About a week before DEMO, I was talking to Pat Kenealy, managing director of IDG Ventures/San Francisco, about the success rates of startup companies that launch first products at DEMO vs. the average venture portfolio. I posited that while DEMO is really about products rather than businesses that young companies are little more than their first products and that our screening process is designed to bring the best concepts to the surface without the bias and influence that affect many investment decisions. As a result, if each class of demonstrators was a portfolio, I speculated, it would out perform many of the top venture firms.
Pat didn’t disagree, but he did challenge me to “do a Kreskin,” and put the names of the 10 companies I thought would be runaway hits to be opened in a year.
Never mind the envelop. I decided to wait a few weeks for the post-DEMO media to play out so as not in influence coverage, and to name my 10 picks here. Now, as a disclaimer, I will say that I am impressed by all 77 companies – startup and established – that introduced products at DEMO and I believe that each and every one of those products has strong potential to be both impactful and successful in the market.
But the challenge Pat posed was to chose 10 that would out pace the market in terms of growth, valuation, and/or exit. So here they are in no particular order. Read the rest of this entry »
