BlackBerry Tries Again With The Porsche Design P’9983 Smartphone

Not to be outdone by the new iPhones or Galaxy Notes, BlackBerry is shouting “me too!” with the introduction of a new smartphone. Meet the Porsche Design P’9983, a slightly re-skined and re-worked BlackBerry Q10 with a 3.1-inch touchscreen.

Don’t be fooled by the swanky Porsche Design exterior. This is a Ford Fiesta with a Porsche 911 body.

Inside the Porsche Design P’9983 is the same hardware that powers the year-old BlackBerry Q10 including the same dual Core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm MSM8960, 2100 mAh battery and 720×720 3.1-inch touchscreen. However Blackberry threw buyers a bone and upped the storage to 64GB.

According to the product page, the P’9983 rocks a slightly redesigned physical keyboard. Glass keys. If that’s important to you.

So why buy the Porsche Design P’9983? Great question and I’m glad you asked, friend. Buyers of the Porsche Design P’9983 get a special prefix on their BBM pins. Yep, a couple of special characters. I’ll let the product page explain:

Be instantly recognizable amongst Porsche Design users. The Porsche Design P’9983 smartphone from BlackBerry provides an exclusive Porsche Design PIN ID group – 2AAXXXXX, which sets you apart and makes you instantly recognizable among other Porsche Design users.

Pricing and availability wasn’t announced yet.

Join Us In Hardware Alley At Disrupt London, Won’t You?

Disrupt London is fast approaching and I’d love to see you in our amazing Hardware Alley. This even, which runs during the last day of Disrupt, features all of my favorite startups – the hardware ones – in glorious technicolor.

What is Hardware Alley? It’s a celebration of hardware startups (and other cool gear makers) that features everything from robotic drones to 3D printers. We try to bring in an eclectic mix of amazing exhibitors and I think you’ll agree that our previous Alleys have been roaring successes.

We’d like you to register as a Hardware Alley exhibitor. You’ll get to exhibit on the last day of Disrupt Londo, October 21, to show off your goods and get access to some of the most interesting people (and most interesting VCs) in the world.

All you need to demo is a laptop. TechCrunch provides you with: 30″ round cocktail table, linens, table-top sign, inclusion in program agenda and website, exhibitor WiFi, and press list.

You can reserve your spot by purchasing a Hardware Alley Exhibitor Package here.

If you are Kickstarting your project now or bootstrapping, please contact me at john@techcrunch.com with the subject line “HARDWARE ALLEY.” I will do my best to accommodate you.

Hope to see you in London!

Korea’s SparkLabs Names Its 4th Startup Intake

South Korea’s SparkLabs accelerator has named its fourth intake — including its first Internet of Things startup (a company making connected flower pots); its first startup from China, a mobile healthcare startup; along with one U.S. business in the marketing automation space.

This continues the more international flavor of the program’s recent years vs its inaugural intake, back in 2012, which consisted of South Korean companies hoping to break into overseas markets.

There were more non-Korean startups (four out of a total of nine) in last year’s SparkLabs’ batch, compared to two this time. However co-founder Bernard Moon told TechCrunch that overall the incubator had more international applications this year — noting that startups from over 20 countries applied to take part. SparkLabs received around 220 applications in total for the program, he added.

There are ten startups in the 2014 cohort in all. Each will be put through SparkLabs’ three month mentoring program, with teams receiving $25,000 apiece in funding in exchange for up to 6% equity.

In terms of business stage, as with prior intakes, the 2014 cohort ranges from nascent bootstrapping startups with only an alpha product to their name, to more mature businesses that have shipped product and raised a couple of million in funding already.

SparkLabs held its third demo day back in April, which included startups making wearable technology, medical devices, and mobile games. The fourth intake covers businesses in the Internet of Things, healthcare and social enterprise space.

There’s more of a hardware thread emerging in this year’s batch, with three startups — Open21, N.Thing and Mobidoo — all building physical kit of some form, rather than pure-play software.

Here’s the full list of ten startups in SparkLab’s 2014 intake:

HUD Technologies: HUD has developed a new technology to render 3D-images of buildings by just using floor plans. They utilize algorithmic modeling instead of other methods, such as using panoramic cameras, to generate an image of the complete building.

Open21: The founder is a serial entrepreneur who has created a potentially revolutionary touch sensor for smartphones, TVs, and other electronics. There is no need for physical buttons with Open21’s electric field that surrounds the device or appliance.

Tree Planet: Tree Planet is a virtual tree planting game that has resulted in real trees being planted in the world. So far over 472,000 trees in 46 forests in 9 countries have been planted.

Beacon Family Doctor: A startup based in Chengdu, China that plans to enhance healthcare services in the region. They have a mobile application that connects urban households with doctors for one-time or long-term medical services.

Vengine: Vengine is building a web platform providing a hiring solution for startups that aims to tackle the lack of trust, insufficient information, and simplicity while building a standard of best practices and encouraging company culture.

Stayes: The company connects unrented flats with expats on extended stays in Korea. Unlike Airbnb, Stayes is focused on business travelers.

N.thing: N.thing seeks to connect people to the green things in life. Their primary product is Planty, an internet connected flower pot. They have a complimentary app that records your “green life” with a smart gardening diary.

Onnuri DMC: A new data management platform for mobile advertising. Their product, CrossTarget, is attempting to tackle the difficult problem of cross-platform mobile retargeting.

Mobidoo: Mobidoo provides an “easy and convenient” mobile loyalty stamp service to consumers and retail stores — aiming to replace paper loyalty cards and ink stamps with an electronic stamp that works with smartphones.

BuyFi: BuyFi analyzes credit card purchasing behavior of customers and automatically triggers a series of ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ marketing programs to convert one-time visitors into multi-visit loyal customers. Currently the company serves over 10,000 merchants through its payment processor partnerships.

[Image by Koshy Koshy via Flickr]

Roku Tops 10 Million Media Streamers Sold

The media streaming world is alive and growing, as streaming set top box maker Roku has just announced that it passed the 10 million unit milestone.

According to the press release, Roku has sold (not just shipped) over 10 million media streaming boxes since launching in 2008. As it stands now, the company has a media streaming stick (that starts at just $49 and competes directly with Google Chromecast) as well as three other tiered media streaming boxes.

In terms of software, Roku has 1,800 streaming channels and has been working to integrate that software into other manufacturers’ hardware, such as TVs.

Roku mentioned that their own customers account for 37 million hours of video streamed per week, doubling that of major competitors like Apple TV, Chromecast, and Amazon Fire TV.

While the stat is certainly impressive for Roku as a company, it’s perhaps even more exciting for the folks working on the media side of the industry. As users take more and more control of what they watch and when they watch it, entrepreneurs are lying in wait to jump into the never-ending mess of cable, copyright and courtrooms to try and unbundle the way we consume media.

Companies that have come before, most notably Aereo, haven’t been able to crack the code and truly change the way the media industry controls its content. But as Roku’s latest stat suggests, the world is moving to on-demand whether the TV industry likes it or not.

The Surface 2 Slow Fade

The 64GB SKU of the Surface 2 is sold out on Microsoft’s website, and, according to a sales person that Neowin spoke to, it likely won’t be restocked. The sales rep said the company is looking to get rid of inventory of the older device and “focus on the newer version of Surfaces.”

Remember the Surface 2? Microsoft introduced the successor to the Surface RT last year, along with the Surface Pro 2. The device was a large step past the original Surface device. Akin to the RT, it was aimed at students and other groups that needed mobility over power.

Lost in the cancellation of the Surface Mini and the release of the Surface Pro 3 is Surface 2 — it isn’t clear how well it has sold, and the future of its operating system, Windows RT, is somewhat occluded at the moment, as Microsoft isn’t expected to demo its successor until early next year.

Microsoft recently cut the price of the Surface 2 by $100. In a statement asking for comment on the lack of SKU inventory, Microsoft demurred to say anything of substance, instead mirroring its past message that it wants to get Surface into the hands of as many people as possible. Cutting its price is a way to do that.

You can still buy a 32GB Surface 2, or the most expensive 64GB SKU that also includes LTE capability.

It seems that Microsoft is leaving the Surface 2 behind. RT-based Windows tablets haven’t done well since inception, and the Pro 3 is likely Microsoft’s main bet for the Surface line this year.

I haven’t uncovered chatter regarding an immediate successor to the Surface 2. It might have been the Surface Mini. If that’s the case, there might not be one.

CEO Of Guess Watches Welcomes Apple To The Fray

In what amounts to a “welcome” turned sputtering softball aimed at Apple’s broad side, the CEO of Guess Watches Cindy Livingston wrote an open letter to Apple while, at the same time, proclaiming her own interest in the smartwatch world. Guess, a fashion brand founded in the 1980s, is best known for dress watches known as “department store styles”: the kind of pieces available at jewelry counters in major department stores.

The most interesting news, to be sure, is Livingston’s announcement that Guess is partnering with Martian, a smartwatch brand that produced a number of unusual pieces but has thus far kept quiet about its reaction to the Apple Watch.

Livingston writes:

LETTER TO CEO OF APPLE, FROM CEO OF GUESS WATCHESDear Mr. Cook:I wanted to write to you and welcome you to the Watch Industry and also offer my personal thanks to you.As one of the largest fashion watch brands in the world, we have been around for more than 30 years. In the early 80’s, there was really only SWATCH (the brand) and GUESS Watches. At that time, we had many critics who thought we were crazy. No one thought that anyone would want this new type of “novelty” timepiece. They believed that the only “real” alternatives were Swiss mechanicals or traditional quartz timepieces. Fortunately for us, consumers thought differently!

We are part of an old and proud industry. Every year we’ve experienced change in some way. Over these years, we have seen the introduction of quartz movements, the rise and fall of calculator watches, digitals, analogue-digitals and many many brands, both big and small. It seems that the test of time has shown that the wrist is an obvious place for both function and fashion.

Fast-forward to today and the world has changed. The proliferation of smartphones and the demand of consumers for round-the-clock connectivity have changed the way people access time. This has caused an understandable fear and challenge in our industry (even if no one likes to admit it).

We personally welcome this new challenge to remain relevant to our young, sexy and adventurous consumers who see as much importance in the device they carry and the messaging app they use, as the clothing and accessory brands they buy.

Over the past year, there has been dramatic speculation of the future of “wearables” and Apple’s entre into this segment. This week, you delivered! Just as we had in the early 80’s, there are naysayers and believers. I, for one, am a fan! Your innovation and attention to detail is spectacular.

In today’s connected world, consumers deserve the next level of combining fashion and function. We’ve always been much more than a watch. Now, we too are going to take that concept even further. As we look forward to the launch of our own connected timepiece for GUESS… “Powered by MARTIAN”, we’re happy to have another true brand innovator in our industry that confirms the wrist as the dominant place for self-expression.

Congratulations.

Cindy Livingston
President & CEO
GUESS WATCHES

Martian is part of the previous generation of LCD- and E-ink-based smart watches that are currently reworking their missions as the Apple Watch looms. Why Guess is partnering with them and not, say, Pebble or Metawatch, is the real question here but I suspect the addition of an analog face coupled with a small digital notifications window matches the Guess aesthetic.

While I suspect this was written in the tone of Apple’s “Seriously” ad published in the 1980s, I worry that the Martian platform will be sub par in the face of future contenders, a sobering consideration for the fashion brand.

via 9to5mac

First Wave Of “Affordable” Android One Phones Breaks Cover In India

Google has announced the first Android One devices — which are targeting the Indian market, starting at Rs 6,399/$105. Hardware partners for this first wave of affordable ‘Droids are Micromax, Karbonn, Spice and chipmaker MediaTek. It added that the Android One program will be expanded to Indonesia, the Philippines and South Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) by the end of the year, with more countries to follow in 2015.

Android’s global reach is already staggering but Google clearly isn’t content with owning the vast majority (circa 80%) of smartphone marketshare. With mobile maker Nokia out of the frame, now it’s been consumed by Microsoft, Google has evidently spotted a new not-so-niche market for Android to own — assuming it can persuade basic mobile phone buyers to opt for a smartphone instead.

Writing in a blog post today, Google’s Sundar Pichai, SVP, Android, Chrome & Apps, noted that some five billion-plus people don’t currently own a smartphone vs around 1.75 billion who do.

Google announced Android One, back in June at its I/O developer event. The program targets emerging markets with low cost Android devices. The aim is to improve the affordability and quality of budget Android smartphones by working with OEMs to identify components to use and pre-qualify suppliers for parts to ensure they work well together.

Why should Google care about raising quality standards at the budget end of Android? First and foremost to ensure the smooth running of Google apps like YouTube — which is how Mountain View monetizes Android. Driving affordability and low end quality should also help to further bulk out Android’s marketshare, and perhaps drive loyalty to the platform and discourage switching to another mobile OS at a later stage.

Apple has continued to shun the low cost smartphone market — which has allowed Android to own the space (and others, like Microsoft’s Windows Phone, to make a push for it). Google evidently wants to cement Android’s low end dominance, as well as seeking to improve its own reach into budget Androids — given that a large proportion of low cost devices running Android do not include Google’s Play store or have any of its apps pre-loaded, so aren’t currently contributing to Mountain View’s coffers.

If Google can build Android One as a budget brand it will be hoping to squeeze out the budget ‘Droids that lack any Google services. Although — for now — there’s still room for those devices to thrive at a sub-$100 price point.

Another potential driver here is Chinese Android startup Xiaomi, which has gained significant sales traction with smartphone hardware skinned with its own UI, including a mid-tier handset priced around $130. Google may view Xiaomi as a potential threat, if it can scale large enough that it’s able to replace Google services with its own alternatives. Android One may therefore be a defensive play to nip the threat of higher calibre low end Android competition in the bud.

To ensure a decent apps experience, the core hardware of Android One smartphones includes a quad-core chip, front and rear cameras, dual SIM card slots (an important feature for emerging markets where users often need to carefully manage carrier costs), a Micro SD card slot to expand storage, and enough battery capacity to survive a day’s use. On the software side, Android One devices are pledged to get the latest version of Google’s OS direct from Google — so these handsets will be among the first to get the forthcoming L release of Android, due later this year.

On the data cost front, Google has partnered with Indian carrier Airtel so that owners of Android One devices using the Airtel network will get Android software updates for free for the first six months. They will also be able to download up to 200MB per month worth of apps from Google Play without eating into their mobile data allowance.

Also today, Google said it’s expecting more hardware partners to join Android One, name-checking phone makers Acer, Alcatel Onetouch, Asus, HTC, Intex, Lava, Lenovo, Panasonic, Xolo, and chipmaker Qualcomm. “We expect to see even more high-quality, affordable devices with different screen sizes, colors, hardware configurations and customized software experiences,” it said.

3D Printing Company Stratasys Is Buying GrabCAD For Around $100M

Some M&A activity afoot in the world of hardware design: GrabCAD, an online community that has been described as the ‘Github for mechanical engineers’, is getting acquired by 3D printing giant Stratasys, a source tells us. The companies plan to announce the deal a little later today [Update: confirmed]. We have heard that the deal is in the region of nine figures, and around $100 million. It is an all-cash deal, but the exact figure is not being confirmed by the companies.

The high price comes in part from the fact that there were several others approaching GrabCAD, from what we understand. Suitors included the usual suspects — others who have strong CAD businesses like Autodesk and have made other inroads into providing vertical social networks for the visual community like Adobe, which acquired Behance last year.

Apart from the offer price, Stratasys’ approach, which will integrate GrabCAD as a separate operational unit in the Stratasys Global Products and Technology Group, was the most compelling to GrabCAD. Hardi Meybaum, GrabCAD’s co-founder and CEO, staying on to lead GrabCAD operations after the deal closes this month.

This is the latest in a string of notable acquisitions by Stratasys: others include MakerBot last year for $403 million, and Solid Concepts (you know, the ones that made the world’s first 3D-printed metal gun) earlier this year for $295 million. While those two, plus Interfacial Solutions (also earlier this year) all furthered Stratsys’ manufacturing capabilities, what GrabCAD gives the company is a deeper play into community services that exist around it.

GrabCAD, which is based in Cambridge, MA, launched as part of the TechStars Boston cohort in 2011 (it was also a part of Seedcamp just prior to that — it was originally founded in Estonia and still has development offices there and in the UK). GrabCAD had raised around $13.6 million from investors that include Charles River Ventures, David Sacks, Matrix Partners and Atlas Venture.

What GrabCAD gives to Stratasys is twofold.

First, it gets a collaboration platform in the form of Workbench — which launched last year as a place for a CAD workgroup to access and develop local and cloud-based files.

And second, Stratasys gets a vertically-focused social networking community, in this case currently serving over 1.5 million mechanical engineers who connect with each other, exchange ideas, seek out partners in crime, and can access a library of over 500,000 CAD models.

“This is part of what got us excited about it. The value of what the GrabCAD network brought was so clear,” said David Skok, a general partner at investor Matrix, which was an investor in several of GrabCAD’s rounds. “So often the value [in social networks] is not, but what GrabCAD did early on was address the concept of engineer drawings. Drawing a model without a preexisting idea is very hard, so there is a very concrete value for participants.” And there was an added benefit, he says: every time someone uploaded something new, GrabCAD got another long-term search term into Google, “creating a viral effect to increase the community.”

There is a clear business interest for Stratasys in offering platforms to further promote the community behind the services it offers, it further ties in users to Stratasys’ ecosystem, the engineering equivalent of going from field to table, as it were.

This last point seems to be logic behind the deal for Stratasys. “The addition of GrabCAD provides Stratasys with a leading cloud-based collaboration platform for engineering teams to manage, share and view CAD files,” said David Reis, Stratasys CEO, in a statement. “By increasing the collaboration and accessibility of 3D CAD files, we believe we can further accelerate the adoption of 3D printing solutions and Stratasys’ product offerings. Together with GrabCAD, we believe that we will accelerate innovation and provide increased value to a growing universe of customers seeking to utilize 3D printing solutions. We also welcome GrabCAD’s active and important community to the Stratasys family. The potential within our 3D ecosystem is very exciting.”

“GrabCAD was founded to bring the world’s engineers together and help them collaborate to bring better products to market faster,” said Hardi Meybaum, CEO of GrabCAD, in the official statement. “By joining forces with Stratasys, a global leader in 3D printing and additive manufacturing, we believe we can extend the reach of one of the most exciting and innovative design collaboration technologies available. With its broad and growing customer base and worldwide presence, Stratasys can provide more customers around the world with exciting new solutions to meet their design needs.”

Vertically-focused social networks is an area that some VCs and others have highlighted as an area of interest as we see more maturation in social media, and a desire less for catch-all, huge communities and more for targeted and focused experiences.

Stratasys, which went public in 2008, is currently valued at over $6 billion.

Updated throughout with more detail from official news announcement.

DipJar Raises Funding For A Tip Jar Where You Pay With Plastic, Not Spare Change

The move to a more “cashless” society has not been without its victims – namely, those whose incomes relied on the spare change and small donations that once came from customers emptying their pockets, but are now locked up in digital bits and credit card swipes. The lowly tip jar today often sits empty, as few carry around the quarters and dollars with which to fill it. A company called DipJar wants to change that, and has now raised a $420,000 seed round to scale production of its hardware.

The round was led by Project 11, the new fund from Bob Mason, Brightcove founder, and Katie Rae and Reed Sturtevant, former Techstars Boston directors. Other angels in the round include Will Herman, Warren Katz, Joe Caruso, Mike Dornbrook, Bill Warner, Scott Heller, and others.

The New York-based company, currently incubated by the Bolt accelerator in Boston, was founded by CEO Ryder Kessler, a former director of strategy at New York cab-sharing startup Bandwagon and VP of Sales Jordan Bar Am, previously of McKinsey, and the co-founder of fruit importer Oke USA.

Kessler said the idea occurred to him simply because he began to “feel like a jerk” at one of his favorite coffee shops which only offered tipping via a cash-only tip jar.

Not only was everyone paying with plastic these days, reducing the tips overall, the baristas there also confided in him that they would rather the store stay empty since there was no financial upside to an influx of customers.

The problem with the reduction in cash-based tips means lower-income workers or those who once depended on a tip-based boost to their salaries, would likely turnover faster as they exited to try to find better-paying jobs, Kessler realized. That’s bad for the businesses who would then have to incur more training costs, and, ultimately, the turnover could affect customer service, too.

Baristas, of course, aren’t the only ones affected by customers’ disappearing cash. Deli workers and sandwich makers, ice cream scoopers, coat checks, valets, barbers and hairstylists, hotel housekeepers, and more also once relied on handfuls of dollars customers gave to them, whether by hand, placed in tip jars, or left in envelopes.

Though customers are now paying by credit or debit, they’re not always getting receipts, or getting those that do don’t necessarily have a line to enter a hand-written tip, because business owners don’t want the hassle of accounting for the extra funds and distributing those back to their employees.

This is what the DipJar, as it’s called, aims to solve.

How It Works

The company began building custom prototypes of the DipJar tip jars, and rolled just under two dozen out to New York-area businesses and charity groups starting back in summer 2012. One recent adopter of the technology is the Central Park Conservancy which used the DipJar to raise funds from those attending a film festival, and now plans to roll it out to visitor centers.

Currently, the DipJar’s hardware involves off-the-shelf parts, but with the funding, the company is working to scale up to mass production.

The unit itself is basic: inside the jar is a standard credit card reader, and not much more. The customer inserts their card and pulls it out to swipe, and the jar will automatically deduct a pre-configured amount (as determined by the business).

Just as important, the act of swiping makes a loud “change clinking” sound so the employee will know you’ve tipped. That will save you from one of those awkward Seinfeld situations (remember George Costanza reaching back into the tip jar because he wanted to make sure he got credit for having done the deed?). Kessler also says version 2 will include a light array as well, along with other refinements, to help encourage and notify other customers and staff of the tips being processing.

The funding will be used to grow the team of two to 4 or 5 over the next few weeks, and further develop the software for businesses that will allow merchants to enter in employee information and track tipping as a metric of customer satisfaction, if they choose. The team is also working to automate the payouts to employees, which are currently distributed by check every two weeks. And, of course, the hardware is being improved to make it a scalable solution.

The team is also gearing up to be ready when the shift to EMV takes place, or if Apple Pay helps push NFC adoption into the mainstream, says Kessler. “We already own the trademark for ‘TapJar,'” he notes regarding the latter.

Kessler won’t detail the cost to produce the jar today, or how much it will sell for, explaining that the company has been exploring several business models, including monthly pricing, upfront pricing, and pricing by volume. Similarly, it’s too early to disclose metrics of the DipJar’s impact on increasing tips, he says, since those can vary wildly by business and the DipJar only has a handful of customers today.

However, he would tell us that the DipJar hasn’t cannibalized cash tips, from what they’ve seen. “The DipJar brings in new money for the recipients,” he says.

Plus, he adds, though the team was planning to run short 3 to 6 month tests, “no one wanted to give it back…that speaks to the success of the product.”

Misfit Wearables Launches The Flash, A More Affordable Fitness And Sleep Tracker

Misfit Wearables, which has sold roughly 600,000 metallic, quarter-sized activity trackers or Shines, has launched a more affordable fitness wearable called the Flash. The company, which was co-founded by an extremely experienced hardware CEO Sonny Vu and former Apple CEO John Sculley, has been building beautifully designed wearables in the health space.

Instead of the burnished metal finish that the Shine has, the Flash is made of soft-touch plastic in seven colors from lemon-line zest to fuschia. It will cost $49.99 or about half of the Shine’s roughly $100 price.

“We used to call it the Shine C,” said Misfit’s CEO Sonny Vu, referring to Apple’s naming scheme for the iPhone 5s and the 5c. “But it’s not that. It’s not the cheap Shine. It’s really targeted toward a different segment. There are some people who love the sleek elegant design of the Shine and are fine paying $100 for that product. And then there’s a segment that wants a more colorful presentation with something more fun that they can afford to buy for their kids. That’s what the Flash is for.”

The Flash basically does everything the Shine does. It can track your steps, your sleep, your calories burned and your cycling and swimming through a paired app. It’s available for pre-order today and will ship in mid-October.

The interesting thing is that both the Flash and Shine are not even the products that Misfit originally raised its $23 million in venture funding on.

That mysterious product — whatever it is — is coming out next year. Activity trackers were just a more practical product to build in the short-term, and it’s turned out to be very lucrative.

Vu said Misfit is profitable and doesn’t really need to return to the table for additional financing. The company’s backers include Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures and Li Ka-shing’s Horizons.

The company’s ties to Apple have also helped tremendously via distribution partnerships in Apple stores.

Come To The TechCrunch Virtual Reality Meetup In LA On Sept 18th

The night before the Oculus Connect conference, TechCrunch is bringing together the virtual reality community for an evening of cool demos, free drinks, and a chance to meet TechCrunch’s writers and VR startups in the space. Register here for the TechCrunch Virtual Reality Meetup.

From 6:30pm to 9:30pm at the The Mondrian Hotel’s beautiful Skybar in West Hollywood, come mingle poolside by the stunning views and try out some of the latest virtual reality hardware. TechCrunch writers Josh Constine and Kyle Russel will be there, so you can tell us about your company.

We’ll have a short fireside chat with James Iliff, the inspiring co-founder of full-motion body-tracking VR startup Survios. And you’ll have a chance to play Survios’ game Zombies On The Holodeck.

If you’re startup that wants to show off a live hardware or virtual reality content demo, contact at us at tips@techcrunch.com. We’ll have a big tab at the bar, but if any company wants help us make the experience even better and get the attention of the VR community, we’re looking for a few more sponsors, who can also contact us at sponsors@techcrunch.com.

Attending the TechCrunch Virtual Reality Meetup is free with registration here.

Details:

TechCrunch VR Meetup In LA

6:30pm to 9:30pm, Thursday September 18th

The Mondrian Hotel Skybar

8440 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069

Demos, Drinks, TechCrunch’s Writers, A Fireside Chat, And The VR Community

Register Here