For those of you who haven’t heard, TechCrunch is bringing their coveted TechCrunch Disrupt event to Berlin for the first time this October. Like many startup conferences, the event will have a variety of great speakers, likely of the US variety, which will be a great opportunity for European entrepreneurs to build their US network, and vice versa. The event is broken up into many parts: a Hackathon, the Startup Alley (for showcasing startups), and, most notably, the Startup Battlefield. This startup competition has seen the likes of Dropbox, CloudFlare, Yammer, Tripit and Mint.com pass through, and there’s certainly no harm in being put on the same ring as these folks. Also, the $50K prize isn’t too bad either.
TechCrunch has an affinity for startups that launch on stage, which makes it a great place to launch your company (just by future of the extended reach). While the event isn’t for everyone – you really need to be prepared to receive an influx of 50K people or so to your service – it is a great place for polished ideas to come to life, and given the event is taking place in Europe, I couldn’t think of a better place to launch.
The event itself is open to all companies; however, the cheap travel and large US audience makes it particularly attractive to European startups. Finalists are guaranteed a certain level of visibility, as well as face-to-face time with speakers, investors, entrepreneurs, etc. at a VIP event during Disrupt.
Existing companies launching new product are, of course, welcome to join as well; however, if you’ve just finished the TNW conference and the Dublin Web Summit and the Pioneer’s Festival, you may have a bit of trouble ‘launching’ at TC Disrupt.
October’s going to be a busy month for the startup scene. Most of the fall season’s best startup conferences will take place over the course of three weeks, and startups are going to have to make decisions soon about where to launch. If you’re looking at several launch platforms, TechCrunch even invites you to submit your application and email them at [email protected] to get priority reviewing.
Applications are open until June 24th, so apply today!