Notes from Flashpoint Cohort 2 Demo Day 2012

Today was Demo Day 2012 for the second Flashpoint cohort of startups and everything went well. Most of the teams did great and a couple were such recent pivots that it probably didn’t make sense to present. This class of startups was a bit different from the first cohort in that the teams were closer to idea stage at the start of the program compared to the previous set of teams that were further along when the program began. Regardless, both cohorts are excellent and some very successful companies will emerge.

Techturized

• Talk and shop for African American hair
• Focused on hair care retail
• African American hair care market is $3 billion per year
• Life change = hair change
• Moods: freedom, new reality, new person
• Cycle of style
• Working with Carol’s Daughter store
• Raising money

Pickoff Sports

• Background in rivals.com and scout.com
• Fantasy sports and March Madness
• Pick teams that you think will win and earn virtual currency
• Played right within Facebook
• Habit loop that emails you how your picks did
• Raising $500k

CourseShark

• Course registration is a big hassle
• Solution is a modern frontend on legacy data
• Students will share their course info with recruiters and companies
• Help students get jobs
• Georgia Tech students love it
• FERPA blocks schools from sharing student courses

Soccermetrics

• Like Money Ball for soccer
• Soccer data is not as developed as other sports data
• Sourcing, analytics, decisions are separate companies
• Key is making valuable information available fast
• Have several sources of data
• Product is an analytics engine

Buzztastic

• Help businesses market together
• Cross promotions like sweepstakes or contest
• Together marketing is a new category of marketing
• Product is inherently viral
• Raising $1MM round

Deliverable

• Freelancer verification to top employers
• Huge number of people are now freelancers
• Free-agent economy
• Growing from 28% to 40% of work force

SeeMove

• Simple solution to track movement of moving boxes
• 15% of population moves each year
• $11,000 per interstate move
• Logistics experience

BeSmart Ventures

• Maximize value of gift cards
• $100 billion market
• Growing 30% over next few years
• Loyalty programs moving to phone
• Breakage is unredeemed value – $7 billion in 2011

The OR Standard

• Inefficiencies in OR are wasting money
• Delayed cases cost serious money and bad experiences
• Solution is an intelligent communicator scheduler with checklists
• Mobile app for doctors, nurses, patients, and patient family members

Springbot

• Marketing automation for ecommerce
• Amazon.com functionality for SMB ecommerce sites
• Ecommerce sites don’t know where to spend the next marketing dollar
• Solution helps track ROI and provide marketing tools
• Value in integrating disparate tools and tracking data
• Business model of monthly fee with data fees
• Already closed a $1MM angel round

ScheduleLogicMD

• Healthcare in US wastes $750 billing per year
• Intelligent scheduling is in its infancy
• Scheduler – receives calls all day
• Different insurance companies have different payment terms and patients should be scheduled with that in mind

Dwellio

• Increase renter retention for apartment owners
• 54% annual apartment turnover
• Renter 50% more likely to renew if friend in building
• Mobile app to help property managers interact with tenants
• Raising $1.5MM

We & Co

• Talent management for service economy
• 2 million service businesses in US
• 70% turnover
• $5,500 replacement costs
• 30 million service professionals in US
• Like LinkedIn for service professionals
• Acquired 10,000 service professionals in last 90 days

Vehcon

• Smart vehicle connections
• Usage-based insurance
• Accurate odometer reading in vehicles is super hard
• Odo-foot app takes pictures of odometer plus metadata
• Deliver authenticated data with a fingerprint based on the car
• $55 per driver per year

I enjoyed the second cohort’s Demo Day today and I’m excited to see the startups grow and be successful.

What else? What are some other thoughts on Flashpoint cohort 2 Demo Day 2012?