Catch Ev Williams and Chamath Palihapitiya at the LAUNCH Festival, Plus over $300k in Investment Prizes!

It's just 17 days till LAUNCH Festival 2013 (#Launch2013) at the San Francisco Design Center, March 4-6 -- eek! @Jason and Tyler rehearsed with 25 of the 35 selected companies this week at Sequoia, now we just need to choose the final 15 startups for the stage from hundreds of applicants. If you applied, you'll hear from us by Friday, Feb 15.

Other awesome news to share with you:

1) Fireside chats with Ev Williams and Chamath Palihapitiya

We are honored that Ev (co-founder of Twitter, CEO at The Obvious Corporation) and Chamath (former FB exec & partner, The Social + Capital Partnership) will sit down with Jason for fireside chats!

You can catch Chamath at 9:15am on March 4, and Ev right after lunch on March 5.

Their bios are at http://festival.launch.co/keynotes.html

2) Wow, more than $300k in investment prizes!

Once again, a number of angel investors and funds have earmarked investments for LAUNCH Festival startups. These investments will be announced on stage, and of course are pending post-conference due diligence and paperwork.

 * Altimeter Capital (http://www.altimetercapital.com/) - $125k
 * TechStars (http://www.techstars.com/) - $118k
 * Attractor (http://www.attractor.com/) - $25k
 * Persefon (http://www.persefon.com) - $25k
 * Steve Chen (https://twitter.com/a5steve) - $25k

If you're interested in putting up a prize of $25k or more, please contact partners@launch.co.

3) More judges and grand jury members!

Brad Gerstner, Founder and CEO, Altimeter Capital
Josh Goldman, Partner, Norwest Venture Partners
Dave McClure, Founding Partner, 500 Startups
Rachel Proffitt, Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, All Things Digital
Halle Tecco, Co-Founder and CEO, Rock Health
Aaron Walter, Lead User Experience Designer, MailChimp

Joining the Grand Jury -- those awesome folks who watch every on-stage demo and scour the Demo Pit for gems -- are

Jay Levy, Partner, Zelkova Ventures
Jonathon Triest, Managing Partner, Ludlow Ventures

The full list of judges & jury is here: http://festival.launch.co/judges.html

4) 25% discount if you buy a ticket RIGHT NOW

Still haven’t signed up for LAUNCH Festival yet? Hurry up, tickets are going fast!

Use the code LAUNCHBLOG25 for 25% off here.

Offer is good through Sunday, Feb 17.


5) Thanks to the new partners of the event!

You know all these free tickets we're giving out? These are some of the folks who made it possible:

 * Bernstein (http://bernstein.com)
 * Norwest Venture Partners (http://nvp.com)
 * Samsung (http://samsung.com)
 * SAP Startup Focus (http://startups.saphana.com)
 * ScreenDate (http://screendate.com)
 * The Social + Capital Partnership (http://s23p.com)

There’s still time to reach the 5,000 entrepreneurs/developers/startups that are going to be there. Email partners@launch.co.

We also have awesome new media partners helping us get out the word. Thank you to:
 * BASE (http://www.meetup.com/software/)
 * Betalist (http://betali.st/)
 * BoogarLists (https://www.boogar.com/)
 * Citizen Space (http://citizenspace.us/)
 * CloudTimes (http://cloudtimes.org/)
 * CoFoundersLab (http://www.cofounderslab.com/)
 * Hacker Newsletter (http://hackernewsletter.com/)
 * Hackers & Founders (http://www.hackersandfounders.com/)
 * PARISOMA (http://www.parisoma.com/)
 * Rock Health (http://rockhealth.com/)
 * SF Agile User Group (http://www.sfagile.org/)
 * SFNewTech (http://sfnewtech.com/)
 * sf.citi ( ); (http://sfciti.com/)
 * Startup Weekend (http://startupweekend.org/)
 * The Hired Guns (http://www.thehiredguns.com/)
 * Women Who Code (http://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-SF/)