LAUNCH Education & Kids: 30 Companies (6 Stealth) Plus Scoble, Alan Louie & Nolan Bushnell

To make sure we selected the most awesome companies for LAUNCH Education & Kids on June 12 & 13 -- just 11 days from now -- the LAUNCH team spoke with over 160 companies of the 300+ on our list.

We debated our favorites and narrowed it down to 30 startups that will unveil something new, including six stealth startups that will launch on stage. Each company will also share its hard-won insights about the education/kids space.

Bottom line: We simply had too many great companies to limit ourselves to 25!

Since we know how much entrepreneurs appreciate receiving immediate feedback, we're also putting together a roster of top judges. Those confirmed include Robert Scoble, Alan Louie of Imagine K12, Christine Tsai of 500 Startups, Wesley Chan of Google Ventures and Ted Maidenberg of the Social+Capital Partnership. Our unofficial judges for the event: tech-savvy kids sitting in the front rows -- we expect them to be nothing less than brutally honest!

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Yahoo to Launch "Chrome Killer" Tonight

This was just sent to us and we had to share it. Yahoo has talked about Axis in the past year, but it looks like the big reveal will be tonight.

Subject: Yahoo! Axis launches on May 23- Redefining what it means to search and browse

Hi team,
 
I am so excited to announce that tonight  at 9pm we will launch Yahoo! Axis! Since you are one of my most valued clients I am giving you first notification. Since this is not launching publically until tonight, we ask that you please keep this information confidential until tomorrow.

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First Eight Companies for LAUNCH Education & Kids

We are just five weeks out from the LAUNCH Education & Kids event at Microsoft's campus in Mountain View June 12 & 13.

So far the LAUNCH team has spoken with over 130 startups in the education and kids space  -- we're blown away by the passion, sophistication and insights these founders (a number of them educators-turned-entrepreneurs) have shared with us.

Eight startups impressed us so much we couldn't wait to let their founders know they received one of the 25 spots on stage. Here they are:

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The Age of Excellence

Listen to Lon Harris reading this editorial on "This Week in Startups" episode #252 and the follow-up discussion with Jason and Tyler Crowley. Download it here.

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The business world is changing very fast right now.

Transparency and global marketplaces are the catalysts.

There's no room left in 2012 for average, or even good, products.

Just three or four years ago, making a good product was good enough. In fact, a lot of the business thinking at the time focused on knowing when to stop investing in a product and get it out the door.

"Perfection is the enemy of progress," I would tell folks. The MVP (minimum viable product) and lean startup movements are great for learning -- but there is nothing MVP about an iPad or Ridley Scott film.

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Is There a YCombinator Valuation Bubble or Not?

At the end of Friday's piece, I asked you guys to vote on SurveyMonkey what I should write about this weekend. Over 50% of you said you wanted me to discuss the buzz around the bubble in valuations for Y Combinator companies. ( Full results: http://jc.is/HE3AV5 )

I speak with six to 12 investors a week, both angels and VCs, as well as a half-dozen founders. Almost every discussion for the past couple of weeks has shifted to the valuations of the latest YC crop.

[ Note: In this piece I will not reference any specific knowledge I have as an angel investor. Everything here is based on public discussion of these issues. ]

For background, the valuation of a startup is the number investors and founders come up with as the full monetary value of a business during a financing event.

Valuations are always a hot topic, but they are delicate for two specific reasons:

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