It used to be that the way entrepreneurs got funding was simple: write a business plan, pitch an investor or lender referred by a friend, and repeat step two 'til funded. These days though there are increasingly a number of different ways to get start-up cash. Take the growing number of conferences like TechCrunch50 and Demo (which we wrote about in our previous post) that put entrepreneurs and their concept not only in front of investors, but the public as well. Far from the stuffy conference rooms where most pitching is done, these entrepreneurs perform under bright lights and before a slightly larger audience.

The question is whether any of these newish outlets for securing funding actually work. Says one entrepreneur blogger who takes issue with how much good the conferences actually do the start-ups they're intended to help:

"Once again, the big news coming out of TechCrunch 50 isn't the companies--we don't even know who they are yet--it's the promoters.

Let's get it straight. No company has ever been made or broken on TechCrunch, and the idea that Mike (Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch) has been called a 'kingmaker' is laughable. If he was a kingmaker, he would have taken the $5 million he had to build Edgio, and made himself a startup king."

Ouch. Of course, on the flip side, older conferences like Demo say they have helped start-ups launch. And the argument could be made that these conferences are simply updated versions of the traditional pitch—they're just broadcast via a LiveStream around the world and are sponsored by advertisers like Sequoia Capital. Still, there appear to be few stats out there about how well any of these start-ups who've demoed at either conference have done.

But what do you think? Do these conferences actually do anything for entrepreneurs or is it just a way to line the promoter's pockets?

TechCrunch50 is like just like this, except with thousands in sponsorships and a few hundred more people or so that includes a group of well-regarded investors. So, it's basically not like this at all.