Automattic acquires Intense Debate

Here’s a video of Automattic CEO Toni Schneider discussing the announcement of their acquisition of TechStars company Intense Debate. He explains that Intense Debate will be tightly integrated into WordPress, but will maintain the current brand and will still function with other publishing platforms besides WordPress.

Video Courtesy of Vator.tv.

Here’s coverage on the deal from TechCrunch, Mashable and VentureBeat. Toni has a post on his blog about this, as does Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg. You can also read Intense Debate founder Jon Fox’s post, or the Intense Debate blog post.

TechStars.org is already 100% powered by WordPress, and I can’t wait to see where Matt, Toni, Jon, Isaac and the rest of the team team take this going forward. I know the gang at Intense Debate isn’t nearly out of ideas for how to deal with the web’s dark matter.

Congratulations to the Intense Debate team and to Automattic!

Occipital to show off at CEA’s i-Stage

The Consumer Electronics Association has selected TechStars company Occipital as one of the 15 finalists who will present at i-Stage in Las Vegas on October 20 at CEA’s 2008 Industry Forum.  Occipital has some pretty amazing technology that enables vivid recollection and groundbreaking visualizations of your photo stream. If you’re going to be in Vegas on October 20th, you should check it out. Truly geeky mind-boggling stuff.

“CEA’s i-stage competition serves as a phenomenal opportunity to recognize the new innovations that will fuel the growth of our industry,” said Karen Chupka, senior vice president, events and conferences, CEA. “These top finalists are taking technology trends to the next level and will no doubt shape the future of how consumers work and play.”

While Occipital has not yet launched publicly, they’re looking for folks who have an interest in what they’re doing who might be able to help. You can get a sense of their interests and skills by checking out some of their past projects. This new project could really change the way we all interact with our photos. It has certainly changed how I think about the possibilities.

Good luck at i-Stage Jeff and Vikas!

TechStars Demo Day in Mountain View, CA

We’ve just wrapped up our second year of doing TechStars and I’m really excited about some of the companies that have come out of the program this year.  We held a Demo and Investor Day in Boulder on August 20th, and 150+ investors showed up to see the ten new companies from 2008. It’s always a fun event where investors get to see some really interesting early stage web companies. I expect at least 7 or 8 of the 2008 companies will eventually close their seed rounds, which is similar to what we saw last year.

This year, we’re going to try adding something new.  We’ll be taking about a dozen of the twenty TechStars companies (from 2007 and 2008) on the road to Silicon Valley where we’ll be doing a demo day on September 23rd. These are the companies who are currently raising money and that already have some committed investment. Some of the companies are the new ones from 2008, but some of last years companies including Filtrbox, EventVue, Intense Debate,, and Brightkite will be presenting as well. These are fun 10 minute pitches and attendees will get to see all twelve companies in the morning. We’ll wrap up with lunch and some networking.

If you are an accredited angel investor or VC, or if you know someone who might like to attend on the morning of September 23rd, just drop me a note and I’ll be sure to get you an invitation to the event. I hope to see you there – it should be a fun day.

Interviews from TechStars Demo and Investor Day

W3W3 did two interviews live from TechStars demo day in Boulder on August 20th.

The first interview is with Don Dodge and Dave Drach from the Microsoft Emerging Business Team, along with Anand Iyer who is a technology evangelist in Silicon Valley for Microsoft. All three spent really a significant amount of time at TechStars this summer helping our ten new startups, and they have some really interesting comments about the Boulder tech scene, how Microsoft engages with startups through the Microsoft Startup Zone, and what makes TechStars unique.

The second interview is with Dave Drach and me just moments after the presentations ended at demo day.

Thanks to Microsoft for their tremendous ongoing support of TechStars.