The Best of the Poor Startups Selected at Le Web 3

The sessions are still under way here in Paris at Le Web 3 but one important part of the event has been completed already. And this part is the startups competition. The winners have been announced here. So out of the 33 startups presenting their 7-minutes pitches to the judges including VCs and media the best have been chosen and they are GooJet, the tool to combine and synchronize your mobile and web lives (winner), PLYMedia (the solutions to make video more integrated and help video publishers monetize their content) got silver and virtual operating system G.ho.st got the bronze.

But it is not the winners I want to talk about here. Honestly, the awards ceremony was not particularly interesting: a winner was announced, a representative of the startup ran to the stage, received his prize, and was allowed to describe what the startup is about in one sentence for those that were not able to listen to all the presentations the day before (and I think there were many of us since it looks like the only thing people actually do here is going between the halls and talking to each other).

So honestly it was short and not all that exciting. I actually believe that it could have been a good idea to give the winners their 7 minutes on the main stage to show the demos again to the crowd and have their moment of glory longer than a sentence. But it looks like members of the jury and there opinions had the priority and thus thy got all the time.

So before announcing the results the judges spent quite some time talking about the startups and their opinions. And unfortunately there were not many good things they could tell. Unfortunately both for startups and for the conference in general, I think - as the criticism had to deal a lot with the way the presentations should have been prepared in the first place.

So there was one opinion that all the judges shared - and it was poor presentations. All of them repeated again and again that the startups failed to deliver proper presentations. Robert Scoble compared the startups competition at Le Web 3 to the DEMO conference (well, quite an obvious comparison, of course). But he mentioned that only 2 of the 33 presentations were good enough to be expected to see at DEMO.

And it is not a pleasant comparison, of course. Certainly, we all know that Web 2.0 is very Silicon Valley-centered but that does not mean we do not want to see excellent Europeans startups. And it looks like even the great startups are not able to present themselves good enough. As a solution it was mentioned that more coaching work should be involved in the preparation process for the event.

So what did the judges expect from the startups and never saw? First of all, they seemed to be focused on the wrong things in their presentations. For example, when pitching the ideas of the startups, they did not think about who needs this idea implemented at all. So again, it looks like we are facing shortage of actually useful ideas behind startups. Developers try to come up with something unique but they end with something truly unusual BUT it is something that no one will ever need to use. Briefly, when you want to offer a solution to a problem, it's a good idea to think first if the problem actually exists - or if it is your imagination only.

Another obvious thing is the revenue model. Investors are definitely not happy about startups focusing on advertising model because it is hard to believe there will be enough ad dollars for everyone. And thus they recommended doing something that could be sold to enterprises as they are easier to make pay than end users.

So to summarize it all, it looks like European startups did not get any actual appreciation from the judges here. My personal impression is that the judges had to choose the best of the poor startups and that's not what I think Loic Le Meur wanted to have here at Le Web 3.