TechCrunch 40 is what DEMO used to be in the early days, a way for struggling young startups to find venture capital.  These days, however, the best presenters at DEMO are already fully funded before the show even starts, and most of the presenters are extremely polished and anything but "struggling."  This year, we sat through two days of fairly-good and not-so-good presentations by companies who (1) didn't pay anything to present, (2) were competing for both capital and press exposure, and (3) could win a $50,000 prize just for doing a great presentation.  At TechCrunch, the Gadget Gurus developed our own list of companies that we think are most likely to actually come out with a product that either we really liked or we think will make the world take notice, including:

• mint.com - Categorizes your bank & credit card transactions and offers discount suggestions (winner of the $50K TC40 Grand Prize)
• Cubic Telecom - Trying to reduce international roaming rates
• Orgoo - Integrates all your email accounts and IM accounts into one screen (now in public beta)
• BeFunky - Quickly create cartoon avatars online