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 few of them, since they're graduates of Y Combinator. But it still seems worthwhile to bring everything together in one post. I started out with the information that's already available online, then I updated with anything interesting from their presentations. Here they are, in the order of their presentations:
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.
From the presentation: Screenleap has now powered nearly 100,000 screenshares, and usage is growing 19 percent week-over-week. The company is also launching an API allowing other products to incorporate its screensharing.
AnyPerk — Another Y Combinator graduate, this time giving startups and other small companies an easy way to offer additional benefits to employees. The AnyPerks platform connects 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.
From the presentation: AnyPerks says that 90 percent of the $5 billion employee perks industry consists of startups and other small companies — but it's largely unserved because the existing providers can't figure out a scalable way to serve those companies. AnyPerks, on the other hand, is starting with smaller customers and plans to eventually move into the enterprise market. More than 2,000 companies have already signed up.
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. 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.
From the presentation: Cselle hinted that this is just a fun side project before the company launches its real "billion-dollar idea." He actually quoted his TechCrunch coverage on-stage, specifically the headline calling DrawChat "silly" and "frivolous," to which he responded, "Mission accomplished." (Illustrated, naturally, with the famous image of George W. Bush.)
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.
From the presentation: The company argues that analytics is currently divided into two different markets — there are custom products built for large enterprises, and there are out-of-the-box solutions like Google Analytics. BitDeli tries to serve the middle, namely businesses whose needs aren't being met on the lower end but can't afford the products on the higher end. To illustrate how easy it is to create a custom dashboard, it showed off something that was created in less than 30 minutes and consisted of less than 100 lines of Python code.
GameFace.me — A platform for games that are personalized with 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.
From the presentation: It kicked off with a hilarious video (seriously, I was giggling) showing off in-game avatars with real-life photos pasted onto their heads. The company launched its own proof-of-concept game, ZombieFace, and it found that when users actually used their friends' faces (as opposed to generic faces), there was a 65 percent next-day retention rate, and a 20 percent 30-day retention rate.
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.
From the presentation: The company elaborated on the idea that salespeople are left behind — specifically, SocialPandas says that the team that is the most social and is interacting with customers is using "the least social tools." So far, the company has received around 1,000 requests for access to the preview version, and it plans to launch in 2013.
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.
From the presentation: Streak says that the user base has been growing steadily, while usage has been growing exponentially — in other words, existing users are also doing more and more with the service. Streak is also launching a backend API so that customers can integrate it with their other systems.
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." (One thing I can share from the presentation: Apparently MeCommerce currently has the largest team trying to squeeze into a Founders Den office.)
Peek — Travel startup promising to help "discover and book amazing travel experiences."
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