I was there yesterday, and we actually presented and ended up tied for second place. AppThwack (Not to be confused with a "brain tumor") is a rapid, automated QA service for testing Android apps on real, non-emulated devices in a massively parallel and fast way. I realize it's not a world-changingly noble mission, but I also don't think it's trivial or inconsequential. Regardless, here are my thoughts. I posted a bit more in the article comment, but thought I'd paste part of my comment here.

"This article is definitely entertaining. It's vapid and catty and well written, and accurately portrays an event from an outsider's perspective. Of course there are lots of things that look like "bad ideas" on their face. On the other hand, there are lots of ideas that seem dumb at first that grow into interesting companies that end up solving legitimate problems.

Overall I think the event was very well run and I met a lot of great people. I was there with the goal of getting something out of it, though, and that something was connections, potential partners/customers, and some more pitch experience. Obviously the author got what he was looking for as well.

I think it's important that the "startup community" (I hate that that's a thing people say) gets kicked in the balls every now and then. For example, this look at TechCrunch Disrupt: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jackstuef/scenes-from-the-pounding-h...