LAUNCH to Welcome Shimon Peres, President of Israel, on March 7

[ President Shimon Peres appeared before the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on Feb. 23. Photo courtesy of the President's official website. ]

We are extremely honored and excited that Shimon Peres, President of Israel, will come to the LAUNCH Festival on Wednesday, March 7 as part of a trip focused on innovation in Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

LAUNCH founder Jason Calacanis and legendary Israeli entrepreneur and investor Yossi Vardi will do a fireside chat with the President, who also plans to visit the DEMO Pit.

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Tesla Motors Model X Will Be on Display at the LAUNCH Festival

[ Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk shows off the Model X in Los Angeles Feb. 9. ]

Visionary Telsa Motors CEO Elon Musk is out of town and couldn't make it to the LAUNCH Festival, but he did the next best thing: he gave us a Tesla Motors Model X to show off!

This is the first time anyone in the Bay Area is going to get to see the car up close and personal from what we understand. We saw it a couple of weeks back at the Los Angeles opening and it is stunning -- especially the falcon doors.

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LAUNCH Festival Hits $639k in Prize Money

By Jason Calacanis

We've now done three of four mandatory rehearsals for the startups launching on stage at next week's LAUNCH Festival (March 7 & 8), and I'm 100% certain they are as good as our amazing alumni: Dropbox, Mint, Fitbit, Yammer, Red Beacon, Powerset and Room77 (among many other awesome startups).

In fact, having had the privilege of personally coaching every alumni for the past five years, I can tell you that one of this year's startups reminds me of a next-generation Dropbox, two feel like features Yammer will add in a year or two, and one is as awesome as Mint -- but for the second most important finance category.

All of them are worthy of angel investment.

Today I received amazing news: last year's winner, Brad Gerstner of Room77, has agreed to put up a $100k prize for one of the winners in this year's competition.

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LAUNCH Hits $589K: A Slot at AngelPad and $100K Investment (If You Move to Vegas)

[ Image created by Marc Burckhardt for the Inc. magazine article "Tony Hsieh's Excellent Las Vegas Adventure" by Max Chafkin. ]

If you thought the prize money available at this year's LAUNCH Festival was already too good to be true, well, we've raised the bar even higher.

San Francisco-based accelerator AngelPad is guaranteeing a slot to a LAUNCH company* -- worth $20k. Plus VegasTechFund will invest at least $100k in one company that agrees to relocate to Las Vegas. 

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The Two Most Important Startups in the World

By Jason Calacanis

The two most important startups in the world: AngelList and Kickstarter.

They're more important than Facebook, Twitter and Apple. Heck, they're more important than Pinterest! ( ← zing! pow! )

These two projects have been hated, dissed and dismissed for much of their existence, but soon folks will see just how disruptively awesome they are.

In the early years, having your vision hated by most people, but absolutely loved by a few is -- of course -- the surest sign you're going to change the world. Conversely, projects that are loved by everyone early are sure to have absolutely modest outcomes. Even Google had doubters. "Why do we need a new search engine?" they said. Others saw the actual, better results behind the goofy name.

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