Four years and going strong, SF Beta is returning once again with one of our legendary mixers. Registration is up, and tickets are going fast!

On March 23, join more than 300 founders, investors, developers, and technologists for an evening of demos, drinks, great conversation, and endless opportunities to network and connect.

In a new twist, we’re adding a theme to our demos. This time around, it’s Search and Discovery. If you’re building the next Google-killer, we want to have you at the event! Email cperry@sfbeta.com for more info.

We’re combining our two most popular events into one giant Shindig!  SFbeta: the FailCon Experience!

If you haven’t heard, we’re working on our next startup conference: FailCon, and offering our readers 25% off!  This conference is the first of its kind and not to be missed.  We’re shaking things up with specific stories, data, and recovery advice for entrepreneurial failure, from the people who have lived it.  Learn about early team struggles from the guys at Meebo, about adapting to the social web from Mark – founder of Tribe.net and Zynga, hear how Max prepared for PayPal and Slide, and how VCs handle their portfolios when they start to go under.

If you, sadly, can’t make it to the event, well we hope to see you at the SFbeta after party!  We’re expecting 350+ of the newest, hottest, and most fun startups, founders, developers, investors, marketers, and bloggers to be at this evening extravaganza.  More information as we get it, but demos are open!

As you may have seen on TechCrunch, we will be hosting the launch party of Powerset co-founder Steve Newcomb’s new company, Virgance.

A brief summary from the article:
“Virgance focuses on fostering and promoting benevolent, wide-reaching and important campaigns that also stand a good chance to make money. The Virgance engineering team, headed by VP of Engineering Naseem Hakim (who helped build the very popular Facebook app Circle of Friends), is building a platform designed to help promote these campaigns across a number of social platforms. Newcomb describes the platform as “the next iteration of what President Obama did” – leveraging the power of social media to reach the masses. But these campaigns are not simply about raising awareness – they have to let the community somehow interact, and they have to have a solid business model. Depending on the campaign, Virgance gets a portion of the incoming revenues.” 

At our next SF Beta, we’ll be featuring the ventures and adventures of Virgance, with tons of bloggers, press, and investors in attendance.  This is definitely NOT the beta to miss this year.

We’re proud to announce the next SF Beta, taking place Tuesday, January 29. We’ll be back with a great mix of startups, bloggers, investors, developers, marketers, and more, at our much-loved home, 111 Minna Gallery.

To change things up for the new year, we’ve decided to standardize our prices. Now, instead of two pricing tiers, everyone will pay the same amount: $15 online, and $25 at the door. We settled on these amounts because they were half way between our two former prices, which we hope you’ll find fair.

Interested in coming? Buy tickets here.

Interested in demoing? Startups can show off their site for free. Sign up here.

Looking for a way to celebrate with the startup stars one last time before the year is over? We’re throwing a big holiday party to wind up the year, and look ahead at the next one

We’re calling it the SF Beta Holiday Bash. Tickets are now available and we’re keeping prices the same as always.

As always, we have tables set up across the venue for startups to demo. And, like always, the cost to demo is free. If you’re interested in showing the world your stuff, sign up on our wiki.

If you’ve been to SF Beta before, and you’re reading this post, you may be thinking to yourself that things look a little different around here.

If this is your first time here, then you may be thinking to yourself, “My, what a pleasant looking design!”

In either case, we’re proud to announce the brand new and MUCH-improved look and feel of SF Beta, brought to you by our friends at Blogging Squared. Over the last month, they’ve worked behind the scenes to put together a snazzy new Wordpress theme for us, overhauling the CSS-violating hackjob that yours truly had gracefully presented you beforehand.

A big thanks to John Wiseman, founder of Blogging Squared, for his work and skill in putting together this beautiful new design. Hooray for John! If you’re looking for a designer, he’s the man you need.

Like the majority of Europe, SF Beta is taking off August off. We’re going to go sit leisurely in the mountains, read a few good books, and forget about the outside world for a while.

We’re going to return on September 25 to celebrate our one-year anniversary. And to kick off the anniversary, we’re changing our pricing model.

Starting in September, all SF Beta events will be FREE for developers, designers, founders, investors, journalists, and students, as long as you RSVP beforehand. Other folks will be $20 in advance and $30 at the door.

Since this will be our anniversary, we have a few special surprises in store. Stay tuned…

This month, SF Beta welcomes Powerset to demonstrate applications built on its natural language search platform. Some who have seen the demo have called Powerset a potential “Google-killer.” After months of buzz, rumors, and speculation, you’ll have the unique opportunity to see Powerset with your own eyes and make your own decision.

Join us for an unforgettable evening, where you’ll be among the first to see a demonstration of Powerset’s next-generation search technology.

You can join in the fun on July 24 by RSVPing now. If you’ve already RSVP’d, then secure a spot at the event by ordering tickets online, as we will likely sell out.

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Woohoo! It’s a party once again at SF Beta. This time, for our May mixer, we brought in a new round of startups to shake things up. We got to see demos by a bunch of companies, including Devicescape, Veodia, Postreach, NoteFish, Spigit, CommentPower, Academia, and more.

Attendance felt busy throughout the night, and started picking up around 6:30, when both rooms at 111 Minna got full. Since we extended our hours this time, we avoided the usual mosh pit and had crowds coming in at a more even pace.

Looking forward to next month. See you all there!