Not much to say about this media only dinner where the discussion circled around how important Demo is to launch a new company/products. On stage, Chris of course and executives from IronPort, Seagate, Sun Microsystems and Symantec. But as Mike Arrington pointed it out on this note, the smallest start-ups might not be able to afford to shell out the $15K+ fee and the travel expenses to send your team and PR. Mike's idea: TechCrunch20, a Demo-like conference, free for the 20 selected start-ups.

However, I disagree with Mike's assumption that "if you are willing to pay the $15,000+ fee, your startup will really need to suck to be turned down". I think Chris does a stellar job reviewing hundreds of companies for the conference. In a conversation, she also mentioned to me that help and funds are available to companies that can not afford to pay for the show. What is also true is that depending on your interest, you might (or not) find the golden nugget amongst the 60+ companies presenting at Demo. I also see the diversity of companies (consumer, enterprise, security, web...) to be some sort of an eye-opener in areas that I might not have heard about, but ultimately found interesting.