Founders Den, the “clubhouse for entrepreneurs” (it’s like a co-working space, but classier) based in San Francisco’s startup-heavy Soma neighborhood, just kicked off its third demo day.
Ten startups are giving presentations to impress reporters and investors. As with other demo days, several of the startups have already launched — this even isn’t the first demo day for couple of them, since they’re graduates of Y Combinator. But it still seems worthwhile to bring everything together in one post. I’m starting out with the information that’s already available online, then I’ll update with anything interesting from their presentations. Here they are (I stuck with the order used in the demo day program):
Screenleap — A Y Combinator graduate that wants to improve the often frustrating and crazy-making world of screensharing. If you want to view someone else’s screen, you just click on a link and you’re up-and-running a few seconds later. It’s a little bit more challenging if you want to share — you have to install a Java applet. And yes, it works on mobile. (Random factoid: Two of Screenleap’s four co-founders created a site at Stanford 13 years ago called Steamtunnels, which was a predecessor of Facebook.) Read TechCrunch’s coverage of Screenleap here.
AnyPerk — Another Y Combinator graduate, this time giving startups and other companies an easy way to offer additional benefits to employees. The AnyPerks platform connects benefits its customers with discounts and other perks. In addition to Y Combinator, backers include SV Angels and Andreessen Horowitz. Read TechCrunch’s coverage of AnyPerks here.
DrawChat — As the name implies, it’s an app for drawing and chatting. Given the limited screen size of mobile phones, the drawings apparently look pretty terrible (no surprise if you’ve seen Draw Something), but they still create an interesting visual record of a conversation. but DrawChat isn’t a Y Combinator company, but it was co-founded by Y Combinator graduate Gabor Cselle, who said he wanted to create something “quick and fun.” Read more of TechCrunch’s coverage of DrawChat here.
BitDeli — A developer platform for real-time data. The company says it tracks “things that are meaningful to your business – including the things only you care about.” Customers write Bitdeli scripts for custom analytics, visualizations and dashboards, then the company handles all the data collection and processing. You can see sample scripts here.
GameFace.me — A platform for creating personalized games using social network data and photos. Some examples from the GameFace site: Instead of rescuing a random princess, you could rescue your girlfriend. Or, instead of fighting random zombies, you can fight your coworkers and friends. Here’s some coverage from InsideSocialGames.
SocialPandas — Social tools for salespeople, who the company says have been left behind in the business world. SocialPandas converts connections and activity on social networks into sales leads. The company recently raised a $1.5 million seed round from True Ventures, as covered in TechCrunch.
Streak — Simple CRM for Gmail. It offers a customer relationship management extension for Chrome, allowing you to move emails into you workflow. It comes with templates for use cases like Sales, Hiring, Dealflow, Fundraising, Email Support and Bug Tracking, but TechCrunch’s Eric Eldon also used a template for Journalism and seemed pretty happy with the results. Here’s his coverage of Streak. Oh, and it’s another Y Combinator company.
The content of the final three presentations are off-the-record, but the fact that they’re presenting isn’t, so here are some bare-bones descriptions provided by the companies:
Rescale — A cloud simulation platform.
MeCommerce — Trying to build “the next generation apparel brand.
Peek — Travel startup promising to help “discover and book amazing travel experiences.”