Details and slot sign ups for Wildcard Demo night coming soon.  Wildcard demo slots will be open to all Showoff applicants attending Twiistup based on available space.

Remember FINAL Deadline for Showoff applications is Friday. APPLY HERE

Showoff Applications are now open. 

Showoffs will be selected in two rounds with preferential consideration given to round one applicants. Round one closes Friday November 13th at 11:59 PM. Round two closes Friday December 11th.

NOTE: Only Showoff Winners will receive complimentary admission to the event. 

Each showoff selection will receive:
• A Showoff table, power and wifi during exhibit hours
• Stage time for presentation and Q&A Session
• One full event pass
• Your logo on Twiistup.com and other event promotions
• A free MarketWire press release and access to event Press

NOTE: Showoff companies will be required to attend a free pitch rehearsal prior to the event. We will make reasonable accommodations for companies traveling from out of the area. 

Showoff winners will be chosen by:
• Jeff Cohn – venture consultant to MHS Capital focused on: online marketing services, mobile and software infrastructure.
• Rick Smith – co-founder of Crosscut Ventures, a Los Angeles-based seed stage venture capital firm.
• Jim Andelman – co-founder and general partner at Rincon Venture Partners 
• Mark Suster – GRP Partners, venture capital. Former VP Product Mgmt Salesforce.com & 2-time CEO and entrepreneur 
• Hamet Watt – CEO of WV Labs and Entrepreneur in Residence at True Ventures 
• Francisco Dao – Producer of Twiistup

www.bakespace.com

Los Angeles, CA

BakeSpace preserves and updates the age-old tradition of gathering in the kitchen to cook and socialize. It’s an independent grassroots community where people from around the world gather to post, search and swap recipes, build new friendships, learn from one another and express their passion for all things food-related. The site was named a 2009 Webby Award Nominee for Best Social Network.

Bantam Live

www.bantamlive.com

New York, NY

Bantam Live is an online service for business teams to collaborate in a workspace and build business relationships across the Web.

Blip.fm

http://www.blip.fm

San Francisco, CA

Think: “Twitter for Music.” Blip.fm is a social music service powered by your most trusted sources: your friends and favorite people. Music discovery is inherently social, and recommendations are most compelling when they come from real people, people you respect and care about. Over a million people are already using Blip.fm to share and discover great music. Channel your inner DJ on Blip.fm.

Diddit

www.diddit.com

San Mateo, CA

Diddit is a site where users check off their life experiences (their “diddits”), tell stories, discover cool things to do, keep track of what they “wanna do,” and meet new people with similar interests. Diddit’s database includes over 400k activities ranging from travel content like ski runs, roller coasters and cruise ships to media objects such as movies, books and television series.

Educator

http://educator.com

Los Angeles, CA

Educator.com is a pioneering venture aimed at equalizing education by assembling the best teachers in the country and making their lectures affordable to everyone.

EQAL

www.eqal.com

Sherman Oaks, CA

EQAL (pronounced “Equal”) is a social entertainment company dedicated to redefining the way users interact with content and each other.

ExpenseBay

www.expensebay.com

Santa Monica, CA

Business travelers dread the monthly task of filling out expense reports. Instead of stacks of receipts and lengthy hours of data entry, ExpenseBay’’s secure SaaS solution gives business employees an easy way to automate their weekly expense reports. ExpenseBay can export an expense report automatically into a companies mandated spreadsheet or existing Expense Management Applications.

JamLegend

www.jamlegend.com

San Francisco, CA

JamLegend is changing the way music is experienced online. We give artists an easy way to promote their music in a Guitar Hero-like game, and gamers the ability to play more songs with more friends, anytime, anywhere.

Mobophiles

www.mobolize.com

Los Angeles, CA

The Mobolize solution from Mobophiles solves the two biggest problems with the Web: slow page loads and no offline access. With Mobolize, you can now have the freedom which comes with having a Web that you can count on, regardless of where you are.

PeopleBrowsr

www.peoplebrowsr.com

San Francisco, CA

Peoplebrowsr is a real-time search engine and client for you to look into the pulse of digital conversations and engage across multiple social networks simultaneously. With filtering, you can bubble up “memes and themes” that are important to you or your brand across any “Web 2.0″ service like Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook.

Streamy

www.streamy.com

Manhattan Beach CA

Streamy is a real-time news and social media dashboard. Read news and see what your friends are reading around the Web. Continue the conversation with instant messaging, sharing, and groups. Drag and drop stories to quickly share and navigate. Extend the conversation with connections to Twitter, Facebook, AIM, Google Talk and more.

UserVoice

http://uservoice.com

Santa Cruz, CA

UserVoice lets you harness the best ideas of your users and help turn them into product champions. Turn on a UserVoice forum, and have your customers help move your product forward.

It helped software developers find jobs, attracted investors to Los Angeles and once featured a giant talking pickle.

Now Twiistup, the event created by entrepreneur Mike Macadaan to showcase the L.A. tech community, has been sold to an undisclosed private investor so it can further expand. Tech communities in places such as Colorado, Florida and Switzerland have written Macadaan asking for his help in creating a Twiistup of their own.

“It’s really helped unify the community,” Macadaan said. “Now we want to expand the energy and excitement here to another level.”

Twiistup, which launched in February 2007, showcases promising start-ups at a twice-annual bash that has been a change from more conventional technology meet-up events. Each iteration attracted more people, eventually drawing visitors from San Francisco, New York and London. At one Twiistup, a giant pickle ran through the room as a surprise. At another, blogger Perez Hilton dropped in to say hello. Each event featured alcohol, music and, of course, networking.

“I hear all the time about people getting their dream jobs there, people meeting investors who would give them a round of funding,” Macadaan said.

It also united a growing Los Angeles tech community, drawing more attention to the entrepreneurial activity going on here. The investor hopes to tap into that excitement, Macadaan said. He declined to disclose the price.

“Other communities look to us as role models” for how to create a vibrant tech scene, said Nicole Jordan, a Twiistup community consultant. That’s partially because of the grass-roots popularity of Twiistup, she said, which often sells out weeks in advance.

Twiistup showoffs, which are start-ups selected to set up booths at the event and talk about their companies, have included YellowBot, Goodreads.com and Meebo. One, a company called Mint, later won a $50,000 award from tech blog TechCrunch for being the best presenting company at a start-up event.

Los Angeles entrepreneur Francisco Dao will now run day-to-day operations of Twiistup. Macadaan said he’s planning to focus more on Tsavo Media, a Santa Monica start-up founded by MySpace’s new chief operating officer, Mike Jones.

– Alana Semuels

(repost from LATimes.com / http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/twiistupla.html)

Vote on your favorite startup here.

Twiistup attendees and photographers took some amazing shots.

(photos by Wm. Marc Salsberry)

(photos by Wm. Marc Salsberry)