Your salary should be basic, covering your costs and giving you a bit of spending money. This assumes you're working full time for the startup. Remember that the bigger picture is equity.
Whatever you do don't spend a month writing a 60 page document. Keep it short and sweet. Use lots of bullet points / bold highlighting to ease readability. No complex multi-idea paragraphs. And most of all, just answer the key questions.
I'd avoid memorizing a script. Memorize and push bullet point phrases, rather than a full 'story'. You'll be so familiar with the project that you should easily be able to recount the story.
Focus on what the judges want to hear, eg if they are investors then make sure you cover:
1. business model
2. market trends / size
3. how your startup solves a problem or fulfils a need
4. your team
5. what you need to implement
6. and how you plan to execute.
It depends on the market you're aiming at. Some market sectors are recession-proof, others less so. Holidays in Hawaii / Bali might be downgraded, but people will still want to go on holiday.
Also, it is competitive out there, but if you are in a niche then go for it. If you have a lot of competition then do it better.
I personally believe that the companies of the future that will do best will listen and learn from their customers. They'll engage with customers. They will let their customers tell them what they want.
We already know what works on the internet in terms of usability / user experience / product page design / checkout process, etc, so don't go reinventing the wheel. Many large companies still suck at this stuff (just look at the Gap.com website if you don't believe me).
Be the best. Understand the mindset of your customers. Make sense of your data. Iterate as often as is practical. And market the shit out of your product (don't forget to sell it to Google via a blog...).
It should focus minds on business models, that's for sure. There's nothing wrong with bootstrapping or having a point to doing what you're doing (ie, making profits). Do you REALLY need the funding?
I think the smaller investors will want to be sure about the team running these startups. And disruptive tech, however cool, isn't going to cut it. Jam today will beat ham tomorrow.
VCs invest in 10 companies and expect 8 or 9 failures, and 1 big winner. In that sense nothing will change.
Also, a recession is a sure-fire opportunity to launch a company, no doubt about it. Better deals and other companies cut the chaff. If you can help another firm improve efficiency, or optimise what they're doing, then you will be well placed.
To encourage users to sign up you just need to encourage more interaction / personalisation. Easier said than done, I know.
The news aggregation game is a bit in-and-out... traffic we receive (as a publisher) from aggregators comes in and mainly bounces. These readers often browse multiple sources to get a view on an individual story (to get a wider spectrum of views, more detail, better pics, more user insight etc).
The way NewsCred is designed doesn't lend itself so well to this... you have promote one story at a time; I'd consider adding more links to more sources on that story, Techmeme/Google News-style, to take advantage of this sort of behaviour.
Maybe users can ultimately choose their own sources, or NewsCred can choose for them, based on where other people are going. The key is in achieving a good depth of coverage, rather than just pointing people at the big media sites.
It's really important and not at all negative, it just means people are searching for something specific, and will most likely move on once they've found it.
For retailers, these are the 'gold' searches. The more detailed the search phrase, the more likely the purchase.
Think about it: 'Digital camera' is far too broad to determine the mindset of the searcher, but 'sony cybershot offer black' shows a far greater purchase intent. Add on a specific product name / number and a sale will be imminent.
For NewsCred this stuff is equally important. You can minimise bounce rates by doing more to keep these users onsite, be it related content, UGC, improved usability / navigation, etc.
I tried FM (my site has 800k-1.2m page impressions / month; mainly US traffic) and they said 'come back when you get 1m US uniques. But you're right - they have sites that are definitely smaller.
Where does your traffic come from? How many page impressions per user?
Also worth keeping in mind that FM takes a 50% cut.
Some good tips here: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/07/how-to-write-a-.html
Whatever you do don't spend a month writing a 60 page document. Keep it short and sweet. Use lots of bullet points / bold highlighting to ease readability. No complex multi-idea paragraphs. And most of all, just answer the key questions.
Good luck.