LAUNCH Festival 2013: David Cohen, Robert Scoble, David Sacks Plus a TechStars Slot and $50K for our Hackathon Winner

You already know the LAUNCH Festival is the best place for startups to launch their companies -- and that's largely because we make sure founders get honest feedback from industry veterans.

Here is the first batch of amazing judges for the 2013 LAUNCH Festival (our 6th launch-style event!) at the San Francisco Design Center, March 4-6:

Paul Bragiel, i/o ventures
Wesley Chan, Google Ventures
Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
David Cohen, TechStars*
Tony Conrad, True Ventures
Jay Levy, Zelkova VC
Tim Lee, Sequoia Capital
Thomas Korte, AngelPad
David Sacks, Yammer
Robert Scoble, Rackspace
Angelo Sotira, deviantART
Josh Stein, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Christine Tsai, 500 Startups
Stefan Weitz, Bing
George Zachary, Charles River Ventures

*Like last year, TechStars is awarding a slot in one of its programs to a winning LAUNCH company. David Cohen rocks!

Our Grand Jury -- the dedicated folks who see everything over all three days -- includes

Harvey Allison, Attractor Management
Don Dodge, Google
Alfred Lin, Seqouia
Mark Pesce, inventor & author

More info on our illustrious group here.

We're also super-thrilled that the first-ever LAUNCH Hackathon has a $50k investment as the top prize! No one else has done that before. LAUNCH founder Jason Calacanis is putting up $25k, as is Hubspot founder, angel investor & OnStartups blogger Dharmesh Shah. Who else wants to help make this the best hackathon ever? :-) Hit contact@launch.co. More on the Hackathon here.

If you have a killer stealth startup -- or a killer new product -- that will be ready to launch in early March, apply here. [ We evaluate applications as they come in, final deadline is Feb 1. ]

Developers, designers and UI/UX gurus (aka builders) can join us for FREE -- apply here.

Demo Pit tables with FIVE tickets are just $1,000, but only a limited number are available: buy yours now.

Want VIP treatment, including waiter service and a guaranteed classroom-style seat, and the satisfaction of knowing your ticket made it possible for builders to come for free? Buy a VIP pass for $995.

Finally, thanks to the new partners of the event! (There’s still time to reach the 5k entrepreneurs/developers/startups that are going to be there. Email contact@launch.co) --
 * DYN (http://dyn.com)
 * Treehouse Technology (http://teamtreehouse.com/)