Matt Marshall, editor and CEO of VentureBeat, the authoritative technology and finance blog, is gearing up for his first year as co-producer of DEMO, the 20-year-old tech conference for start-ups. He is co-producing the show with founder Chris Shipley, who leaves after the Fall event. DEMO will be held in San Diego, September 21-23. And this year, unlike last, it won't overlap with the TechCrunch 50 event. He told me that the number of companies presenting this year will be expanded with a sort second tier of earlier on, less funded start-ups in a category he calls AlphaPitch. Matt, a former foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and business reporter for the San Jose Mercury News started VentureBeat in late 2006. The site had nearly a half a million uniques in May, according to Compete. We caught up last week at the Business Insider start-up conference/competition last week at NYU. Matt was a judge. Andy Plesser, Executive Producer Less