TechCrunch disrupt 2014 in review

We wrapped up our first ever TechCrunch Disrupt Conference (link) this past week! It was a great five days packed with creative hacks, well-prepared pitches and some big-name speakers.

Disrupt kicked off bright and early Saturday morning, when we set up our booth at the Manhattan Center - our temporary home for both the Hackathon and the Conference.

With the launch of our new v3 API, we hosted a custom contest for the over three hundred developers at the Hackathon. The top three teams to build hacks with both the most creative use of our APIs and best overall execution would go home with prize packages (cash, Fancy gift cards and Karma hotspots). Teams had from 1:30pm Saturday to 9:30am Sunday to conceptualize and build their products.

Our rockstar Developer Evangelists Tyler Nappy and Shubam Sharma were on hand around the clock, to help brainstorm and accelerate. We came out of the 20 hour hack session survivors of an impromptu Nerf War, highly caffeinated and having met a good number of the hacking teams. It turns out sleep deprivation is a great relationship builder!

Also, the Mailjet/TechCrunch Disrupt Tour Concert tee proved to be a pretty popular piece of swag. By sunrise, we were nearly through our supply! Some of the hackers even went on to present in our tees (Thanks for the love, guys!).

A range of apps were built on the Mailjet APIs; from practical to practically hilarious. It was a tough decision, but ultimately we narrowed down the winners to; Concur Trip, Employee Appreciation and It Gon Rain.  Again, a big congratulations to these three teams!

By Monday morning, the Mailjet team had caught up on some sleep and we were ready to roll again, kicking off the conference with the announcement of our newest v3 features; A/x testing, Campaign Comparison, Segmentation & Personalization.

These features will allow marketers and developers to take their insights to the next level by leveraging historical data and understanding customers from a one-to-one relationship. For now, some of these are in private beta, but we’re very excited to be rolling out the remainder of these features on plans over the course of the next month. Check out our demos here!

When not manning the booth and showcasing our demo, we got a chance to listen to speakers from a variety of industries, including Astro Teller of Google[x], David Byttow, CEO and Co-Founder of Secret, Shane Smith CEO of Vice and Marissa Mayer CEO of Yahoo!. TechCrunch reporters probed the speakers with insightful questions, giving an inside look at how some of these large media and software companies are looking to revolutionize social interactions and how we as consumers are also influencing this process. ...The strategy is to make [your product] as good as possible, not try to convince people it's good.“ said Chris Wanstrath, CEO of Github.

Missed the conference? Fret not, catch the best of Disrupt on TechCrunch's Youtube Channel.

[ Posted Fri, 09 May 2014 20:00:13 ]