Startup accelerator Y Combinator is holding its summer 2013 demo day where 49 companies will launch their product in front of members of the tech community, investors, and the media. Held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the batch is a diverse one, especially after the 17 Demo Day events. Here’s a live blog of the event.
GoComm
Calling itself the Yammer for the mobile workforce, GoComm came about when founder Travis Dredd encountered difficulty when serving as Chief of Staff for the Democratic National Convention. When last-minute venue change was needed, it proved to be a painful process. The service aims to make things transparent and has been profitable after signing its first contract worth $150,000 per year. It’s looking out at major events and working industries in construction, security, hotels, and others.
➤ GoComm
SimpleLegal
Calling itself the “Mint.com for legal bills”, SimpleLegal will take the paper documents law firms give you and analyzes it to help you save money. In the five weeks since it launched, it has grown 50 percent each week with customers including Sequoia Capital, Stripe, Pebble, MobileWorks, inDinero, and others.
➤ SimpleLegal
RealCrowd
A crowdfunding platform for real estate. The company thinks that this platform is needed because the time is now with the passage of the American Jobs Act and the success of other platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others. Since its launch, it has gained 500 accredited investors and has raised $550,000 towards a $1.35 billion market.
➤ RealCrowd
Apptimize
A mobile A/B testing service aimed at helping marketers change their company’s app without needing to speak with a developer. So far, users have downloaded the company’s SDK more than 1,000 times and is installed on over 1 million devices. It counts dozens of customers, including those in Fortune 500 companies.
➤ Apptimize
WatchSend
WatchSend is a service that lets developers see videos of their users interacting with their apps. It’s taking on Mixpanel and other analytics services as it looks to aid developers in being proactive in enhancing and fixing problems in their apps. Since launching two weeks ago, the company says that it has been used by businesses like Klip, Streak, SendHub, Finish, Scoopkit, Universal Music Group, and others, with 1,000 recordingsgenerated per day.
➤ WatchSend
Graft Concepts
A iPhone case that allows for interchangeable backplates for the mobile device. So far, it’s sold $2.25 million to date and looking to sell $7.5 million in 2013 — all with one product. The company thinks that it’s appealing because it’s functional in that it can replace your wallet or can be personalized to meet your needs. It bills itself as a billboard for brands. Epic Meal Time, a popular YouTube channel with 5.5 million subscribers has been using it.
The company has signed a deal with Zazzle allowing users to customize their backplates by the end of the month. It’s targeting a market with a price of $40 per case, with 740 million potential customers.
➤ Graft Concepts
Glio
Aiming to be the “Yelp for Latin America”, Glio thinks that it has a niche to help people in the region search and find information on the Internet. The company says that it has been growing 40 percent month over month over the past 24 months, with 100,000 people using the service. Glio seeks to conquer the Internet throughout Latin America in many verticals.
➤ Glio
Toutpost
A review service that makes it a comparison service. The site has been built around the “x versus y” mechanics. Any user can create a comparison and can vote and leave comments justifying their action. It has more than 6,000 users in the past 45 days. The company thinks that reviews are fragmented and replacing it with high-quality reviews and then sharing it with merchants.
Toutpost aims to aggregate all of the reviews and be the de facto owner of people’s thoughts on the Internet.
➤ Toutpost
SpoonRocket
This startup says that it has figured out how to bring $6 organic meals in 10 minutes. It says it’s the Uber of Food and launched 7 weeks ago with a $2 million run rate. It is seeing 112% growth by controlling the entire process by writing the code, make the food, and do the delivery themselves. SpoonRocket touts that in Berkeley, it has done more business in one day than GrubHub has done in a month. It’s looking for a $600 million run rate.
➤ SpoonRocket
Prim
Prim is in the laundry business. Americans have a lot of dirty laundry where people have spent $15 billion in related services. This startup allows people to order online, get door to door delivery, and cleaning. It is taking on the local businesses, calling it a fragmented market that is unable to handle the scale of the online audience. Prim has grown to $7,000 in recurring monthly revenue in under two months. Average subscriber pays the company $80 per month and looks to add dry cleaning service in the future.
It has a 65 percent retention rate with customers.
➤ Prim
7 Cups of Tea
A support group for your needs. The company says that it will match you up with an active listener that has been vetted so that they’re emphatic, non-judgemental, free/inexpensive, and convenient. In cases of emotional or psychological issues, customers don’t have to talk to their family or go through expensive therapy. Often times, people are not looking for a diagnosis, but rather a person to talk to.
The company takes a 40 percent cut on all transactions. It is doing more than 1,800 calls each week — a 40 percent growth rate week over week.
➤ 7 Cups of Tea
StatusPage
Don’t worry about conveying a status message during your site’s downtime. StatusPage not only lets you tell your customers why your site is down, but also targets the appropriate message to specific users. Since launching six months ago, it has seen 20 percent weekly revenue growth with $8,500 in recurring revenue. It’s being used by Citrix, Parse, New Relic, Podio, etc.
➤ StatusPage
Kivo
A variation of Git specifically for documents, the service aims to take the power of Git, simplify it, and use it for documents. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using Excel, PowerPoint, and Word using a collaboration product Kivo has come up with. Basically, the company is bringing versioning control into document software. It launched its first product a few weeks ago and is being used by Deloitte, Accenture, SVB, Macy’s, GlaxoSmithKline, and others.
➤ Kivo
Teleborder
Admittedly a “weird idea” by the founders, it’s a service aiming to “eat up the immigration lawyer”. For tech companies, dealing with immigration is a tough, time-consuming, and difficult challenge. Teleborder has figured a way to make dealing with immigration issues simple. Companies log into the service and tell it who they want to bring over and Teleborder handles the rest. It charges $5,000 per application and with 900,000 applications per year in the US, it’s a $4.5 billion market alone.
With Teleborder, employees won’t have to worry about physical boundaries. Companies can use the service to find the best people.
➤ Teleborder
Floobits
A service looking to build Google Wave — well, using a part of it. It has started with hackers with 7,000 developers signed up spending 8 hours a day using it to create a new protocol.
➤ Floobits
EasyPost
EasyPost aims to help make shipping easier for e-commerce. It says that users prefer its solution because its API gives access to carrier rates and requires no additional development. In the last seven months, it has grown 179 percent month over month with 70,000 shipments. It is being used by Many Labs, Automatic, and others. In the US, shipping is a $26 billion industry and EasyPost charges 5 percent.
➤ EasyPost
Standard Treasury
A startup looking to build simple API for commercial banking. It believes that it can help financial institutions to create their own development community. Banks are looking to make more money — the existing model isn’t possible due to new financial regulations and are turning to transactional revenue. Technology is something that banks lack and it’s said that they need to have someone that is well integrated with various APIs. Standard Treasury is in contract negotiations with 16 banks for 3 year contracts.
➤ Standard Treasury
12:06 pm PST: We’re taking a bit of a break for lunch, but will be back for the second set of startups.
1:32 pm PST: We’re back and about to get ready for the second batch of companies to present. It turns out that Demo Day is a star-studded affair with folks like former Washington, DC mayor Adrian Fenty, MC Hammer, NFL legendary quarterback Joe Montana, Ashton Kutcher, and former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly in attendance.
Amulyte
Amulyte is a service designed to help senior citizens to be used in an emergency. It transmits locations and situation to family and friends through an online portal. This pendant object includes a speaker and microphone to help loved ones communicate with someone for assistance. It uses mobile, GPS and WiFi, and accelerometer.
With Amulyte, senior citizens are useful outside of the home. The founders say that existing products just work inside the home, which is not really helpful when a majority of falls occur outside of someone’s residence.
A device costs $149 and a first version has already been built. It is working with a retirement home on a pilot program.
Le Tote
Calling itself the Netflix for women’s fashion, Le Tote will send a monthly box with various apparel and accessories. Already it is doing $70,000 in revenue, with 30 percent month-over-month growth and a 93 percent retention rate.
So why are customers interested in the product? The company says that it gives women what they want at a lower cost.
Ixi-Play
Ixi-Play is a robot buddy meant for young kids to help with learning. With childcare experts suggesting that young kids shouldn’t have that much screen exposure, the question then becomes what do parents buy them to play with? Ixi-Play is that potential solution. It costs $299 and has an app store run on Android.
The device has been tested with 125 children in Europe and in the US with at least five different robots to play with.
Butter Systems
Butter Systems looks to take on the paper restaurant menu — customers can order food and drink simply through the use of a tablet positioned at a table. In a test restaurant, it’s seeing a 13 percent boost in average check size and already 11 more deployments are planned. The menu is fully customizable and plug and play.
The service can let restaurant customers translate the menu into their native language as well.
Asseta
A capital equipment marketplace, Asseta looks to help build a single place where people and companies can exchange goods, and it’s starting with the high tech market. Manufacturers aren’t inclined to put inventory on the web themselves. So far, in the past three months, it has collected 28,000 listings, with $212,000 in sales. It charges a 5 percent commission for everything sold on the site.
Hum
Hum aims to solve a major business problem: too much email and enables users to work in a collaborative fashion. It takes chats and organizes it by topic. People can be notified through @mentions. PDFs and files can be attached as well. All chats are synced across all devices. As you use Hum, the company says that you’ll use your inbox less and less.
The founders come from Medium and Path and have found that the problem exists no matter where they are — it’s difficult to work together and that there needs to be something that replaces email.
This is an on-going event. Please refresh for updates.
Photo credit: Paul Miller