The DEMO conference has long been part of the VC-backed startup scene:

DEMO is the premier launch venue for new products, technologies and companies. For more than 18 years, DEMO has established a reputation for identifying and presenting to an elite audience the products most likely to have a significant impact on the marketplace and market trends in the coming year. Each product is carefully screened and selected by DEMO's Executive Producer, Chris Shipley, one of the top trend spotters in the personal technology product industry. DEMO is held two times a year; one in February, and one in September.

We covered it last September: Which DEMO companies have blogs?

This year, the second annual TechCrunch50 conference is running at the same time (Sept. 8-10) as DEMO fall (Sept. 7-9). Chris Morrison of VentureBeat has some details.

But let's go straight to Chris Shipley's blog post at The Guidewire.

A year or so ago, TechCrunch set its sites on DEMO and has been lobbing missiles our way ever since. Why? Honestly, I don’t know.

Honestly? Jason Calacanis spelled it out quite clearly on April 30, 2007:

Mike and I started the TechCrunch40 conference in large part to fight the trend of DEMO-style conferences for sticking it to startup companies by making them pay $18.5k for six minutes on stage--SIX MINUTES!!! Over three thousand dollars a minute. I still can't get my head around that number.
...
Are these companies being forced to pay? No. However, I believe that the trend was moving to pay for play and I'm really excited that the trend is now swinging back to the entrepreneur. In fact nothing would please me more then being part of the trend that shutdown the concept of startups paying to present on stage. ....

This is nothing personal against the folks who run the other trade shows. I know the folks ... and I think they are very smart, nice people.

Back to Chris Shipley:

For us, it’s about the entrepreneur. He or she comes first.

Er, no. The $18,500 comes first. Sure, that's a drop in the bucket for a VC-backed startup. But it's serious money for a bootstrapped entrepreneur. The DEMO conference is an established and (probably) very profitable business. Why should a competitor step aside when they can be successful by shrinking the market:

We love investing in technologies and business models that are able to shrink existing markets. If your company can take $5 of revenue from a competitor for every $1 you earn – let's talk!

(That's Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital in 2006.)