Score your free pass to Startup 2012, May 3

This sponsored post is produced by Business Insider.

Hey VentureBeat readers: want to hear about launching and scaling a successful startup? Come hear from Kevin Ryan (CEO, GIlt Groupe), Arianna Huffington (President & EIC, Huffington Post Media Group) and the founders of Fab, Branch, Gumroad, Lot18 and Dwolla at Startup 2012, Business Insider’s fourth-annual entrepreneurship conference and business-plan competition.

Startup 2012 takes place on May 3 in New York, and VentureBeat Founder & Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall will be judging the Startup Pitch live at the event.

Business Insider is giving away ten tickets to VB readers over the next week. Here’s how to score yours: email events@businessinsider.com and tell us why you need to be there. Hint: look at the speakers and agenda to help you make your case. And if you don’t score a free pass, we’ll give you a discount. Here’s what your ticket will get you:

• Get the scoop from Arianna Huffington on how she built a blog into an empire, and on life after AOL’s $315M acquisition of HuffPo.
• Score crucial insight from Kevin Ryan, co-founder of Gilt Groupe and earlier, DoubleClick, on launching a startup in a crowded vertical –like online ads, or e-commerce — and on how to tackle huge markets.
• Hear from Y Combinator reject Josh Miller on how he rebounded and scored funding for his startup from Twitter’s founders.
• Meet the innovator who helped build Pinterest and was recently dubbed “Silicon Valley’s Most Interesting Teenager” by BI startup reporter.
• Learn smart tactics in developing for Facebook in the post-Timeline world from an engineering manager at the company who helped build it.
• Network like mad with 800 other innovation junkies.

But let’s say you just don’t feel like entering a competition and you’d rather spend some money. That’s probably a lot of people, right? You can buy a ticket here. There’s a discount for startups, too. Use code “venturebeat” to save 20%.

See you in May!