TechPulse 360

They came, they saw, they pitched.

Startups are finding that in the austerity of early 2009 raising money is about as difficult as a Labour Party victory in Britain.

Startup CEO hopes to use peer-to-peer technology to develop a search engine

So several dozen seized upon the opportunity to make their case at Launch: Silicon Valley, an event designed to bring early stage startups together with angels and venture capitalists.

The eclectic event saw a diversity of entrepreneurs and startling variety of innovation. Presenting CEOs pitched everything from new ideas for search engines (peer-to-peer technology) to a unified e-mail box for people with multiple accounts, an online troubleshooting site for high-tech gear and a system to instantly qualify potential buyers of timeshare vacation homes.

Four hundred companies applied to present at this year’s fourth-annual Launch, an increase of about 133 companies from last year, said Chris Gill, president of SVASE, the event’s sponsors. In the audience were about 40 VCs along with angels, corporate execs and journalists.

Of the four hundred, 30 startups were selected for a few minutes of on-stage pitch time.

Among the most ambitious was Palo Alto-based Wowd, which hopes to take on Google with a peer-to-peer based search engine. The goal, says CEO Mark Drummond, is to mine the wisdom of crowds to develop a hot list of useful sites that users can then search and view.

“We have only a few hundred people in the network right now,” says Drummond, but imagine if that were tens of millions?

High product return rates make an Internet help-desk service for high-gear a startup opportunity, says CEO Ryo Koyama

Wowd works by taking note of which sites its network members visit and then putting together an index of those sites it deems worthwhile. Techniques such as page rank play a part in its analysis.

Wowd launched in a friends-and-family test mode last month and has investors such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Trooval of Henderson, NV, is less focused on high-tech, but not afraid to use it. The company uses the Web to generate instant credit reports on people knowing only their names, addresses and e-mail account.

A big problem in the timeshare industry is finding qualified buyers, says Trooval CEO Jonathan Lowenhar. Finding unqualified buyers is a little like “the sub-prime mortgage crisis all over again.”

Trooval hopes to reduce the risk. So does Yoics, the Palo Alto developer of an Internet-based IT help-desk service of high-tech gear.

The company’s product is in beta testing now, but already the startup is working with Lincoln Center in New York to help the performing arts center distribute music from its library to musicians.

CEO Ryo Koyama says the big opportunity is with electronic manufacturers, who sometimes see product return rates as high as 40 percent. Typically these return rates, for products such as routers and surveillance cameras, spike due to network connection issues.

“It’s a nightmare to get vendors to pay you anything,” admits Koyama, but “their return rates are very high.”