Both DOMAINfest an T.R.A.F.F.I.C. announce twists on business plan competitions.
A popular feature of many tech conferences is coming to the domain name industry.
Two industry conferences — DOMAINfest and TRAFFIC — have announced variations of business plan competitions for their upcoming conferences.
DOMAINfest’s agenda includes two sessions titled PITCHfest, in which conference goers will be able to pitch their business plan and the audience will vote on which is best. The first one is for domain monetization:
In this fun, rapid-fire session, six hand-picked finalists have mere minutes to pitch truly innovative, entrepreneurial ideas for increasing domain-name traffic and revenue. Expert panelists provide candid feedback on each idea’s viability and value. Which ideas are overblown, underdeveloped or essential? Your real-time, text-message vote decides who gets the grand prize.
The second PITCHfest will be for a business plan to turn develop a domain:
In this fun, rapid-fire session, six hand-picked finalists have mere minutes to pitch entrepreneurial plans for turning an undeveloped category-killer domain name (domain to be announced soon) into a fully developed, money-making website. Expert panelists provide candid feedback on each idea’s viability and value. Which ideas are overblown, underdeveloped or essential? Your real-time, text-message vote decides who gets the grand prize.
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. will also hold a competition at its upcoming show in New York, modeled off the Shark Tank TV show. According to show organizer Rick Schwartz:
Modeled after the popular T.V. show “Shark Tank”, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. NEW YORK is inviting all persons who have domain projects in development or business plans for expansion of their web sites to apply for an opportunity to present their plans to a panel of Domain experts for the purpose of obtaining funding for their projects in exchange for giving up a “piece of the action”.
A number of technology conference hold these sorts of pitch sessions. Some conferences are made up of nothing but pitches — DEMO and TechCrunch 40 come to mind.
This should be an exciting addition to both of these conferences.
So I wonder who stole who’s idea?
How does one get selected to pitch?
I’ll add a little color here… DomainFest Global in January of 2007 had a ‘fastpitch’ contest that people submitted their concept, and it culled down to 5 winning parties each had 15 minutes with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch one on one to fastpitch their business concept.
We had a lot of the concept publicized in late 2006 for this.
‘Fest is in new hands, but I largely credit Ron Sheridan as the genius on this, it started a trend…
Jothan – thanks for the added info.