500 Startups Demo Day was hosted at the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. The room was filled to capacity with entrepreneurs, investors and excitement! It was fun to watch the fifth batch of startups graduate from the accelerator program. The theme of the demo day was enthusiasm as many of the entrepreneurs projected their abundance of energy to the audience. The first session included 17 pitches and the second batch included 14 pitches. The keynote was provided by serial entrepreneur and Andreessen Horowitz general partner Chris Dixon.
Without further ado, here are some of the memorable startups from the evening (in no particular order).
Cubie: This social chat application is available on Android and iOS. Think a more robust Draw Something combined with the way you currently text. It has gotten a lot of attention from international users in 16 countries and is now ready to tackle the US market.
Traity: All companies talk about culture fit. It’s one of the main factors in recruitment. We’ve all heard about the airplane test. Traity solves this problem by standardizing personality, trying to measure what is inside people.
Kickfolio: Promoting a new iOS app can be extremely time consuming and expensive. With their proprietary platform, iOS developers can now upload their apps onto the web for user testing before releasing it on a mobile device. This allows app developers to better engage with their users with interactive demos.
Compstak: Commercial real estate agents will tell you that getting lease comparables is extremely cumbersome. Compstak solves this problem by creating a trade platform between brokers for lease comps. This information then gets sold to private equity firms, REITS, hedge funds, etc. The team has strong momentum as they have 99% of the data in NYC and they just launched in SF two weeks ago.
Waygo: Their first app translates Chinese characters to English without an internet connection. Hover over the Chinese characters and get an automatic translation. Think RedLaser for Chinese-to-English translation.
Chewse: Given the CEO had a fever while giving her pitch, she packed a powerful presentation with her B2B marketplace for corporate meals. Chewse simplifies group lunch/dinner catering by streamling the process online. The company has launched in two test regions and is looking to expand nationally.
iDreamBooks: Think Rotten Tomatoes for books. Why not just Amazon reviews? Apparently authors are fraudulently “pumping” their own books to achiever greater sales.
Dealflicks: The Priceline of movie tickets. Save up to 60% on movies tickets and concessions. Per the CEO, “we get butts in movie seats”. The company has many regional theaters signed up and is currently in discussion with some national chains.
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