What I hope to see:

    There's been a lot of talk about monetizing mobile lately in the wake of the Facebook IPO.  The fact is that the current mobile ads are ugly, intrusive and worst of all have much lower ROI than traditional banner ads.  It would be amazing to see someone pitch an idea that solved this huge problem.  Perhaps a new type of ad network for mobile apps or an app that somehow monetizes in a way that does not use banner ads?

    What I will most likely see:

    Event discovery apps seem to be all the rage these days, there were a couple that even showed up in SWTJ.  This is a huge market and so far nobody has gotten it right.  I reckon that there are going to be more than one pitch about a new way to discover events near you that is going to be local, mobile, social + some other startup cliche.

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