A social outreach platform for churchgoers and a two-tap concert concierge are among the 11 companies accepted into TechStars’ newest class for New York City, chosen from a record applicant pool of nearly 1,700 companies.
TechStars, based in Boulder, Colorado, is a mentorship-driven start-up accelerator, founded in 2006 by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown and Jared Polis.
There are seven TechStars programs, offered in Boulder, Boston, Chicago, New York City, Seattle, London and San Antonio.
Each start-up receives $18,000 in seed funding and an optional $100,000 convertible debt note. Although thousands of companies apply for the programs every year, TechStars only invests in about 10 companies per program location.
Eugene Chung, managing director of TechStars NYC, said in a blog post TechStars is “thrilled” to announce the spring 2013 class for New York City.
According to Chung, the applicant pool of 1,700 companies was an all-time high for New York City.
“We had applicants from 420 cities, 66 countries and six continents (no applicants from Antarctica – this year). The acceptance rate for our program (0.6% this time) grows ever smaller by the year,” Chung said.
“We had applicants from countries as diverse as Nepal and Tanzania.”
Even more impressive than the geographic diversity of the applicant pool was the outstanding range of business ideas, Chung said.
“The unifying theme is the fantastic quality of our founders and the interesting (and large) market opportunities they are tackling,” he said.
“The areas our founders are tackling are as varied as optimising eCommerce to the world of pets.
“For the first time ever, we have a company tackling the religion space, an underserved yet massive market with incredible opportunities for disruption.
“And the markets are large, with our founders bringing solutions to the millions of new parents in the US every year to providing pioneering solutions for the $40 billion online advertising market as well as the $1.2 trillion local commerce market.”
Meet the TechStars NYC class of 2013:
AdYapper allows consumers to “talk back” to any advertisement in the world and influence brands.
Dash Labs is a connected car platform, enabling users to chronicle their journey while they’re on the road.
FaithStreet is a social outreach platform for faith communities, helping people find and connect with churches.
Jukely is a two-tap concert concierge, designed to change the way people discover shows, and buy and share tickets.
Klooff lets users create profiles for their pets and connect with thousands of other pet lovers around the world.
Placemeter senses and unlocks massive amounts of data about activity in physical places. Its aim is to build the next generation of in-store traffic analytics systems.
Plated provides consumers with a convenient way to “discover your inner gourmet chef” by delivering pre-measured ingredients for chef-designed meals to their door.
Sketchfab is a web to publish and display interactive 3D models. Users simply upload their model, embed it and share it.
TriggerMail creates “intelligent eCommerce emails” by allowing users to choose a prompt, or trigger, which will send off an automated email.
Validation Board allows would-be entrepreneurs to test their start-up idea without wasting time or money.
weeSpring is a social shopping platform for new and expecting parents, offering honest advice about what they need for their baby.
