RedBeacon wins TechCrunch 50 WTF

Wow - lots of interesting stuff there - let me respond in my own way. The main thought I had was that RedBeacon is a worthy company, I am sure, but is it the best possible startup with the best potential that TC50 saw? I severely doubt it!

Now some specific points:

Firstly, I agree the market is vast - as is the market for say plumbers - but that doesn't mean that its easy for one player to clean up as there are many structural barriers.

An anecdote if I may: we have had a service like this since Dotcom 1.0 days locally, but what makes it work is the community on the social network. And that takes time, trust and tears to curate. It is trusted because it is by the community, for the community. (In fact many such were set up in dotcom days, most today are empty shells that f*ck up Google search results)

I also doubt the RedBeacon's simple transaction model works as, when it comes to households, every problem except the most mundane is different. You need to have a conversation very early, rather than online comparison shopping. "My washing machine won't work" for example, describes an array of possible fixes of varying costs despite knowing from the site that all the repair guys in the area have about the same price per hour. What you need are competent people, and the rolling conversation on any simple community network gives you that very fast already.

Now, I have such a site, others do not, but to cover London alone you need probably about 100 local area sites at least, each will take a few years to be useful, in each patch it will take time to recruit users and service providers, and that takes good old shoe leather. And the "good enoughs" are legion and varied in each area.

Your point re Yelp et al is taken, in my view these guys will develop a nice bit of workflow and then sell to Yelp or similar and earn a nice little wad for themselves. But a shape changing business and "best of breed" from all the TC50 applicants - C'mon!

Funnily enough, the VRM community has been discussing RedBeacon etc from yesterday - I think (looking at the posts to date) most opine that its a 3rd Party marketmaking play, not a 4th party one. There were many such in Dotcom days, most fizzled out for all sorts of reasons.

As to Yammer - and Mint for that matter - neither were really "startups" at the time, both were already well funded entities - which to me made the whole TechCrunch thing look like a sham.

There have been all sorts of allegations of vote rigging going on about this year's winners, and Messrs Arrington and Calacanis have had a hissy fit over it, so I think there is more to come out.