IMPORTANT NOTE: Applications are due by midnight pst this Friday, June 27 (submit your company here), and our 50 finalists will be selected by Friday, August 1.

We are pleased to announce that joining Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, Chris DeWolf, Dan Farber, Om Malik, Marissa Mayer, Sean Parker, Kevin Rose Sheryl Sandberg, Yossi Vardi and Jeff Weiner are three new additions to the TechCrunch50 expert panel. Marc Benioff, Don Dodge and Mark Cuban have signed on as TechCrunch50 experts.

Keep checking in with the TechCrunch50 blog, as additional announcements about experts and panels will be up next. Background on Marc, Don and Mark is as follows:

	Marc Benioff Marc Benioff is chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. He founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand information management service that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Under Benioff’s direction, salesforce.com has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a publicly traded company that is the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. For its revolutionary approach, salesforce.com has been lauded as one of BusinessWeek’s Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, named No. 7 on The Wired 40, and selected for the past two years as a Top Ten Disrupter by Forbes. Benioff has been widely recognized for pioneering innovation with honors such as the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the SDForum Visionary Award, Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year by the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business, and being ranked No. 7 on the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT survey by eWEEK. CrunchBase profile.
	Don Dodge Don Dodge is a veteran of five start-ups including Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks. Don is currently Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team. Don has been in the software business for more than 20 years. He started his software career with Digital Equipment, aka DEC, in the database group. He worked with 5 software start-ups over the next 12 years. Forte Software was the first multiplatform object oriented development environment. AltaVista was the first search engine on the web. Napster was the first P2P file sharing network. Bowstreet was the first web services development environment. Groove Networks was the first secure P2P collaboration platform. Now he is at Microsoft… “the biggest start-up in the world”… working with VC’s and start-ups in the greater Boston area. CrunchBase profile.
	Mark Cuban Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and chairman of HDNet a HD TV cable network. July 1982 saw Cuban start MicroSolutions. MicroSolutions became a software reseller and system integration company, selling products such as Compuserve, Carbon Copy, and Lotus Notes, with the company’s biggest client being Perot Systems. Cuban sold MicroSolutions to Compuserve for $6 million in 1990. In 1995 Cuban and friend Todd Wagner became interested in the early stages of the Internet along with their interest in basketball resulted in them starting broadcast.com which grew to revenues of almost $100 million and 330 staff. The internet company Yahoo brought Broadcast.com with Cuban earning himself just over 5 billion worth of Yahoo stock. CrunchBase profile.

More announcements will be coming up next week. Stay Tuned.

In addition to announcing our next three experts, we would also like to thank our new service partner Ustream for joining TechCrunch50 this year. Thank you!!

Ustream is the leading internet broadcasting platform. Ustream’s proprietary technology powers an easy-to-use, web-based interface, allowing anyone with a camera, computer and Internet connection to broadcast live to the world. Integrated with a host of interactive tools including chatrooms, co-host, and shout meter, Ustream’s platform delivers real-time, social experiences on the web. Since its beta launch in March 2007, Ustream has grown to 360,000 registered users broadcasting 15,000 live shows a day. Ustream.TV is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is privately held. For more information, please visit: www.ustream.tv.

Thanks to all the expanded space at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse, we have even more options to participate in TechCrunch50.

Exhibitor Package Highlights:

• 5’ table for exhibit space in the West Hall for the full 3 days of the conference. We provide the table, linens, printed sign, power and wireless connectivity.
• 4 conference passes (retail @ $2,995 each / $11,980 total value)*
• 1 ticket to VIP dinner Monday, September 8 (partners and sponsors, experts, keynote speakers and 50 presenting companies)
• Corporate logo included in the exhibitor section of the TechCrunch50 website, blog and all print media (including program guide w exhibitor layout)
• Right to offer corporate marketing “schwag” in the TechCrunch50 conference bags and to distribute company marketing materials during conference
• The Exhibitor Package is targeted to early-stage product companies, and the conference passes and demonstration space package is for use by a single company.

Exhibitor packages are $10,000 and will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis and may be paid by credit card, Paypal, check or wire transfer. (Exhibitor reservations to be paid by check or wire transfer will be held for 10 days, and then released back for sale if payment is not received.)

Get your exhibitor package automatically via Eventbrite ticketing or email us at sponsors [at] techcrunch50 [dot] com.

We’re still hosting a 2008 DemPit
Like last year, DemoPit slots will be offered on a priority basis to TechCrunch50 applicants (preferred slots will be extended to semi-finalist companies for use for 1 of the 3 days of the conference) starting late July. Additional inventory, if available, will be released for early-stage start ups in early August.

Come be part of the action and join in the start-up energy of TechCrunch50.

And remember, applications to TechCrunch50 are due this Friday, June 27 at midnight pst. Submit your company here.

We are pleased to announce that joining Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, Chris DeWolf, Marissa Mayer, Sean Parker, Sheryl Sandberg, Yossi Vardi and Jeff Weiner are three new additions to the TechCrunch50 expert panel. Kevin Rose, Om Malik and Dan Farber have signed on as TechCrunch50 experts.

Additionally, as a reminder, this Friday, June 13 is the deadline for applicants seeking “early decision” guidance on acceptance to TechCrunch50.

Keep checking in with the TechCrunch50 blog, as additional announcements about experts and panels will be up next. Background on Kevin, Om and Dan is as follows:

	Kevin Rose Kevin Rose is the founder and chief architect of Digg. Kevin started Digg in September 2004 as a personal project. His initial idea was to conduct a social experiment in how masses of users could control and promote news and other content on the Web, without external editorial control. After a very short time, he realized the power of his idea, as Digg was becoming a resource for breaking news stories and developed a strong user following. Kevin is also a co-founder of the Internet Television Network Revision3 where as a member of the board he provides strategic direction to the company. Crunchbase profile.
	Om Malik Om Malik has over 15 years of experience as a journalist covering technology and business news. Most notably, he was a Writer at Red Herring during its glory days. He then went on to be part of the founding team of Forbes.com as a Senior Editor. Most recently, he was a Senior Writer for Business 2.0 magazine covering telecom and broadband stories. His contributions have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and MIT Technology Review. Additionally, Malik is the author of Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist. He is the founder of Giga Omni Media, the company behind popular blogs such as GigaOM, NewTeeVee, WebWorkerDaily, Earth2Tech & OStatic. Crunchbase profile.
	Dan Farber Dan Farber was named Editor-in-chief of CNET’s News.com in February 2008. Previously he was vice-president of editorial at CNET Networks and editor in chief of ZDNet. Dan has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. He joined ZDNet in 1996, and led the development of ZDNet’s worldwide network of more than 70 technology-focused sites. Prior to joining ZDNet, Dan served as vice president and editor-in-chief at Ziff-Davis’ flagship computing news publications, PC Week and MacWeek. He was also a founding editor at MacWorld and part of the editorial staffs of PC World and PC Magazine. Crunchbase profile.

More announcements will be coming up next week. Stay Tuned.

In addition to announcing our next three experts, we would also like to thank our new partner MSN Money for joining TechCrunch50 this year. Thank you!!

MSN Money is a premier online financial resource, providing great original editorial content plus the tools and community to empower investors and engage spenders and savers. Taxpayers can find helpful tax tips, checklists, a tax estimator and the Deduction Finder to help them make informed decisions about filing. MSN Money also helps users stay informed with in-depth and up-to-the-minute data, investment recommendations, valuable tracking tools, and opportunities to connect with other active investors to make smart financial decisions. MSN Money is located on the Web at http://www.money.msn.com.

Joining Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, Marissa Mayer, Sheryl Sandberg and Yossi Vardi are three new additions to the TechCrunch50 expert panel. We are pleased to announce Chris DeWolfe, Sean Parker and Jeff Weiner will be joining us at TechCrunch50.

Stay tuned as additional announcements about experts and panels will be up next. Background on Chris, Sean and Jeff is as follows:

	Chris DeWolfe Chris DeWolfe is the co-founder and chief executive officer of MySpace.com, the leading online lifestyle portal. DeWolfe, alongside co-founder and president, Tom Anderson, created a new platform for a generation to communicate and discover culture based around the self expression and connectivity of the site’s 110 million active users. As MySpace’s CEO, DeWolfe is responsible for all aspects of the site’s strategic vision and the execution of its global business initiatives. Along the way, DeWolfe has led strategic initiatives that have extended the site’s reach into a number of vertical categories – such as online video (MySpaceTV), politics (MySpace Impact), news, music and film – and at present a total of 29 international markets. Under DeWolfe’s leadership, MySpace has grown exponentially since its launch in 2004, with an average of 300,000 new users signing up daily. More than 70 million people in the U.S. visit the site each month, creating a user composition that includes politicians, bands, filmmakers, comedians, photographers, and people wanting to communicate with friends and plan their social lives. CrunchBase profile.
	Sean Parker Sean Parker is the co-founder and Chairman of Causes on Facebook and MySpace, a new network that aims to enable large-scale political and social activism on the Internet. Sean is also a Managing Partner at The Founders Fund, an early stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco . Previously, Sean was the co-founder of the category defining Web ventures Napster, Plaxo, and Facebook. At Napster, Sean helped to design the Napster client software and led the company’s initial financing and strategy. Under Sean’s leadership, Napster became the fastest adopted client software application in history. Following Napster, Sean co-founded and served as President of Plaxo, where he pioneered the viral engineering techniques used to deploy Plaxo’s flagship smart address book product, ultimately acquiring more than 15 million users. In 2004, Sean left Plaxo to become the founding President of Facebook, one of the most rapidly growing sites on the Internet today. Sean sits on the boards of several private companies. CrunchBase profile.
	Jeff Weiner Jeff Weiner is an Executive-in-Residence for leading Venture Capital firms Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. Prior to joining Accel and Greylock, Weiner served in key leadership roles at Yahoo for over seven years, most recently as the Executive Vice President of Yahoo’s Network Division. In this position he led a team of over 3,000 employees, managing products reaching over 500 million consumers, and overseeing a P&L responsible for roughly $3 billion in annual revenue. During his tenure, Weiner helped drive the Networkʼs Open and Social strategy as well as expansion of the companyʼs category-leading consumer web products, including Yahoo’s Front Doors, Communications and Community products, Search, and Media properties. Prior to his Network role, Weiner was part of the Search leadership team that directed the acquisition and integration of Inktomi, AltaVista, and FAST as well as the development of Yahoo Search Technology. From 2001 to 2002, Weiner oversaw Corporate Development at Yahoo, where he was responsible for the development and modification of overall corporate and individual business unit strategy and M&A. Weiner is also actively involved in the non-profit sector, with specific focus on leveraging digital capabilities to broaden the reach and scale of high impact causes. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of DonorsChoose.org and Malaria No More. CrunchBase profile.

In addition to announcing our next three experts, we would also like to give a “shout out” to a returning partner. International law firm Perkins Coie is joining us again this year as a supporter of TechCrunch50. Thank you!!

Perkins Coie is a leading international law firm offering a full spectrum of legal services. With more than 650 lawyers in 14 offices across the United States and in China, the firm serves great companies ranging in size from start-ups to FORTUNE 100. Many of the firm’s clients are leaders in traditional industries as well as emerging technology markets, including Internet, software, digital media, hardware and telecommunications. The firm’s Emerging Companies attorneys have extensive experience in working with technology companies at all stages of development, from start-up planning to all aspects of capital formation. We help our clients protect and leverage their intellectual property, secure financing from venture capitalists, private equity groups and others, develop growth strategies and, when appropriate, exit strategies. As our clients grow, we work with them in public offerings, partnering ventures, and mergers and acquisitions.