Techstars, one of the most sought-after business accelerators in the country, is a badge of honor for the companies that get selected. But it's after the 90 day program where startups really begin to leave their mark on clients and, of course, investors. The Techstars Chicago Demo Day took place Wednesday and 10 promising early state businesses pitched their startups to potential investors at the House of Blues.
More than 700 companies applied for Techstars Chicago this year, meaning only 1 percent of startups made the cut. Interested investors have a chance to meet one on one with the startups during Techstars office hours on Thursday.
The room was buzzing with excitement and innovation from companies who knew they were on the verge of the next great idea. We'll have to wait and see if investors felt the same. Here's what we learned about the 10 presenting companies:
InRentive is a platform that allows real estate professionals to post informative and engaging content about their listings. The site allows property managers to post images and other information about their building and easily post the listing across numerous housing websites and social media, saving time and money.
While everyone is interested in Big Data these days, NexLP is in the business of Big Text. The company's product Story Engine is able to take massive sets of text to pull out key findings and observations that the client needs. The example the company gave was about a business that lost half its employees to a rival company overnight. It spent thousands of dollars on lawyers who dug through thousands of emails to see if the employees broke contract or were recruiting other employees to leave. After the lawyers came up empty, the company tried NexLP and used Story Engine to find that one employee was emailing his mom and fiancee to help recruit employees away from the company. And it worked in 90 minutes, the company said.
NexLP also announced that just Wednesday morning it secured $2 million in funding. Nice timing.
Data Everywhere is a cloud database that syncs all of your spreadsheets, regardless of what program you're using. Take a spreadsheet in Excel and work on the data in Google Sheets. Data Everywhere allows you to synchronize your data, reorganize it across multiple spreadsheets, and its REST API makes your data available in databases, phones, websites, and other applications.
Package Zen is changing how people receive their shipped items in multi-unit housing complexes. Roughly 3/4 of people living in those buildings don't get their package directly; it's handled by a doorman or front desk worker, the company said. Package Zen is a mobile app that lets doormen take a photo of the delivered package and a notification is sent to the recipient's phone. The company started in residential housing complexes, but is beginning to add the service to shared office spaces. Eventually, Package Zen sees its app as a way for a building to track maintenance requests and other housing issues by taking photos, videos and the GPS location of the problem.
Telnyx is enabling universal voice communication via the internet, bypassing traditional phone companies. The company says it can provide customers the same service that the larger phone carriers can, but at a fraction of the price. It eliminates overhead costs that are inherent in large server infrastructures, in turn saving the customers money.
Rihanna has 14 million YouTube subscribers. Pewdiepie, an "online gaming celebrity," has 29 million. GameWisp is trying to give these gaming celebrities better access to revenue by giving them more ways to interact with fans. Gaming celebrities have content on Twitch and YouTube, but GameWisp created a Watch Room platform to give gammers access to revenue. The Watch Rooms show video of the gammer's performance, and it allows his or her fans to watch and interact with the celebrity while it plays. CEO Michael Anderson compared it to "watching game film with Jay Cutler." There are virtual tip jars and tickets to private Watch Rooms to give gaming celebrities a chance to capitalize on their success.
Tangiblee, formerly yRuler, gives online retailers a way to provide a more realistic shopping experience for their customers. You can "virtually try on" clothes, handbags, jewelry, etc. by comparing the size of the item to a person of your height. Select handbag, for example, then type in your height, and see how it compares to your body.
WeDeliver is working in the very trendy, yet very competitive, delivery space. It is trying to set itself apart by a new app called Locally, which aims to "recreate main street online." Locally will have Chicago's most popular local merchants and allow you to shop at each without leaving the Locally platform. It's as if you're walking down a strip mall for bread, meat and flowers, but online, CEO Jimmy Odom described. And rather than waiting for shipping, WeDeliver drivers bring your item to you in under an hour.
Martmobi, an India-based startup, makes apps for online retailers to increase mobile conversions. The company allows retailers to customize their app in minutes, letting them focus on their product rather than drowning in code. And although Martmobi launched overseas, it plans to stay in Chicago to grow its business.
Clutch prep provides video tutoring that corresponds with specific college textbooks. Starting as a tutoring service for students at Florida International University, the company is expanding the online videos to colleges across the country in a wide variety of course subjects. The video guides follow along with your textbook to help make sense of the information.
Each company gave a polished pitch Wednesday. It will be interesting to see which startup resonated the most with investors. Personally, I was impressed with InRentive. Having combed through hundreds of apartment listings that lack even the most basic photos and information, a service like this would come in handy to many property managers. And when having to post listings on Zillow, Craigslist, Facebook, etc., InRentive's one-click publishing is a serious time saver. NexLP also caught my eye. A service that can scan massive data sets to provide a quick synopsis of the key information would definitely help journalists going through pages of FOIA documents and other lengthy items.
