Serious?

They only won because they brought cupcakes.

how original

Congrats!!! You guys are picking up where the folks @ HeyCosmo Concierge left off.

So, why exactly did Arrington leave the stage?

Congratulations!

I’m not feeling anything special about the winner or the runners-up.

Big let down after Mint.com made its huge announcement.

Regards,
George

Congratulations to RedBeacon!

You got to admit. The cupcakes trick was memorable. I definitely remember that presentation . . . but not the company name.

I really wonder how these guys will overcome the chicken and egg problem. Because right now I doubt the service has enough mass to be useful. We’ll see in a year :)

http://www.traderbots.com

it seems to me that the google pedigree played into the final decision. it is a nice site and a sound idea, but like the judges noticed, it has the chicken/egg issue to deal with.

i liked breakthrough.com the best. simple tech, but seems like a great big (but focused) idea for a great big market.

congrats to all selected companies…and to mike & jason for another excellent conference!

Looks like a great service. Congrats RedBeacon. But tell me, what was the criteria for selection?

The site’s concept is really good. Having been wanting an authentic service like this for long. What is the criteria for selection?

Innovative? Cutting edge? What?

Isn’t this just a complete knock-off of ServiceMagic and other local service matching sites that have been doing this for years already?

so it’s just a free angie’s list? sure you have to pay but they already have a ton of reviews and mindshare.

my sentiments exactly. are we serious here? liquidity plans? can’t happen.

looks like a cron job ;)

I’m waiting for Paul Carr’s explanation.
Should be interesting.

At one point I thought Arrington was going to come out with a CrunchPad and give one to the winning company, marking its launch. But I guess not.

This comment was meant to be a reply to one of the posts above regarding Arrington not being on stage for the presentation of the winning company.

I live in Australia. Doesn’t seem to help me much!

Great news

Awarded based on who needs the money most….

RedBeacon? Really? I didn’t remember the thing 5 minutes after they stepped off stage. Here are my Top Four:

1.AnyClip
2.Breakthrough
3.Udorse
4.City Sourced

[...] up. As usual, Mike Arrington & Jason Calacanis put on an excellent conference. RedBeacon walked away with the grand prize of $5ok (congrats!), but all 50 startups were very [...]

incorrect.

RedBeacon — Ok, here’s another one I don’t get. Weren’t there dozens of companies during Web 1.0 that came and went providing such a service? A few even continue to hang around today, like Angie’s List. What makes this one any different or better than all those that came and went before?

/Ira

I left the following comment on Monday, but I feel it bears repeating:

It’s a sound concept, but the two-sided market (chicken and egg problem) is a lot to overcome. Just opening the floodgates for 2 weeks and hoping small businesses sign up is not going to cut it. Sure, you may get service providers scattered across the country, but this will be of minimal utility to users. I’m not saying it’s not a worthwhile tool for small businesses, but it takes a massive sales effort to garner enough merchant participation. How many people do you think YellowPages employs? A newspaper? Small business sales are tough.

Congratulations to City Sourced! You guys rocked the party!

Agreed…. useful service, but not a game changer.

Udorse was innovative. City Sourced had the “do better for your community” theme and AnyClip seems like it will be popular like animoto “just because it’s fun”

Think their definitely needs to be a “voter” award… cause if you looked at all the tweets, chats etc. you’d find a different list I think ! We’re not sophisticated entreprenuers turned VC’s, but we’re technologically oriented users that will end up using these apps.

Don’t be Kanye West

Points to consider,

1.) Ex Google Employees
2.) Presentation went over 3 minutes (limit was 6)
3.) Cupcake Bribery
4.) Decent product, not yet launched

They only won because they’re ex-Google employee’s. Typical.

Congrats RedBeacon!

Big shout out to co-founder Ethan Anderson. He showed up at one of the last session of Founders Institute as a guest when @Arrington was speaking to the class and showed him a demo.

Great product + Great market + Great team + Great marketing + Non stop drive = future success.

Picking a company that shows the most promise for actual market success is what TC 50 is all about.

I just got back from a 6 month trip to Australia (Perth). I loved it down there!

How is this different from Yelp? Aside from the stupid name?

That’s it, next year I’m going to TechCrunch and inventing a giant webpage of knowledge that ANYONE can edit. I’ll call it “YellowCrowdsourcingPEDIAr.” NO ONE STEAL MY IDEA.

Udorse is interesting but has the potential to lead to mass unauthentic plz someone just pay my bills noise.

Anyclip is ok but until it knows all of everything video on the planet its limited. Its API could be leveraged though and that could be attractive technology to someone else out there.

Citysourced is cool but not really super new. But it hits that big ooo social services i wanna be a part of the planet team.

Redbeacon is ok but slow city to city roll out will kill it, heck hook up with crowdflower and get those turks working on building out the vendor infrastructure. Redbeacon is kinda interesting in that its not specific to a set vendor gig, so i could just use it like a greedy mturk setup (which i think someone made a site like that previously) where you can post a job like “moon my sister when she gets on the bus 9am at this location, take a photo as proof” and the job goes out there, people bid on it, complete it etc.

Redbeacon also doesnt seem too concerned about the experience end of biz if the vendor drops the ball on the gig etc, sure its a blackeye for that vendor but also could quickly erode trust in the app that provided that vendor.

And theres nothing stopping Angie’s List from just turning on this ability/offer in all its territory and rolling out a like product. The 50k to them seems like a weak handshake of hurry the frak up before everyone gets wind of it. Weird TC50, very strange.

Hey Justin, check out http://www.quotify.com.au/partners, those guys have been doing a very similar thing in Australia since 2006

They won because of the people – (don’t know them personally) but they have “big names”. I feel that if they have sold only cupcake on the internet, and said it is a widget, they would have won.
I guess the team here is everything because the company itself sounds like other companies out there and like Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, said they are not world changer… (he said that on all the companies that presented first day)

Exactly! Or a Peoples Choice award…

This is their liquidity event!

[...] conference is over, the winner has been announced (RedBeacon), and the drinking has begun. Thank you so much to all of the companies (both the finalists and in [...]

Ey redbeacon, I’m really happy for you and I’mma let you finish, but mint.com was one of the greatest TC50 winner of ALL TIME

try http://www.whocando.com.au – looks much better and it works!

Yes me too! I just signed up to discover that it has very clearly defined “service” types and only US based.

funny how the 3rd founder wanted to be back with another startup.. lol.. what was he thinking ?

techcrunch fails again with their lame pick. RedBeacon? I mean really??? really?? I can name 10 others more deserving

Angieslist.com is better and craigslist even more

so TC put up all this circus so that another of Craigslist’s vertical tries to make it???!

Come on!

So, basically Google buys them out, they all goback to their old cubicles but with shit loads a cash, the site gets nowhere and i keep on visiting Craigslist whenever i need a new plumber

Craig you’re still the king of all start ups

F

Hard to see the innovation here. It is a good concept but other new services are doing far more what redbeacon. For example, bookingangle and http://questbid.com are more interesting. They actually call providers based on the text request entered. A lot more intriguing.

[...] conference is over, the winner has been announced (RedBeacon), and the drinking has begun. Thank you so much to all of the companies (both the finalists and in [...]

Yo RedBeacon, im really happy for you and imma let you finish, but Threadsy had one of the best products of ALL-TIME!

congradulations to RedBeacon. heres a tip
-get a domain that is easy to spell, vocalize and relates to product. most people cant spell redbeacon or know what it does just by hearing it.
most people would know how to spell ContractorLocator and know exactly what the channel does just by hearing or seeing it. i call this self propelled marketing.
- TC from what i understand bakers are product providers not service providers.

[...] year’s conference just ended, and the grand prize winner is RedBeacon, a company that is like a Yelp for local [...]

BTW, http://QuestBid.com really solves the chick and egg problem. Providers do not need to sign up to receive inquiry. They have fully automated phone call mechanism.

Scratching my head so hard over RedBeacon choice that the scalp might start to bleed! How is RedBeacon a solution at all?!

Doesn’t address at all the core challenge of hiring vendors: the need for a 3rd party to evaluate and vouch for them. A shortage of supply of vendors isn’t the problem; any Yellowpages, Google, or Craigslist search will yield tons of options.

How is an RFP process for bids by the vendors themselves going to reliably vouch for who’s dependable, who won’t cheat you, who’s done a good job in the past, etc. Yelp, Angie’s List, WOM are all more complete solutions because external judgments based on past performance.

Er, TechCrunch, you just picked a dud as your winner: a mere directory of unreliable self-listings.

You mean like the Microsoft Bizspark award?

[...] Web (1,472) RedBeacon, the market for local services, wins the top prize at TechCrunch50 2009; http://j.mp/4xy8lY [...]

They admitted the biggest market is for “household services.” They will not be able to capture this market because once a connection is made, the middleman gets cutout. There is some value-add in aggregating price quotes from vendors for professional services, but this requires vendors to signup and is a more limited market.

Just another service provider platform. But important is how they gonna execute and not what it is. There are 100 such service platforms(web) in India but 1 or 2 doing well.

Its all about execution.

Is that true?
An hour and a half before the end of the voting, Yaron Binur asked from an Israeli blogger to help win by using the Israeli votes. (RedBeacon was behind by 7 votes). 15 minutes after the blogger twit on that RedBeacon became the winner…
The story is here (in Hebrew): http://www.thecoils.com/2009/09/16/tc50_update3-2/

Intuit (www.intuit.com) which just announced buying Mint.com had launched and killed a similar service about 4 years ago. It was called Zippingo.com. There was not enough traction for the service to monetize and they believe in killing a product quickly if it doesnt do well.
I am wondering then if RedBeacon has any differentiator from Zippingo or for that matter any of the 20 other players in the market today!

you know guys it strikes me as odd that a ton of people twittered they just voted for red beacon even though the presentations weren’t over. That just smells weird. The same way if you look at the TC comments.. they are just a notch too positive then what normal coverage would be…

SOMETHING IS FISHY HERE

Local lead gen is a old idea from the late 90′s and servicemagic is the king in this space. Old school execution is the key here, for example signing up service providers is very lowtech and they will need a big callcenter sales team. Getting traffic is mainly a SEM/SEO game!.

Bottomline is i really doubt they are going to make it, lets see :)

Probably nothing can, mate

Let’s hope they inspire Yelp to pick up their game.

[...] Even though they didn’t capture any of the eventual awards (of which top prize had gone to RedBeacon), seeing their Demopit win brightened up my day, and brought some much-needed sunshine and [...]

hey locator guy, haven’t seen you here for a while, where have you been?

50k is nothing compare to boost they will receive after tech50. Thanks techcrunch for helping startups.

Remind me what world changer business Mr. Heish started? oh, it was a shoes store.

Congratulations to RedBeacon!

In Europe MyHammer is offering something liken a reverse auction plattform for plumbers et al. – and it’s doing pretty well.

I think the chance to get a service by a recommended company immedieatly could be the killer feature.

In one year we will know what start-up will have survived and upstarted.
Do you remember the winners of last year ? Name 4 besides Yammer.

Any of the 5 winners have a real business model or are they all hoping on advertising?
Or is the goal to get acquired soon?

Still can’t get over this pick.

Anyways the other opportunity here is that redbeacon/servicemagic/craigslist/angieslist firm should try and tell vendors why lost- was it rep, was it price, was it language in the profile, gimme a reason why i lost so i can improve.

Plus while yer at it, pulling in yelp info is nice and all but why not scrape all of the other RT services out there to add more clarity/noise to the party. Break out that semantic search engine and find relevant tweets aided by locational goodness to boot. :P

RedBeacon feels like 1999 all over again.

Very surprised that u-dorse didn’t show up in the final six or win. it seemed like investors were swarming those guys as compared to redbeacon table nextdoor

Weird year at TechCrunch.

Well done to them. I’d love to know from whoever had the final decision why these edged it over the others? You didn’t really mention it anywhere in the post. I would’ve gone with Anyclip or Citysourced as I think they have a higher chance of traction and overall success.

Overall the level was increased among the top few companies but nothing really comes close to Mint. I don’t think they’ll ever be a better company presenting at TC50. I’m not sure how some of the companies got through.

These sorts of businesses are already around in many local areas, we’ve had one where I live for years.

There is no competitive advantage, no unique technology, no barriers to entry, very hard time capturing a mass market, very difficult to scale….

I have no particular axe to grind re TC50, but choosing this as a winning business seems daft. One wonders what the selection criteria were.

Congratulations to all winning teams!

RedBeacon wins TechCrunch 50 WTF…

RedBeacon wins it, says TechCrunch, but its essentially just a service that matches local service providers:

Using the site will be easy for anyone who has used a local review service like Yelp. Simply type whatever service you’re looking for (be it…

[...] work, read up on Brian Solis’ notes on Facebook Reaching 300 Million Users Profitably, share RedBeacon’s win of the top prize at TechCrunch50 2009 on Twitter and enjoy The Fellows’ story on how they too connected through media which has in [...]

wow, another online marketing whiz! Perhaps you should pitch Craigslist, Amazon, and Ebay on the virtues of Self Propelled Marketing and that you are available to help come up with more descriptive names because such is SO IMPORTANT to a site’s long term success. Obviously these sites should have been named “Classifieds.com”, “Books.com” and “Auctions.com” so that people would KNOW instantly what these sites were about.

When you are done renaming the three of the top five most successful commercial websites in the world, why not spread your wisdom to other consumer brands … to help them become more descriptive?

Too bad you weren’t in the room when Pokemon, PacMan, or Dr. Pepper were born! You could have helped rename these less than descriptive loser brands as well!

Seriously, when will Merry Marketeers like you get over this myth that a site/brand name needs to be descriptive? Why do you believe this to be so? There are countless examples of incredible brands that have nonsense names. One can’t get more non-descriptive than “CraigsList”.

Personally I’d suggest to these guys that they use their precious startup resources on building a great service first and foremost … but that’s just me.

I really like Trollim’s idea.
Liked them from the first look at the first slide of their PowerPoint presentation on stage. cool slide :) very non-corporate.

As an independent platform/service provider RedBeacon is going to have a tough time competing. Local search is a tough nut to crack. Integrating their service within an existing local search player would be the ideal scenario.

Yeah ServiceMagic.com does the same thing…it’s amazing how many sites offer the same service, and yet RedBeacon still won the cash, it’s hard to see any innovation in this area, it’s been done way too many times.

[...] .Redbeacon is  startup that tries to fill that gap. Redbeacon won the prestigious Techcrunch50 top prize yesterday [...]

[...] a self-described “Open Table for service businesses” has won TechCrunch 50’s top prize and $50,000. I wasn’t at TC50 but I watched the demo pitch on video. RedBeacon is the just [...]

[...] a self-described “Open Table for service businesses,” has won TechCrunch 50’s top prize and $50,000. I wasn’t at TC50 but I watched the demo pitch on video. RedBeacon is the just [...]

[...] Die letzten zwei Tage durften sich 50 Startups auf der TechCrunch50 präsentieren. Am Ende der Veranstaltung haben die beiden wohlwollenden Diktatoren Michael Arrington und Jason Calacanis mit Redbeacon den Sieger gekürt. [...]

[...] year’s winner, RedBeacon, has already been announced, but that got us thinking: did any local companies make the trip [...]

[...] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments [...]

[...] RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009 – Like Angie’s List, it helps consumers find local [...]

[...] RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009 – Like Angie’s List, it helps consumers find local [...]

If you watched Tony’s interview he stated it has nothing to do with selling shoes. He changed the way customer service is delivering value to customers. He doesn’t care what he sells, evidenced by their foray into electronics, apparel, etc. It’s all about the WOW. (and no, I don’t work for Zappos).

So…is it different than yellowpages? This seems kind of a lame win for all the hype…

That’s funny!

Get lost, I’m already working on it ;)

The TC50 team clearly hasn’t done their homework. This is a 100% rip-off of local matching services like ServiceMagic (an IAC company) that is dominant in this space. What a terrible pick for innovative start-up. A real black mark for Arrington and Co.

What a joke! You got to be kidding. Providing a service on your website that is imported from other websites such as Yelp to find you a plumber? Wow. I just google it. Fast and efficient.

[...] essential. Here’s an example how a pitch should be delivered. You can see other ones at the TechCrunch 50 competition. This presentation is from the runner up, [...]

Horrible choice.

In my view, redbeacon.com did not even deserve to be amongst the finalists. There are over 40 services out there who provide, if not the same, similar services. TC50 and the panels should have done their homework.

I am highly dissapointed at the TC50 winner.

There was a handful of people bashing Mint / TC40 back then, too. It’s just the jealous haters.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/18/mint-wins-techcrunch40-50000-award/

“Red Beacon”

Yep, real hard to say and spell! Well, maybe if you’re a complete moron.

[...] That question came to me this morning, in response to RedBeacon being named the winner of this year’s TechCrunch 50. [...]

ServiceMagic was brought up specifically in the panel discussion. Different business models, different target jobs (remodel vs. handyman) and different approaches (more focus on quick job filling).

ServiceMagic is equivalent to CPM where RedBeacon is aiming at CPA. I know most small businesses would rather pay only when they win the business, not just for leads.

ServiceMagic and Angie’s List need disrupting. Their models are old and their organizations are bloated

did he?

what was that cupcake trick exactly? any video capture of it?

funny you havn’t seen me, i’m in here mopping the tc startup floors everyday. my end of innovation predictions appear to be coming true.
-redbecon=servicemagic
-citysource= gps picture app linked to the city
-anyclip= video splice search engine
-imo=remote control for ipone
-trollim=employee monitor system
-threadsy=thread feed integrator
-1000 startups entered this contest and not a game changer in sight? maybe the game changer was never chosen and still remains in the heap of denied entrants. thats were im at now and from here i only get stronger as my platform appreciates off the charts. appears i may be the only serious game changer in existence. TC is proving that to me everyday. i love this place.

o’rite. but i really don’t see the connection between their name and their service.

the first time i heard the name i was thinking of “red hat” (another example of a pretty strange name)

there might be some truth in this statement

well why didn’t they pick bing then? they sure have the biggest potential for future market success.

Cool site and concept, I hope they do well. Kind of reminds me of ServiceMagic with appointments added in, though.

Congratulations. But I am wondering how is this different from a online ‘Wanted’ list?

There’s no way to give an accurate bid for construction or remodeling work without seeing the project. This service is going to be full of hacks.

There’s a reason no one else is doing it this way.

The launch area is too small for this to ever take off. This years TC50 companies really weren’t all that spectacular. Clicker looks nice, YourVersion isn’t as good as Lazy Feed or Feedly and the rest were just kind of eh… Overall, I wasn’t highly impressed this year like when Mint.com won. There is too much effort involved with getting service providers signed up for this. What are the size limitations, I have a guy who cuts my lawn for 25 bucks a week, it is just one guy. How will he get listed on RedBeacon? Most of the larger shops are way more expensive then the little guys and the little guys do a better job.

Congrats Read Beacon!

But I am disappointed, Have the judges never heard/seen servicemagic.com ? They are doing the same exact thing for more than 10 years.

RedBeacon – Sorry typo in my last post

ServiceMagic and Angie’s List need disrupting. Their models are old and their organizations are bloated…

Maybe be, but they need merely to turn this concept on and they are live in X dozen or so cities. That’s the issue. How does RedBeacon protect itself from the established list/vendor let alone reputation analysis factor thats built into Angie’s List?

I dunno how RedBeacon, can protect itself.. and for the record i’d just like to say I keep saying RedBaron in my head.. just rename it.

Curious choice indeed. Is TC reluctant to 3.0 and wanna be back to 1.0 old-fashioned style services.
Let’s wait six months and see where they ‘ll be.

Congrats anyways!

Hey amazon and zappos and newegg and… wait hopefully you got the point already. No? Ok no worries…

[...] lead generating service for local service providers, is the winning start-up at this year’s TechCrunch50 conference.  From the pitch video I watched it seems like RedBeacon is basically ServiceMagic [...]

Maybe service magic should buy them…..

Personally, what problem did this solve that made this so unique?

Success will be sustainability and flawless execution I don’t care how “useful” the product is.

No they are looking for something more along the lines of the not having paid attention award…

Amazing display of the new crop of Israeli web startups – RedBeacon, AnyClip and Trollim. Congrats guys. Shana Tova.

Cupcake = Marissa Mayer. Track down the conspiracy.

Trollim site is a killer app… but its achilles heel is its total disregard for real-world skill sets behind web 2.0: PHP, Ruby/RoR, Python, etc – that’s an enormous user base. So Trollim ignores engineers from Facebook, Twitter, 37signals, isn’t Hulu on Rails too? Etc.

Even hardcore front-end-behavior-layer-UI Javascript ninjas should be battling here. But no love for them either. So Trollim disses anyone from the Jquery/Prototype framework fanclubs, half the crew at Meebo, etc. Actionscripter? Sorry, Sproutbuilder team, battle elsewhere.

Trollim: just forget this crowd. They’re too busy building next-gen webapps to be battling on your site anyway, right?

[...] a reception one video-related startup, AnyClip, got at the conference. Apparently they were a judges’ runner-up and the audience favorite, though, so clearly there’s some demand for what they’re [...]

Congratulations. Seems similar to Angie’s List or ServiceMagic, but haven’t checked out thoroughly.

This year they preferred execution over innovations, so most of the candidates had great websites for such an early phase, but not so innovative, the winner made no exception.

True innovations where udorse, city sourced, maybe sprawtt.

Congrats to all and excellent event and panel judges! Fun to watch and almost felt the buzz of being there…now lets get that next tech rally going on wall street shall we? ;P
bobbyd

Did anybody look at the twitter posts… people voting before all demos were presented, or the off tone comments on the techcrunch post, paired with the fact that no one really was interested in that company…

Anyway to me it seems all a bit rigged… probably worth to spend an hour to look into that.

Congrats RedBeacon! From some of the comments here, it sounds like your competition is a little green with envy. You work hard and have a great idea, it pays off! You deserve it. Good luck for your future endeavors.

wtf? There’s absolutely no innovation they offer that’s a significant improvement over the existing services already mentioned in this space. ServiceMagic, Angie’s list, fixr, even craigs list for that matter. I guess I don’t get the selection criteria. Mint was awesome and a completely new idea which made sense when TC picked them. But RedBeacon? I guess I’m just not seeing this or maybe they didn’t communicate what differentiates them very well. But this just doesn’t feel like a TC50 winner to me. Wish them luck tho…@robblewis

the presentation and the CEO are very impressive. very silicon valley ex-googler type.

pounding the pavement isn’t what they’ll be good at, and that’s what’s going to be needed to succeed.. especially outside the bay area.

finessing wont cut it!

I watched every minute of it… even the slide shows during the breaks that played “we from the streets” music over pictures of nerds… The link for the Bizspark award was broken, and Though Mike repeatedly announced the correct link to go to, I refused to remember it, cuz fuck Microsoft. :)

[...] Congratulation on winning the TechCrunch50 award [here] [...]

I do not get how this is different than YELP?

I posted earlier and now it’s no longer here. what happened? reposting…

wtf? There’s absolutely no innovation they offer that’s a significant improvement over the existing services already mentioned in this space. ServiceMagic, Angie’s list, fixr, even craigs list for that matter. I guess I don’t ge…t the selection criteria. Mint was awesome and a completely new idea which made sense when TC picked them. But RedBeacon? I guess I’m just not seeing this or maybe they didn’t communicate what differentiates them very well. But this just doesn’t feel like a TC50 winner to me. Wish them luck tho…@robblewis

[...] Podczas zakończonej konferencji TC50 odbyło się bardzo wiele ciekawy i innowacyjnych prezentacji startupów. Materiałów do oglądania jest na długie godziny. Ja swój przegląd zacząłem od zwycięzcy i tych którzy mieli największe szanse na wygraną. [...]

ServiceLive.com does the exact same thing…big difference? ServiceLive is backed by SEARS!!!

RedBacon? This company bribed the entire audience and it’s been done several times over. There were numerous egregious biases at the TC50 conference for people already within the inner circle. The DemoPit company, Chyngle, who won on Day 2 people choice somehow managed to stack their chips. They had more than could be possible in the first hour of the event. And their app was so narrow. It could have been their neat iphone display, but the service was not a winner IMHO. Penn and Teller was a bust (Penn bombed on stage and the judges were not impressed), and Clicker, Yext and several other companies were either already funded or already launched (both in violation of the TC50 rules). Next year let’s try to keep it within the constraints you guys set yourselves. So it’s a fair playing field for all entrants.

IMO, most of the companies this year were simply riding the wave of trends like facebook, iPhone or analytics of some sort and are not good long term businesses and merely get rich quick schemes piggybacking on hype. No good tech just booth babes, shwag, and me-toos.

You are correct like the panel said distribution will be the main hurdle. If you live in a big city this may catch on but I highly doubt anyone in a smaller city will ever get use. I hope they are able to get the word out, if so I think the idea has promise.

Actually, different in at least one really important way. Service Magic charges you PER LEAD. Contractors I’ve spoken w/get screwed with this approach, as they are paying really good money for “leads” that never materialize into anything. IF the folks at RB can figure out how to only charge for actual jobs… I think many contractors might be interested.

BUT, 10% seems pretty steep. I mean, what’s the real cost of doing business RB? These small guys aren’t running huge profit margins, so if you’re taking 10%, they’re just going to increase their prices to cover it. And then, as the consumer, I’m going to be incented to find the contractor outside of RB to get a cheaper price.

So there’s still serious practicalities to work through, but I agree it is a great idea. Would love to see that 10% come down to something far more reasonable like 2%.

i hear ya. Verizon wireless drops “Chaperone” for “FamilyLocator” http://bit.ly/qYw6M
-the World Game Changer of Tomorrow is about who can make the most common sense of the internet and mobile as a whole………..setting a universal standard that supercedes cyberspace as we know it. can you hear me now?

[...] like Yelp. Actually, Redbeacon even imports star reviews <i>from</i> Yelp. TechCrunch says, "RedBeacon also employees natural language processing so it can figure out exactly what [...]

Have you ever heard of Angieslist? This is the same exact thing with a little twist. I am extremely disappointed to see that for two years in a row the winners were .com models that already exist. I thought this was supposed to be a award that goes to the startup idea of the year. These are ideas that already exist and have shown signs of success. Two Thumbs Down!!!

Looks like a copy of http://www.jobaba.com

[...] : “Startup Mahakumbh” has  just summed up at San Francisco. The results are out. Here is the list. 1) redbeacon.com -  Local service providers platform. 2) threadsy.com [...]

TechCrunch50 : Are Indian Startups Ready Yet?…

TechCrunch50 : “Startup Mahakumbh” has  just summed up at San Francisco. The results are out. Here is the list.
1) redbeacon.com -  Local service providers platform.
2) threadsy.com -  Online communication platform.
3) citysourced.com -Â…

I cannot believe my eyes. I am a co-founder of nejremeslnici.cz – a startup from Czech Republic. We launched two weeks ago and in addition to being on the same topic, we are even using the same graphics (I have records to have purchased the graphics weeks before 14.9. when RB went live).

So the reason I’m writing here is to announce that we did our web before (or in parallel to) RB and we have not copied ANYTHING from the new TC50 winner. Congrats to them, but I’d feel better if they did not qualify ;-)

Our plans and focus are a bit different from RB though, but that’s beyond the scope of this post. For non Czech speakers, you can get rough idea here (the Czech is too hard for google;-) http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=nejremeslnici.cz&sl=cs&tl=en&history_state0= and http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=nejremeslnici.cz&sl=cs&tl=en&history_state0=

The second link should have been http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=cs&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nejremeslnici.cz%2Fgeneric_pages%2Findex sorry for the mistake

There is already a site that offers the same services as Redbeacon, it’s called Fixr(http://www.fixr.com/), and I think it’s been around for over a year or more already.

Do they handle the payment for the service too? Who eats the 3%-4% transaction cost of a credit-card payment? What about down-payments required by the service providers?

That’s going to be key. If you’re looking measuring in the good proportions algorithm criteria & users criteria, please tell me.

How does/ will this differ from Gigpark?

http://www.gigpark.com/

Wow… and to think that ThanksBud (our company rejected from TC50 last year with the exact same premise) was told that this would never work by 15+ different incubators. Funny how a couple ex-googlers makes a product so much shinier.

congrats redbeacon, thats awesome news! good luck, its a great service :)

rofl potd.

Completely agree. I have used numerous localized services over the past 5 years. RedBeacon is no technological breakthrough nor does it have a innovative business model to deserve the TC50 winner’s spot. I thought there were over a dozen other presentations which were better than RedBeacon.

Let’s see if my post doesn’t get deleted (or whaterver happened to it) this time. There’s already something like RedBeacon, and it’s called Fixr: http://www.fixr.com

I don’t really get what makes Redbeacon so special.

There’s something like Redbeacon already. It’s called Fixr.com and its’s been around for more than a year already I think.

Congratulations for the winner but my favorites where the guys from City Sourced I hope investors put their eyes on them.

Ex Google Employees is what i feel did it. and that seems like all that did it. But that is business.

I would consider our site, Workpost.com, to be a little bit more authentic. Instead of taking a dump of someone elses directory, we are building a directory of pros from the ground up. All listings are user generated and managed. Check us out at http://www.workpost.com!

The name got you confused because it sounds like red herring.

It’s not like Angie’s List. Angie’s List is just ratings and reviews from other users but you have to pay a subscription to see them. Redbeacon is free to use and seems like it intelligently matches you to the best service provider out there. You get price quotes from them and book ur appointment online. How is this like Angie’s List again?

How is this like Angie’s List? Angie’s List is a subscription based rating and review site. Redbeacon seems like it intelligently matches you to the best service provider. In the demo, they showed getting price quotes and scheduling the job online. I guess they have ratings and reviews but so does YouTube and I wouldn’t say Redbeacon is like YouTube…

Very good site, very intuitive & simple.
But, for my information, can someone explain me what ” Redbeacon” means ?

[...] RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009 The 50 startup presentations are over, the judges votes are in, Michael and Jason chewed over the top contenders, and the winner of this year’s TechCrunch50 is RedBeacon. The startup aims to help consumers find local service providers such as plumbers, bakers, and contractors. TechCrunch [...]

[...] RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009 The 50 startup presentations are over, the judges votes are in, Michael and Jason chewed over the top contenders, and the winner of this year’s TechCrunch50 is RedBeacon. The startup aims to help consumers find local service providers such as plumbers, bakers, and contractors. TechCrunch [...]

Erick forgot to include link of tc post on redbeacon, here it is http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-redbeacon-lets-you-hire-local-service-providers-online-without-any-phone-calls/

RedBeacon is refreshingly original to me and very useful service too. Sad it’ll probably come to a server near me in about 7 years. CitySourced is very useful too especially if citizens can monitor online the response to the reported issues, issues reported by other users, etc..

[...] RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009 (TechCrunch) [...]

This is pants. AnyClip is a much more innovative search engine idea ….. I see RedBeacon and just think yell.com

[...] conference is over, the winner has been announced (RedBeacon), and the drinking has begun. Thank you so much to all of the companies (both the finalists and in [...]

aghh – finally someone calling this. There were hundreds of these sites – bullhorn was one. I just dont see how this is any different.

haha – great response

total copy from myhammer.com

how can you guys award such a copycat and unoriginal idea??

Congrats.

[...] TC50 Winner: RedBeacon [...]

[...] TC50 Winner: RedBeacon [...]

[...] TC50 Winner: RedBeacon [...]

Looks like they thought they can get away with being the US version without telling us.

[...] TC50 Winner: Redbeacon [...]

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[...] “OpenTable for local services” that launched at TechCrunch50 last week and took home the top prize from the event, gets a little attention from mainstream media. See founders Aaron Lee, Ethan [...]

They got more buzz and publicity whose value is lot more than the 50000$!

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Congrats to RedBeacon, here in Belgium we created a very similar startup called http://www.skilto.com which enables you to signup with your Facebook, Myspace or Twitter account, create a profile to list you skills and find local clients by adding pics and videos to display your talent!
Maybe we will win next year’s TC50 then :)))

It actually seems that the “Services Marketplace” space in Australia is much more mature that the USA. Whilst Red Beacon is just starting out, Australians have been pioneering this space for years.

Service Central ( http://www.servicecentral.com.au ) launched in 2005 and has generated $580,000,000 in job requests, and over 180,000 jobs for service providers.

Service Seeking (http://www.serviceseeking.com.au ) launched a cop-cat site in 2007 and has gained some good traction with alliances with EBay and New Ltd.

Quotify (http://www.quotify.com.au) has been doing online lead generation for years, but hasn’t really gained much traction in the marketplace.

Others of interest in Australia include WhoCanDo, HomeFriday, Utool, and jobstodo. Seems like the USA has a lot of catching up to do.

That said Service Magic has been doing this for years, and Elance is a dot com survivor from way back. I guess the fact that Red Beacon has been able to present this as a new space is indicative of just how big this space is and just how successful the dominant player in this space will be in the years to come.

Hi Danny,

People have been trying to make this assumption about Services Marketplaces for years. What you’re saying makes perfect logical sense. However, the reality of the fluid dynamic nature of local services is that people keep on coming back again and again.

We’ve been running Service Central ( http://www.servicecentral.com.au ) for 4 years now and received over 180,000 job requests from consumers. The biggest source of work is repeat usage. Consumers that love the service and have grown to trust us over time.

Some of the reasons why consumers continue to use the services marketplace after a “connection has been made” include:
1. Frequency of work …. in reality, how often do you actually use a plumber?
2. Availability … what is the likelihood of the plumber you used last time being available when and where you want them?
3. Convenience … its much easier to make a single job request with a Services Marketplace and know that a quality local business that is available when and where you want them is going to call you to do the job.

The list goes on, but I won’t bore you with details.

Cheers

D.

Congrats! But we have been doing exactly the same in Germany since 2004. Thank’s for copying the concept, general layout & even the wording… Check out http://www.blauarbeit.de.

[...] no surprise that these guys were the winners of TechCrunh50 this year. When Robert Scoble, also a TechCrunch50 panelist, interviewed them for a Building43 [...]

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http://www.ojanta.nl is another similiar site

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