TC50: Cocodot creates a slicker version of Evite

Lots of people complain about Evite, the top site for online event invitations. A startup called Cocodot says it can shake up the market with a fancier service aimed at women, which connects online and physical invitations.

There are lots of other hopeful Evite-killers, and some of them such as MyPunchbowl try, like Cocodot, to be fancier and more customizable. But the company, which just demonstrated at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco, says it’s not trying to attract users away form Evite. Instead, it’s trying to reach an audience (mainly women, supposedly) that doesn’t bother with Evite at all, and still sends out physical invitations.

Basically, you go to Cocodot to create an invitation, and you can choose from pre-created templates that have the attractiveness of traditional greeting cards, or create your own invite. Then you send out invitations via email, social networking services like Facebook, printed invitations, or some combination of the three. Cocodot also handles elements like reminders and thank you notes.

Most of the expert judges seemed impressed with the presentation, even in a sort of backhanded way. Publisher Tim O’Reilly, for example, said he focuses on “stuff that matters,” an area that Cocodot doesn’t seem to fit into — but he grudgingly acknowledged there’s probably a market here.