Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Jon Paris, CEO and co-founder of Astrid To-Do. Astrid participated in AngelPad and immediately raised a successful seed round from Google Ventures and other investors. His opinions are his own.

Incubators are playing an increasingly vital role in acquiring meaningful investment for first-time entrepreneurs. TechCrunch reported that elite accelerators like Y Combinator receive on average one application every minute, and AngelPad reminds its participants that it is many times more selective than the Harvard Business School.

Incubators ask for a 2 to 10 percent stake in your company, a sum that could alternatively be used to attract a junior co-founder or provide meaningful ownership to the first few engineers you enlist. In return, incubators offer intensive coaching, networking with other founders, and warm introductions to likely investors. Incubators give first-time entrepreneurs and international teams alike a crucial link to Silicon Valley.

In addition to the giving up of meaningful equity there are other downsides to consider before participating in an incubator. Most have a schedule that’s built on a demo near the end of the program. While many companies view that external structure as helpful, others can find that working with such a timeline damages their business.

The long lead up to D-Day could mean a delay in fundraising or product launch, which in turn can translate into missed opportunities. There are other potential pitfalls, from committing too quickly and prematurely to an idea, to trying to scale before properly understanding a market and the company’s place in it. And with any robust community, there’s the danger of succumbing to groupthink. Founders need to remember they understand their market better than anyone.

For most first-time founders, these downsides are far outweighed by the benefits. Below are some lessons I regularly share with prospective entrepreneurs interested in applying to incubators.

1. Know their interest and expertise

When planning to apply to such incubators as 500 Startups, Y Combinator, TechStars or AngelPad, watch any and every online video you can find of incubator leaders outlining what they are looking for and what they can offer your company. Numerous incubator leaders, including Paul Graham, Thomas Korte and Dave McClure, have explicitly mapped out what they can bring to the table and what kind of companies they are targeting.

Know what’s important to the investors: Dave McClure at 500 Startups will want you to have a deep understanding of the micro-economics; AngelPad loves great B2B opportunities; and Y Combinator appreciates founders who have already demonstrated their smarts with submissions on Hacker News. They all will make exceptions, but you should pitch in a way that will resonate with the specific incubator.

2. Understand their challenge

All incubators play an arbitrage game, curating great early-stage startups for the community of larger investors. They need to believe they can readily convince other investors to put in an even larger sum at the end of the program. It is your job to convince them you have the raw material, which usually means great engineers (preferably branded by great universities or companies), beautiful design, strong team dynamics, and an ability to get a meaningful user base. If you have these ingredients, the incubator can help you polish your pitch and get in front of investors.

3. Intros matter

Getting a friendly introduction from someone the incubator knows can prevent your startup from getting buried in the application avalanche. The best intros come from people they trust who have insight into what it takes to start an effective company. Founders, fellow investors or former colleagues (hint: search LinkedIn for shared connections) can help get that needed extra attention. Intros from their friends and family members outside the startup ecosystem will be much less helpful. I got a key intro to AngelPad from the MoPub founders and to Y Combinator through Posterous co-founder Garry Tan.

4. They will be watching closely

Many incubators now require a video submission with your application and will follow up with an in-person or video chat with you and your co-founder(s). While these might cause the incubator to miss great people due to some unconscious bias, they also give a glimpse of confidence, charisma and, perhaps most importantly, your relationship with your colleagues.

The least you can do is ensure that everyone pays attention to whoever is speaking. If the engineer rolls his eyes, yawns or corrects the CEO when he speaks, the incubator might regard your startup as radioactive. If you get a live interview, make sure everyone has defined roles, with the CEO answering all market and business questions, the CTO answering all technical questions, etc. And practice the interview dozens of times. Enlist smart friends to barrage you with questions in rapid succession until you can confidently provide short and clear answers.

5. You’ll get a new Alma Mater

Incubator provides fantastic coaching and rich networking opportunities with other companies and investors during their programs. This is especially helpful for international teams that can boast great products and meaningful traction, but lack connections to the Silicon Valley investor community. But the time in the incubator is just the beginning. Months out, the mentors continue to provide trusted counsel and meaningful introductions.

Our incubator class provided us with thousands of dollars in free services and have consistently been among the first to try our new products, provide honest feedback and give them a five-star rating in the App Store. The camaraderie runs deep, fostered by shared experience and an understanding that each companies’ success will elevate everyone’s status.

Many first-time entrepreneurs succeed without participating in an incubator, in the same way many professionals can have successful careers without going to college. But this will increasingly be the exception. Young companies passing on the incubators can squander time, even years, when they could be building their networks, getting greater market feedback and scale their business with investor dollars.

In the past year, I have seen four great teams with early traction and Stanford founders stagnate while trying to do things on their own. Each had a few connections with the investor community, but they didn’t compare to what the best incubators deliver. Don’t make their mistake — if you want to build a company with world-wide impact, joining an incubator may be your most important early step toward achieving success.

NYC-based Blueprint Health, a health-focused member of the TechStars Network, is announcing its inaugural class of startups today. The Winter program, which begins on January 9th, will be taking place in a 12,000 square foot loft in SoHo that will be shared with the NYC-based members of Health 2.0 starting later this month. Part of the loft may also be turned into a co-working space for other healthcare-focused area entrepreneurs.

When Blueprint opened up for applications in fall 2011, it listed a large group of mentors which included those who founded and helped lead companies like Amicas, Eliza, Everyday Health, Generation Health, Healthination, HelloHealth, Keas, Kryuus, Livestrong, MedCommons, Medivo, PatientsLikeMe, Phreesia, ShapeUp and ZocDoc.

Since then, it has added the following 10 mentors to its program:

• Andy Weissman – Partner, Union Square Ventures
• Dr. Paul Ehrlich – Chief Medical Officer, Cerner
• Jonathan Gordon – Strategy, New York Presbyterian Hospital
• Rachel Winokur – Head of Strategic Diversification, Aetna
• Jason Gorevic – CEO, Teladoc
• Jeff Hoffman –  Senior Director Health Care Strategy, CVS
• Peter Preziosi – Health Innovation Strategist, Verizon
• Hamel Shah – Corporate Business Development, Allscripts
• Neal Sofian – Director Member Engagement, Premera
• Dr. Destry Sulkes – CoFounder, Medivo

Blueprint also has employees from CVS, Johns Hopkins, Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser Permanente, Lockheed Martin, McKinsey Hospital Institute, Take Care Health Systems, Pfizer and WebMD on board. Its investment partners include Aberdare Ventures, ATV, Bessemer Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, HLM Venture Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, Physic Ventures, Psilos and Radius Ventures and Windham Venture Partners.

The startups participating in Blueprint’s program, both now and in the future, will be focused on technology products for patients, doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, health plans or employers. The accelerator, however, will not be as focused on consumer-facing apps looking to gain traction.

The first class of startups joining the program include the following:

5 O’Clock Records (Draper, UT)

Led by Matthew Cottrell, 5 O’Clock Records helps doctors reduce phone calls by direct requests for medical records from health insurance companies, lawyers, and others to a website where the requester can submit request information, verification, and pay for the request with a credit card.  Matthew is a serial healthcare entrepreneur who previously founded MediConnect.net, grew the business to $22 million revenue and sold it to private equity firm.

AHEAD Research (Baltimore, MD)

Led by Craig Monsen and David Do, AHEAD Research helps care management companies reduce call times by implementing triage best practices and large-scale data analysis of medical information.  Craig and David are both Johns Hopkins medical school students and Ruby programmers.  Craig designed and built a computer-based system for the diagnosis of heart disease using an electronic stethoscope, while David built a handheld device for blind people to detect people in their environments using a thermal camera.

AidIn (Boston, MA)

Led by Russ Graney and Michael Galbo, AidIn makes discharge planning easy by creating an online system to manage discharge planning coordination and billing with nursing agencies.  Russ previously founded and led a high-performing charter school in Brooklyn and Michael previously started a company that converted waste into hydrogen and was a semi-finalist in MassChallenge.

iCouch (Shanghai, China)

Led by Brian Dear and Jessica Dear, iCouch provides a platform for counselors to conduct video counseling sessions and manage the billing process.  Brian is a self-taught iOS and Rails programmer and creator of ClassCloud, a cloud-based classroom management system.  Jessica has been a private practice counselor for over five years.

InquisitHealth (Secaucus, NJ)

Led by Ashwin Patel and Brijesh Patel, InquisitHealth connects recent and experienced patients to new patients based on medical procedure, surgery or treatment.  Ashwin has a PhD from the Wharton and is an MD candidate from Weill-Cornell Medical College.  Brijesh is experienced in web development, information architecture and product management.

Meddik (Philadelphia, PA)

Led by Tim Soo and Ben Shyong, Meddik is a search engine for health that ranks results based on a user’s symptom set, clinical attributes, and demographics.  Tim is a Penn medical student and programmer who built Invisible Instrument, a Wiimote & iPhone gestural-based instrument that won an MTV Award.  Ben is a Web-developer and programmer, having built a real-time transit tool for the Philadelphia transit system and started a bubble-tea restaurant.

Patient Communicator (New York, NY)

Led by Jeff Novich, Patient Communicator is a practice management solution that will help providers reduce phone calls related to refill requests, payment, and appointment scheduling.  Jeff is serial entrepreneur, having previously founded an education start-up and a cab sharing iOS app, and has a computer science and physic degrees from Johns Hopkins and an MS from Columbia.

Procured Health (Dubai, UAE)

Led by Hani Elias and Will Danford, Procured Health will reduce hospital costs by improving medtech product evaluation and purchasing.  Hani is a founding member of McKinsey’s Center for US Health System Reform, a Soros Fellow and holds a BA, JD and MPH from Harvard University.  Will has led development of Facebook and ESPN mobile applications for the new Windows OS.

Needl (Minneapolis, MN)

Led by Rashaun Sourles and Michael Winikoff, Needl is a Q&A web platform that connects healthcare professionals to industry vendors.  Previously, Rashaun spent 7 years in pharma sales at J&J and earned the “President’s Circle” designation, putting him in the top 10% of J&J reps worldwide based on sales.  Michael previously started a technology consultancy focused on graphic design.

The inaugural class will also include two “floating founders” Tom Black (Madison, WI) and Janan Rajeevikaran (Toronto).  Tom is a Navy veteran and a software developer whose primary dev stack is Ruby, JavaScript, HTML5 + CSS3, Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, Heroku, and a sprinkling of Java/C/C++.  Janan has a degree in electrical engineering and has been programming for nearly a decade in about 20 languages.

Vizify, a social tool for creating a great first impression online and a recent grad of TechStars‘ Seattle accelerator program, is announcing today that it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from a group of entrepreneurs and investors, which includes Picnik Founder Jonathan Sposato, Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim Draper, Bill McAleer of Voyager Capital, and Co-founder of Feedburner Matt Shobe, among others. Vizify is also a member of the inaugural class of the Portland Seed Fund, a seed fund and 90-day accelerator program that invests $25,000 in six to eight Oregonian companies every six months.

So what is it about Vizify that has attracted this sizable round of seed investment? The startup, which is currently in private beta, wants to take that ever-growing wealth of information about you that is already available online and construct a unified and visual profile to help you, what else? Make a good first impression. The goal, then, is to help average web users build and manage their personal, online brands, as well as to help people seek out new business or employment. Co-founder and CEO Todd Silverstein says that the company is using a variety of data-based techniques to help identify and communicate what makes you, as an an individual, “awesome” — based on the content, profiles, and information you’ve created (and continue to create) each day online.

Although we’ll have to wait until Vizify launches later this year to see the nuts and bolts of what this means — in practice — the startup is already offering its “TweetSheet”, which creates an instant infographic out of your Twitter activity, highlighting things like your top followers, geographic impact, and your most viral content. This is by no means the main focus of what Vizify will be doing, but it is a small demonstration of what it can do with the information that piles up from your everyday usage of sites like Twitter.

Vizify thinks that this information is underutilized, and while Twitter users may not care particularly about analytics, it can still help brands and regular tweeters see who their top followers are, or what their top tweets were.

What’s most interesting to Vizify, Silverstein says, is the social function of this information, where it gets shared and talked about, and the company wants to help users make use of this information on their favorite sites.

Thus, the need for a service like Vizify comes from the three trends: The amount of information people share online is doubling every year and much of that is automated (like Spotify plays showing up in your Facebook Timeline); second, the mainstream is waking up to how much information is available about you online in a simple Google search, thanks to APIs and innerconnectivity that pushes that information (or makes it available) in more than one place at once; and third, the challenge of managing your identity online, across multiple silos, contexts, etc.

We all have our profiles, or at least some amount of personal information, across sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and one thousand others. As we see Facebook pushing its Timeline, and G+ pushing circles, finding better ways to manage and share your life and personal information online is coming increasingly to the fore.

About.me is a good, quick way to aggregate your basic personal information in one profile, but Vizify wants to create a more sustainable and useful way for people to get back in control of their personal information, again, centered around what Silverstein says is the digital equivalent of real world first impressions. This will likely take shape in a suped-up and more interactive About.me presence, that aggregates your profiles in one place, allows you to control them from there, and offers a host of visual, data-based tools (like the TweetSheet) to help you get more from your social media experiences.

It’s an interesting idea, one that’s been tried in a number of different capacities already, but we’re looking forward to seeing what Vizify has in store when it peels back the curtain. If there’s enough appeal in the data-parsing tools, it’s easy to use, and visually engaging, Vizify could be onto something here. Stay tuned for more.

Gazelle Lab, the brand-new Tampa Bay-based TechStars Network member which just held its first Demo Day in November, is expanding its operations. The accelerator has just announced the opening of second location in Orlando, Florida, where it will be working with local academic institution Rollins College.

The Orlando team will be led by founder Richard Licursi, CEO of Florida’s Spectrum Bridge, Inc. You may remember hearing about that company as being the first to win the FCC’s approval to manage a database in the newly-opened “white space” spectrum. Licursi will be responsible for leading the fundraising for the Orlando crew, along with three other founders and support from the original St. Petersburg team.

In addition to Lucursi, Orlando’s Gazelle Lab founders include Allen Kupetz, Executive-in-Residence, Crummer Graduate School, Rollins College; Pete McAlindon, Ph.D., CEO of Blue Orb, Inc.; and Pat McNair, CPA, Interim CFO, at RowShamBow.

This is only the second TechStars member to open an additional location. TechStars proper, of course, has multiple locations across the U.S. while network member Startup Bootcamp is live in a few cities in Europe.

As to why there’s a need for more locations so early into the group’s founding, Gazelle Lab founder Daniel James Scott explains that the team feels that the region deserves a statewide effort.

“One of the biggest lessons we had during the first cadre of Gazelle Lab is that if we are going to accomplish our missions of building community and a true seed-stage funding pipeline, these would have to start happening at the state level,” he says.

Scott says there’s been demand for even more Gazelle Lab-branded programs across the state, but Orlando had the right mix of founders, investors and partners that Gazelle could plug its support, mentors and application pipeline into. With this announcement, the group is hoping to tie together all of central Florida into a cohesive early-stage funding scene, while tapping into the talent from area universities like Rollins, USF, and others.

Florida entrepreneurs are invited to apply to program via the Gazelle Lab website. The group is also supporting the new acelerato.rs application system, which lets you send in your application to multiple accelerator programs at once.

GoChime, a graduate of the 2011 TechStars Seattle program, is today announcing that it has raised $630,000 from a host of entrepreneurs and angel investors that include Geoff Entress, who has invested in companies like Hootsuite and Cheezburger, Walter Winshall, an investor in Harmonix (Guitar Hero), Co-founder of Feedburner and former Googler, Matt Shobe, Dave Carlson (investor in Socialthing, Daily Burn), and Founder and CEO of Bigdoor Keith Smith — to name a few.

What is GoChime? Simply put, the startup is delivering relevant offers to people based on real needs they’ve expressed across their social media profiles. In other words, it’s direct marketing for social, something which GoChime Co-founders Matt Walters, Josh Emert, and Austin Evarts are convinced has not yet been done successfully.

Seeing that millions of people express the desire for products and services on social media every day, whether that be for a Android phone, a vacation, or help studying for the GMAT. They experess these desires to their friends, followers, and really, the public domain. GoChime wants to eliminate the need for every day users to have to search Google for products or solutions by making use of the reams of commercial intent data available on social networks, in turn providing customers with value by saving them time and money.

Thus, GoChime wants to enable brainds to effectively come to the rescue of these potential customers by offering promotions and offers that are contextually relevant to the needs these people have already expressed — delivered to them by their existing customers and fans.

GoChime matches each desire expressed with products or solutions provided by the corresponding brands when and if that expression is contextually relevant. GoChime matches relevant brand promotions in its database and passes it off to brand loyalists, who then decide if the expression is relevant to the matched promotion. Those that aren’t relevant are skipped, and those that fit the bill are then used by the brand evangelists to start a conversation with the person, with the incentive of a discount, coupon, etc. being dangled in front of that potential customer.

Chimers are graded by a “reputation score”, based on “professionalism, information sufficiency, and relevancy”, according to the GoChime Co-founders. Giving its users the chance to interact on behalf of the brand, the service then allows those with the best scores to stand out as the top social media brand influencers, presumably going on to well-paying jobs in marketing at their favorite brands.

The startup wants to provide and environment in which those people with an “innate skill for engaging with other people on social media” facilitate the connection between companies and their potential customers. By delivering the right promotion at the right time (presumably to the right person), GoChime thinks that it can play a part in defining the new economy that is emerging on social. The Co-founders say that, so far, they’ve seen CTRs and conversion rates that far exceed traditional advertising options, and are convinced that they’re onto something.

The startup is still working out its business model, but you can get a sense of where this is going. If GoChime can connect brands with top social media influencers and acquire new customers, then the startup gets paid and, in turn, provides a social service while doing so. Obviously, this model is all about effectively finding the best influencers. It remains to be seen whether its “influence score” is enough of a litmus for brands to seek out those influencers, but it’s yet another social-centric direct marketing alternative to display advertising.

Chime in and let us know what you think.

Startup founders are the new reality TV stars. No, really! Today, the exec producer of the TechStars TV show on Bloomberg TV, Cameron Casey, is announcing his plans to film a second startup-focused reality show. This time, the show will follow a group of entrepreneurs out in L.A., courtesy of a partnership with the Start Engine accelerator.

But here’s the big news: this time, the show is planned as a multi-season series for a network.

The TechStars reality show was apparently successful enough for Casey to give the format another shot. The producer is still shopping the show around to networks, however – there’s no distribution deal in place as of yet. But based on the success of TechStars, word is they’re very confident that a deal will be signed soon. And it will be for a five-year run to start, they say.

The documentary-style program will follow the entrepreneurs enrolled in Start Engine, the L.A.-based incubator founded by Howard Marks, co-founder of Activision, and investor Paul Kessler, founder of the Los Angeles Film School. Start Engine is a rapid accelerator, offering four 90-day cycles per year, each culminating in the nerve-wracking Demo Day events, where the founders pitch a roomful of top angel investors and VCs.

At Start Engine, the goal is to launch over 100 companies per year, with sessions that include around 30 companies each. According to Kessler, this incubator is different because of its focus on the entrepreneurs. “This is the first effort on a really large scale that’s not driven by VC’s, but by the entrepreneurial spirit,” he says. He points to the program’s large line-up of mentors, as an example of that. Around fifty are on the Start Engine website, but many more are not. As for the companies themselves, teams (not individuals) are preferred and one on the team should be the technical co-founder. The founders are bright, well-educated and the experience of watching them go through the program should be inspiring to other entrepreneurs, says Kessler.

Casey approached Start Engine around 30 days ago about the idea, and Kessler  immediately recognized the opportunity to showcase L.A.’s entrepreneurial talent via this show.

“We were big fans of TechStars on Bloomberg TV,” he says, “so we’re excited to be partnering with Cameron to shine a spotlight on how innovation is created here in the City of Angels where the media, technology and entertainment industries converge.”

For those of you who watched TechStars, you’ll be familiar with the formula employed by the new show. It will document how entrepreneurs apply, get chosen, the mentoring process and finally, the big pitch. There have been complaints, however, that the “reality-tv-ification” of the startup process led to some inaccuracies which painted some founders in a bad light.

According to Casey, the accuracy problem is related to the genre itself. “This is a very challenging TV format to tackle,” he says. “Considering the series was documented in real-time following multiple teams, dozens of characters, and multiple story lines over nearly nine months of filming in total. Some stories may be out of sequence, but we try to tell each story as accurately as possible.”

In other words, it may be inaccurate, but it might not be wrong. Hmm?

Kessler adds, ”there’s always a risk [of a negative portrayal, but I’ll do everything in my power to do things accurately, and protect the companies and the folks associated with those companies.” He also notes that the applicants won’t be required to be on TV – if for some reason a company says they cannot, Start Engine will accommodate that. But that’s a bridge they’ll cross when they come to it.

Says Casey, “considering that Start Engine is both a TV series and a exercise in media training and marketing, I would hope that founders would appreciate the value, and jump at the chance of having the birth of their new business documented.”

The series will reportedly appear on a network first, then online afterwards, starting sometime in early 2012.

Update: Credit where credit is due. We’re hearing that Casey’s involvement was minimal, and that if anyone should get credit for TechStars’ production it should be Bloomberg’s Elizabeth Gould, the show’s producer. Casey reports he was in charge of hiring the crew and payroll, however. With regards to “executive producer” and “producer,” the bigger title isn’t always the bigger job. 

Today, another TechStars Network accelerator comes online. Greenville, South Carolina’s “The Next Big Thing,” as it’s called, has been running in stealth mode since its founding in February 2011. But now, the incubator is ready for submissions. Companies can apply for the program starting today up until the window’s closing on April 20th.

The Next Big Thing’s initial program will begin in summer 2012, culminating in a Demo Day in September.

Like all TechStars Network affiliates, The Next Big Thing will provide those granted admission with support and capital to help get their startups off the ground. In this case, companies receive office space, mentorship, free legal and accounting work and $18,000 per team in seed funding. They will also receive around $75,000 in freebies and discounts from partners. In exchange, The Next Big Thing takes the typical 6% stake in each startup it invests in.

The accelerator has lined up some significant mentors to kick off its launch, including Brad Feld, Bo Fishback, Ryan Carson, Hiten Shah, Eric Marcoullier, Lloyd Taylor and many others.

In addition to its own startups, the accelerator also invests in other startups, usually graduates of similar accelerator program. Currently, it has invested in FullContact (TechStars Boulder 2011) and is closing on two investments from TechStars NY.

The unique thing about this incubator is that it’s also hiring five designers skilled in one or more of the following: IA/UX, identity design, illustration, graphic/print design, HTML, CSS, Javascript/JQuery, video production and animation. The designers will be employed by the The Next Big Thing but will work with the teams individually. They will also be encouraged to join the program’s startups or launch their own, says TNBT Managing Director Peter Barth.

Barth, an alumnus of Vanderbilt University, where he studied computer engineering, spent a couple of years on Wall St. as a registered options principal and general securities principal at Duke & Company and Morgan Stanley. But he soon realized that he really was a hacker at heart and he moved away to Indianapolis, taking a development position with SinglePoint. He worked his way up to CTO then purchased a stake in the business. In 2006, he relocated to Greenville and has been involved with the development of NEXT, the NEXT Innovation Center, InternGreenville, and now, The Next Big Thing. Other members of TNBT’s advisory board are detailed here.

Interested startups can now apply for The Next Big Thing here.

Last week, Erick wrote about the dramatic increase in startups and early-stage businesses we’ve been seeing over the last few years, likening the phenomenon to the Cambrian Explosion. In these fertile times for startups, naturally, there’s plenty of funding to be had: In the last year, according to CrunchBase, there were more than 1,100 seed/angel funding rounds, up from 855 in 2008.

There are fewer barriers to startup creation now than ever before, and as businesses pop up left and right, so have the incubators and accelerators that provide these companies with the early fuel they need to build their products. Y Combinator, one of the more well-known startup incubators in the world, is now receiving over one application every minute, for example, and recently expanded the size of its classes to keep pace with demand.

Each of the prominent incubators, Y Combinator, TechStars, 500 Startups, and Founder Institute, among them, have been expanding their programs and networks, both at home and overseas. TechStars has added hubs in a number of cities, and both 500 Startups and Y Combinator recently launched their “largest batches yet”. It seems that with each passing “semester”, enrollment continues to grow.

But which of these incubators is the largest? It depends on how you define “largest” — each of these incubators rock and each has its own case. But one in particular thinks it has the “biggest” case: Founder Institute, today announced that it has become the largest incubator in the world — at least in terms of the number of alumni, mentors, and locations.

Founder Adeo Ressi told us that the incubator has now helped launch 415 startups worldwide, with a total of 483 graduated entrepreneurs. Founder Institute has done so in less than 2.5 years, and Ressi says that, when the ten operating sessions graduate in the next two months, the Institute will exceed 500 companies launched and is on pace to launch an average of two tech companies per day in 2012.

The Founder attributes the incubator’s growth to, among other things, focusing not on bringing startups to Silicon Valley, but on building startup ecosystems in national and international markets, allowing entrepreneurs to create their businesses at home. The Institute is directly operating in 20 different locations and counts over 700 mentors among its flock.

Of course, while Founder Institute may be the largest in terms of scale and alumni (Y Combinator has graduated 317+ companies, TechStars 114, 500 Startups 174, and Plug and Play 300+), it does not hold claim to being the largest in terms of the number of exits that generated cash returns or the amount of money raised.

The top 21 companies incubated by Y Combinator, for example, have a combined value of $4.7 billion, said Founder Paul Graham. Comparatively, 41 percent of Founder Institute graduates have received funding, for a total of more than $30 million.

Founder Institute companies have averaged about $2.5 million for their series A raises, the largest of which was $5 million. While the Institute has produced entrepreneurs that have gone on to found companies like Cake Health, I-DISP, Identifii, Kaliki, Rentcycle, and Udemy, Founder Institute has yet to produce high-valuation companies like Dropbox and Airbnb — both of which are Y Combinator graduates and have raised over $100 million.

While more than 100 of Founder Institute’s graduates are based internationally, 20 percent have female founders, 40 percent have been funded, and the Institute plans to add another 75 international locations, the incubator has to be careful that it isn’t just becoming a startup mill. Entrepreneurs want to be sure that they receive fair ROI, and the total amount of funding raised by graduates, the number of successful exits, and high valuations can be a good marker for determining this.

Founder Institute accepts an average of 30 percent of the startups that apply to its program (compared to 3 percent for Y Combinator), so startups know that they have a better chance of getting in. Yet, unlike other incubators, Founder Institute doesn’t invest in its startups, though it does take 3.5 percent of the graduating companies and puts it into a pool for the founders, mentors and people who operate local chapters.

The key for Founder Institute is its international footprint. Seed Camp, in contrast, has a significant (and growing) international presence, but it doesn’t have the same connection to Silicon Valley that Ressi has forged over the last 2.5 years. There is a growing push to invest in up-and-coming international tech hubs, and with the Institute planning 75 new locations (in London, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Bangalore, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, and Cape Town, to name a few), the incubator may have a leg up on incubators focused solely in the U.S.

It’s also important, as part of this expansion, to get support of local governments and ecosystems. Singapore’s government has been backing 100 percent of Founder Institute grads with investment grants, market access and other services — so even without investing significant capital in startups themselves, it’s partnerships like these that will make Founder Institute continue to fly — without being seen as a startup mill.

Applications for Founder Institute’s Winter 2011 program are being accepted through tomorrow, so readers interested can take FI’s “Predictive Admissions Test” and apply here.

The Kinect has proved fertile ground for hackers and innovators all over the world, from individuals to student teams to established researchers. But as yet there haven’t been many commercial applications. Microsoft and TechStars are hoping to turn the creativity and momentum associated with the Kinect into some functioning startups.

Applications are being taken through January 25th; ten will be chosen and given the opportunity to participate in a three-month incubation program at Microsoft — and get $20,000 in seed funding. Got an idea for a new device, service, or method of using the Kinect’s low-cost real-time depth sensor? This could be a good opportunity — if you can afford to move to Seattle for a while this Spring. Don’t worry: the program is in the downtown area, not Redmond.

There are minor catches. TechStars, in exchange for funding and leading the program, will be getting a 6% stake in your new company (in common stock). And it’s not just a way to put the finishing touches on a game you’ve been working on. The goal is “to create businesses that leverage the Kinect for Xbox or Windows.” And since the Accelerator is based in South Lake Union, there will likely be daily rumbles with Amazon employees, who consider the area their exclusive territory.

Clearly, the idea is to package and monetize some of the creative energy going into the platform. It seems like a good fit for the student engineering teams we’ve seen that likely put their devices together with university tools. Travel to the Emerald City, get some expert help and learn your way around the SDK, and get a shot a creating a business. Microsoft doesn’t get to keep any of your IP or anything, but it’s no secret that you’re essentially working for them. What’s good for the Kinect is good for Microsoft.

There are more details and a FAQ at Microsoft, and TechStars has a blog entry as well. The application form is here.

After graduating from TechStars Boston this spring, Brightwurks, a startup that makes web-based productivity tools with an emphasis on customer service, launched a new product called Help Scout that aims to bring quality email collaboration and support to small businesses.

The problem the startup hopes to address, as Brightwurks Co-founder and CEO Nick Francis sees it, is that, while the majority of companies feel that great customer service is mission critical to their business, on the Web, most still fail to interact with customers effectively. Part of the problem is that current solutions for customer relations offer a user experience that is automated and inherently impersonal.

Furthermore, in the customer service market, there is a growing gap, Francis says, between email and help desks. Solutions like Zendesk and Assistly (the latter is now part of Salesforce) end up being too wide-ranging and complex for small businesses to integrate. It doesn’t make sense for a 10-person startup or online retailer to use a help desk, for example, when the team just wants an easy way to scale their email support.

As well-known players like Salesforce and NetSuite target the enterprise, Help Scout intends to cut down on the noise and focus on the one thing every online business needs: Email support. “Focusing on one area allows us to do that one thing really well, and be versatile there, as opposed to offering 50 different features that just lead to a complicated and mediocre overall user experience”, the Brightwurks CEO said.

Thus, Help Scout is going for a help desk-CRM hybrid (that will soon sync with the CRM solution your business is already running), designed for any team of two or more that needs to share an email inbox, keep everyone on the same page, and offer personalized, high-quality customer support.

According to Francis, 27 percent of emails sent by customers to online retailers are answered incorrectly, and most often that’s a result of the agent being unfamiliar with the customer. To solve this problem of familiarity, Help Scout allows agents to see every conversation that’s ever taken place with the customer, along with a public profile of that customer compiled from data on social networks, etc. (Similar to what Rapportive does for teams.)

Emails from Help Scout look like one-on-one email threads, as they actually come from a real person with a personalized signature — not like the correspondence one would receive from a help desk. What’s more, to the customer, Help Scout is invisible; they don’t have to log in to an account or go through a complicated process to talk with a real person.

As to how it works? Help Scout is compatible with any email address, the startup simply gives a business a unique email alias, to which it can forward copies of all incoming emails. This gets a copy into Help Scout, and businesses can then set up their own outgoing server or use Help Scout’s for sending replies. Typically, setup takes about 4 minutes, Francis says, which gives it a bit of a leg up over the big players in the space, which often requires weeks of customization.

For all businesses, great customer service is essential, but because it can be time-consuming and complicated to manage, there’s a prevailing sense that the ROI is marginal. They instead turn to web-based and cloud services to automate and make CRM easier to deal with, in hopes of seeing more of a return on the time and energy invested.

Across the board, companies are investing more and more in online customer service (Salesforce acquired Assistly for $50 million in September), and there’s an abundance of opportunity in this market. As a testament to this fact, Help Scout is announcing that it has raised $435,000 in seed funding from a full roster of 17 angels and VCs, including Dharmesh Shah, David Cancel, Dave Balter, Zelkova Ventures, TechStars, and more.

Help Scout launched in May and has signed up over 500 companies so far. It’s still early, but part of the reason the service is attracting 100 companies per month is that its affordable at $10/month for individuals and $20/month for businesses. For startups and small businesses, this pricing makes it an appealing alternative to the bigs.

For more on Help Scout, check them out at home here.

Startup incubator and network TechStars has raised $24 million in new funding from the Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Avalon Ventures, DFJ Mercury, SoftBank Capital, SVB Financial Group, RRE Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, TechStars Alumni, and several individuals. TechStars is actually already directly funded by over 75 venture funds and angel investors, but this new funding will be used to offer every single new TechStars company an additional $100,000 in funding in the form of a convertible note immediately upon acceptance into TechStars.

TechStars, which launched in 2007, is a “startup boot camp” for tech entrepreneurs in which selected startup receive up to $18,000 in seed funding (or $6,000 per founder up to three founders in exchange for 5 percent of the company), three months of mentorship from successful entrepreneurs and investors, and the opportunity to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program.

One of the differentiating factors in TechStars is that it takes a mentor and community-driven approach to incubating startups and supporting founders. The company pairs at least 10 mentors in the local technology industry with each startup to give founders access to both seasoned entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

The incubator has programs in Boston, Boulder, New York, Seattle, and recently launched a new thematically focused business kickstarter, dubbed TechStars Cloud.

Earlier this year, TechStars also open sourced its model, recently announcing the TechStars Network as part of the White House’s Startup America initiative to spur entrepreneurship. The incubator’s model is now being used by over 20 programs globally, including Chicago’s Excelerate Labs.

TechStars co-founder David Cohen says of the news “Acceptance into TechStars now means an additional $100k of funding from a diverse group of top tier investors. This additional funding will allow TechStars companies to stay focused on making progress during the three-month program instead of spending that valuable time on early fundraising in order to make ends meet. It’s also enough funding to entice a broader spectrum of would-be entrepreneurs to consider TechStars.”

The important message with this news is less about the funding for TechStars and more about the extra money each incubated startup will receive for participating in the program (which is on top of the potential $18,000 startups are given). Yuri Milner and SV Angel teamed up earlier this year to offer the companies housed in fellow startup incubator Y Combinator $150,000 in convertible debt.

Because of this move in January, the incentive to join Y Combinator was strong. But now TechStars has leveled the playing field somewhat for startups and it will be a harder decision to choose which incubator to join (not to mention the fact that TechStars has programs in a number of cities in the U.S.)

Similar to Y Combinator, TechStars has been able to produce a number of impressive startups via its incubator. We’re told more than 70% of TechStars companies go on to raise venture or angel capital after the program ends and 7 of the first 20 companies incubated have now been acquired. The incubator is also subject of a documentary “reality TV” show on Bloomberg TV, which debuted last week and will run six episodes through October 18th. We’ve embedded the trailer below.

TechStars is funding approximately 60 companies per year, and this additional level of funding applies to the incubator’s 2012 (and future) programs.

Exclusive - Startup accelerator TechStars, arguably one of the best of its genre in the world, is today announcing the launch of its first thematically focused business kickstarter. Dubbed TechStars Cloud, the sub-accelerator will focus exclusively on backing cloud computing and infrastructure startups, and companies that work with OpenStack.

For its first thematically focused accelerator, TechStars has attracted some high-profile mentors, including Pat Condon (founder of Rackspace Hosting), Jeff Lawson (founder & CEO of Twilio), Brad Feld (Foundry Group), George Karidis (CSO of SoftLayer), Jud Valeski (co)founder & CEO of Gnip), Rajat Bhargava (founder & CEO of StillSecure, Interliant), and many others.

The inaugural TechStars Cloud program will run from January to April 2012 in San Antonio, Texas, and will be co-organized with Rackspace Hosting.

TechStars will select roughly ten companies – evidently focused on cloud computing and infrastructure – to participate. They will receive seed funding, mentorship from people like the aforementioned, and benefit from a number of perks available only to TechStars startups and alumni.

Interested companies should apply by October 21st for priority consideration, with a final application deadline of November 9th, 2011.

The program will be managed by Jason Seats, the founder of Slicehost (acquired by RackSpace in 2008), and Nicole Glaros, currently the Managing Director of TechStars in Boulder (she’s temporarily relocating to San Antonio).

In case you hadn’t heard, TechStars is also the subject of a documentary “reality TV” show on Bloomberg TV, which premiers tonight at 9 PM Eastern Time.

In six episodes, viewers will receive an inside look of what the TechStars program is like for startups (more specifically, those who participated in the NYC program in early 2011) and mentors alike.

Below is the new trailer for the show, which hasn’t yet been publicly released:

I’m here in St. Petersburg, Florida this morning to learn more about the new TechStars Network member, Gazelle Lab. This 3-month, mentor-driven program is Tampa Bay’s attempt to establish itself as a home to entrepreneurial innovation and a place where early stage startups are fostered. Today, the Lab launched its first full round of startups, after having previously launched a “beta” group of just 3 companies earlier this year. The launch includes 6 startups, with a diversity of focus ranging from the fun (a mobile adventure quest game) to the practical (an app that listens to your car to help you save you money). The startups will demo in front of investors later this year.

While six may seem like a small number when parent company TechStars routinely launches groups of a dozen or so, it’s a big number for the Tampa Bay area, which has struggled to solidify its position as an entrepreneurial community. Great startups are occasionally founded here, but once they’re successful they tend to leave, following the money (that is, the venture capital) out to Silicon Valley.

For example, Y Combinator-funded and Tampa Bay-based Wufoo was acquired by SurveyMonkey in April and relocated to California. An even more notable departure was that of  Wikipedia, which left St. Petersburg for San Francisco in 2007, claiming the move would give it access to “a rich array of resources, including best-in-breed online talent, top-tier universities, world-class support services and major media.” In other words, resources Tampa Bay couldn’t provide.

But things here in the “other Bay Area” are starting to change. Tampa area tech leaders held a Startup Weekend this July, bringing the tradition of the weekend-long hacking fests to the region for the first time ever. And now Tampa has Gazelle Lab, a TechStars Network member which provides early stage startups with seed level funding, research and advising from USF St. Petersburg’s entrepreneurship students, fundraising and tools from Entrepreneurcommons.org, development and tools from Microsoft BizSpark, a library of legal documents, in-person training, plus support from peers and mentors.

Gazelle Lab was co-founded by Brent Britton, who has been helping companies for more than 20 years in Boston, San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, New York, and Florida. Along with Britton are co-founders Bill Jackson, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Director of the Sustainable Entrepreneurship & Innovation Alliance, at USF St. Petersburg’s College of Business, John Morrow, Entrepreneur-In-Residence with the Sustainable Entrepreneurship & Innovation Alliance at USF, experienced software entrepreneur and technology innovator Marvin Scaff and entrepreneur and author Daniel James Scott.

Will Gazelle’s new graduates remain in the area long-term, though? Who knows? But even getting Tampa Bay’s name on the map as a birthplace for acquisition targets wouldn’t be a bad thing for this community. After all, high-profile exits will show the industry what Tampa is capable of producing. Or, as Britton more simply puts it: “an exit is an exit.” He believes Wufoo’s acquisition was a win for this region, and while it would be ideal for companies to stay put, plant seeds, and grow roots, getting acquired is something worth cheering.

Besides, Tampa Bay has a lot to offer the tech community, adds Scaff. Out in San Francisco, for example, there’s a lot employee poaching, due to scarcities of available talent. Here, there’s not. “The best things about Tampa Bay are the negatives about California,” he explains. And add to that, the affordable housing, nearby academic institutions (including the University of South Florida, now pushing 50,000 in total enrollment), Tampa Bay’s beautiful beaches and attractions and its family-friendly take on American suburbia, and you can see why people here want to see Tampa emerge as a place where startups can be born, grow…and survive.

Gazelle Lab’s launch is a good first step for an area that wants to make a name for itself as a technology hub. If it can produce a few more successes like Wufoo, then the missing piece – strategic capital – may soon follow.

Note: we’ll have a round-up of the new startups up shortly. 

Today, seed fund and accelerator, TechStars, will be hosting its “Demo Day” in Boulder, where it will showcase its 12 newest startups. The accelerator expects over 500 people to be on hand, including investors and venture funds, who will be on hand to vet the young founding teams and potentially take out those checkbooks.

Founded in 2006 in Boulder, TechStars has expanded its operations to include New York City, Boston, and (most recently) Seattle, where the accelerator holds seasonal programs for 10 to 15 startups, investing up to $18,000 of seed capital in each team at a 6 percent equity stake. And, so far, TechStars has proven valuable to its entrepreneurs; according to TechStars’ website, 81 percent of its alumni remain active or profitable, 10 percent have already been acquired, with 8 percent having gone out of business.

Yesterday, TechStars announced an upcoming reality TV series that will follow a recent batch of New York City companies through the trials, tribulations, and pivots they experience as part of the accelerator program. Many of TechStars’ New York mentors, like Dennis Crowley of Foursquare and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, make cameos, which will no doubt make for some good startup TV.

Yet today’s Demo Day is all about Boulder startups, so without further ado, here is a look at the 12 startups launching today in Colorado:

Creative Brain Studios is a game development engine that solves many of the common problems facing game engineers. Their turnkey solution offers easy management of audio and visual files, incorporates game play, analytics, hosting, and monetization, as well as leveraging HTML5 to publish the game once and deploy it across smart phones, tablets, and desktops.

Because tours and activities don’t have a mature distribution system, online travel companies are losing out on a $20+ billion opportunity. FlexTrip offers its API to online travel companies to monetize one of the most profitable areas of travel: tours and activities. The startup claims to boast “the world’s largest selection of tours and activities” as well as a unique recommendation engine to ensure the traveler gets matched with activities most suited to them. FlexTrip has already tallied a few cool integrations, including one with TripIt.

FlixMaster creates technology that enables anyone to build what they call “branching-path video mash-ups”. This allows people to pull videos, audio files, forms and images from all over the web, enabling viewers to travel different paths through the video — all right within the video player. Their branching path video mashups provide a richer and more engaging experience for the consumer.

FullContact is an API that keeps contact information current. Developers can easily tap into FullContact’s database of more than 100 million contact records to quickly turn partial, out-of-date contact records into fresh, complete contact records. They use a crowdsourcing model to update the contact information, only share contact information that’s publicly available on the web, and unlike competitors like Plaxo and Jigsaw, they allow any software application to leverage their contact database via their API.

GoSpotCheck is crowdsourced secret shopping for brands. They provide brands with realtime insights, such as price checks, shelf positioning, photos, and videos of in-store displays via a smartphone-weilding mobile workforce. Shoppers get paid cash to conduct these ‘missions’ simply by completing these simple tasks in the stores they’re already visiting. Unlike GigWalk, which allows for a range of activities, GoSpotCheck delivers a customized solution for brands in their retail settings.

InboxFever is a platform and marketplace to build and sell email-powered applications. Email-powered applications are a new breed of applications to help people do common tasks faster on the web. They allow you to control your web applications simply by sending an email – no logins, no new user interfaces, no downloads. Test it by sending any word document to pdf@inboxfever.com and watch it return to you in seconds as a PDF.

MealTicket provides a mobile, social web platform for foodservice distributors to better engage with their restaurants. They do this via a deals and promotions social marketing tool that foodservice distributors pass on to their restaurants. The deals and promotions are distributed via MealTicket’s mobile app, Twitter and Facebook apps, and most importantly, their API partners, who ensure the offers are distributed across many web channels. The foodservice distributor and restaurant can collaborate on creating deals and promotions, ultimately protecting the restaurant’s bottom line, leveraging the salesforce of the foodservice distributor, and enabling the restaurant to leverage the social web with little-to-know social media expertise.

According to the startup, Mocavo is “the first and largest free genealogy search engine”. Previously, genealogists and family-history enthusiasts had to visit dozens of disparate websites to conduct searches, or pay an expensive monthly fee to find limited content. Today, people can now start an ancestral search for free at Mocavo.com.

ReportGrid provides an API that makes it easy for SaaS vendors and technology platforms to give their customers deep analytics and insightful reporting. Different than normal analytics tools — this API plugs into a SaaS vendor’s product, allowing visualizations and analytics to become part of the product offering to their customers.

Simple Energy is changing how millions of people save energy by changing how utilities engage their customers. Their web and mobile application uses game mechanics to compare real energy usage to friends and neighbors, making energy efficiency social, fun and simple while addressing an $11 billion-a-year problem for utilities.

SocialEngine turns any company into a “social engine” through an array of products. Their flagship product, a downloadable social networking platform, is in use by over 7000 customers today. The newest addition to their toolset is a recommendation engine that gives tactical and practical suggestions on what to post, who to follow, what to read, what to reply to — in effect turning anyone into a social media guru.

TruantToday instantly contacts parents when students skip school, bringing students, and funding, back to the classroom. Current truancy products contact parents too late, at the wrong locations, or in a non-native language to the family. Because TruantToday contacts parents instantly, they have the ability to return the student back to the classroom and keep funding in schools. TruantToday is founded by Zak Kukoff, the 16 year old who is the youngest founder ever to participate in TechStars (and yes, he does plan to go back to school while operating the startup).

Move over American Idol, and move over Survivor? There’s a new reality show (okay, documentary-reality series) in town, but luckily no one’s getting voted off the island. In this tech TV version, it’s startups and their founders iterating, scrambling through feature sets, and competing for the affections of investors.

It’s a great premise, as the reality surrounding an early-stage startup can be a kinetic one: It may not quite be the car chase in Bullitt, granted, but it’s certainly tense, fast-paced, and, if founders play their cards right, can have significant bearing on the future success of their company (for the better).

But, by and large, the early evolutions of startups — and the role that the big technology incubators have in fostering this growth — happen behind closed doors. Or in low rent, shared office space, with lots of empty pizza boxes. Now, thanks to a partnership between TechStars and Bloomberg TV, all eyes will get a comprehensive peek at what it’s like to be on the founding team of a startup going through the gauntlet at a top technology incubator.

This “reality-documentary” miniseries, called “TechStars”, will premier on September 13th at 9 p.m., with the six episodes running through October 18th. It will air on Bloomberg TV, both on cable and the web.

As to the participants: The series will feature the eleven startups that participated in TechStars’ New York City program, which ran from January of this year through early April and includes OnSwipe, Immersive Labs, Nestio, Veri, ToVieFor, Shelby.tv, RedRover, MigrationBox, CrowdTwist, FriendList, and ThinkNear.

David Tisch, Managing Director of TechStars in NYC and David Cohen, Founder and CEO of TechStars, who are both featured in the show, tell me that viewers can expect a real glimpse into what it’s like to be a TechStars company: “Everything is 100 percent real and representative” of what it’s like to be a part of the incubator.

TechStars had been approached by several networks looking to do reality-type shows on the incubator, but ultimately chose Bloomberg TV, they said, for the reasons cited above. They wanted it to be an objective, fact-based series that captured the actual essence of what it’s like to be a founder going through an incubator, rather than something that’s over-produced and skewed in favor of dramatization. Bloomberg seemed the right fit.

Of course, that being said, both Cohen and Tisch assured me that there will be some drama — startup drama, of course. Yes, there will be a few pivots. But, not to overstate: This will hopefully be an “objective” look at what it’s like taking an idea to execution, developing a workable business model, finding users, and discovering the best way to pitch to investors.

Viewers can also expect to see cameos by many of the TechStars mentors in NYC, including Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC, Chris Dixon (Founder Collective, Hunch), Alexandra Wilson (Gilt Groupe), Gary Vaynerchuk and “dozens more”. You can check out the TechStars mentor list here.

What’s more, it should also be interesting to watch as Bloomberg TV’s board of judges, along with Cohen and Tisch, and many of the TechStars mentors dissect business models and offer startups and their founders pointed criticism and advice as they move through the program, reality-show style.

All eleven of the startups make an appearance in the series, though some are on camera more than others. TechCrunch has covered a few of these companies, which you can check out here for OnSwipe, Nestio, Immersive Labs, Veri, and ThinkNear. Seven of the eleven TechStars Winter Program startups have also gone on to raise funding, with a few more soon to close, Tisch and Cohen said. So, there could be a good demo day finale in store. As long as it’s better than the last episode of The Sopranos, I’m in.

Applications for the Boston winter program and NYC spring program are open now, and you can apply here.

For the “TechStars” trailer, look out, video below:

In just five years, TechStars has grown significantly in both size and reputation, and though every startup accelerator will tell you that it offers valuable assistance to the startups it takes under its wing, TechStars now has some interesting data to back that up. According to the accelerator’s results, seven of the first twenty companies to go through its program have been acquired by larger companies, and about 70 percent of its companies have raised follow-on funding or have since become profitable.

So, without further ado, here is a sneak peek at the 12 startups from TechStars’ latest batch debuting today at Demo Day. Check ‘em out!

Evertrue is a social donor intelligence platform for development offices of academic institutions and non-profits as well as a provider of location-based apps for alumni of those institutions. Development offices currently have data about their alumni that is largely incorrect and alumni do not have tools to easily connect with each other. With 18 schools already on the platform — including Brown, Cornell, and St. Paul — and a partnership with LinkedIn, Evertrue is well on the way to solving this problem.

Ginger.io uses your mobile phone to understand and predict your health. Based on cutting edge algorithms and models that the founders developed at MIT, Ginger.io can detect whether you are stressed out, have a cold or the flu, and are working on conditions such as Crohns and IBD. Collaborating with major institutions such as Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Pfizer, the company plans to help individuals get the medical attention they need more efficiently than ever before.

GrabCAD is the biggest web-based community of CAD (computer aided design) engineers and the 5th biggest mechanical engineering team in the world. Through its web platform, GrabCAD connects its worldwide network of 8500 highly skilled engineers to manufacturing companies in need of CAD solutions. The company has already raised $1.1 million in venture funding from Atlas Venture, Matrix Patners, and NextView Ventures.

HelpScout allows small and medium sized businesses to provide customer service with the personalized touch of email and the organizational structure of a helpdesk. The founding team has already signed up over 200 companies for the service, including Wine Library, the online wine store run by the well-known customer service advocate Gary Vaynerchuck.

Kinvey makes it easy for mobile app developers and designers to build and manage cloud backends. Developers model their backend needs and Kinvey auto-generates their backend for them with libraries that they can just drop into their app. Kinvey’s cloud platform scales as needed and will be have volume-based elastic pricing.

Memrise is a social learning platform that helps people learn factual data 10x more quickly and continuing learning 10x longer than the average. Built by and based on the methodologies of the memory grand champion who trained bestselling author Josh Foer, Memrise is tackling language vocabulary as its initial product but will expand to all factual data from medical terminology to legal facts.

Placester changes the online real-estate advertising game by making it incredibly simple for brokers to get the most bang for their advertising buck. Brokers currently have to go through the hassle of posting the same information onto hundreds of sites without knowing which deliver the most ROI. Placester automates the placement of ads, creates landing pages, and tracks clicks and phone calls with a proprietary optimization engine that converts CPC and CPM advertising into pay-per-performance advertising that delivers real value to brokers.

Promoboxx bridges the gap between web-based promotions run by brands and promotions run by their independent retailers. With a suite of tools that leverage the power of social media, Promoboxx lets brands offer exciting promotions to their retailer’s customers. Across 407 promotions running already, data shows that Promoboxx is 5x more effective than previous approaches. This boost in effectiveness is bringing big brands like Wolverine, Linus, Uvex, and others on board.

Senexx provides enterprise professionals answers to difficult questions. By merely sending an email with the question to the Senexx engine, the engine routes the email to the people within the enterprise who have the expertise to be able to answer the question. Individuals no longer have to email everyone they know before finding that one person with the right knowledge. Given how much time and energy this saves, it comes as no surprise that Novartis and Xerox have already signed up for beta deployments.

Spill creates virtual communities for anonymous peer-to-peer support among college students. One in four college freshmen do not return to school for sophomore year due to psychological pressures that they have trouble sharing openly with others. The Spill platform helps these students get the support they need in a welcoming and secure environment so that they can overcomes their struggles and stay in school. Currently active in 10 colleges, Spill has already helped to avert seven potential suicides.

Strohl Medical Technologies has developed a portable stroke detection device that greatly improves triage and treatment times in the ER. Because it currently takes several hours for ER doctors to detect whether a patient has a stroke, only 5% of all stroke victims can receive tPA, the treatment proven to reduce the effects of a stroke. Using a patented technology built at Tufts Medical School, the Strohl device quickly scans brain waves to detect strokes, effectively serving as an EKG for potential stroke victims.

TheTapLab is a social gaming studio developing multi-player mobile games based on real-world locations. Their first game, TapCity puts players in their home cities and allows them to buy and develop their favorite locations such as Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium. But other players can attack these locations to steal them away, so maintaining an empire requires constant vigilance. With over 5000 players averaging 25 minutes per day in the game, TapCity is set to take over the world.

TechStars NYC killed it today with its first ever Demo Day in New York City. I’ve been to a lot of startup pitch events, and I felt that the caliber of the companies and pitches were better than most other incubator and startup events in New York (which makes me feel really good about our own Disrupt NYC event coming up in May). The room was packed with investors too, including Union Square’s Fred Wilson, Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures, Howard Lindzon, Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital, and John Borthwick and Andrew Weissman of betaworks. The energy and interest level was up a notch from what I’ve witnessed before.

Right out of the gate the pitches were strong. I’ve already written about would-be Craigslist killer Friendslist, tablet publishing platform OnSwipe (watch video), smart digital signage startup Immersive and crowdsourced learning site Veri (watch another video). But I want to highlight two more Demo Day startups that impressed me: Nestio and ThinkNear. They also happened to be the first two presenters.

Nestio is attempting to clean up real estate search because “moving sucks,” in the words of CEO Caren Maio. With either a browser bookmarklet, emailing links or cutting and pasting, someone doing a housing search can organize all of the listings they look at across multiple sites into Nestio. There they can compare them on an apples-to-apples basis by price, square footage, amenities, and so on. It’s all clean and in one consistent UI.

Nestio adds in a social element by allowing people to invite their friends and prospective roommates to see their search list via Facebook Connect. Their friends can then comment on the different options. Right now, Nestio only works in Manhattan, but it will expand soon, and mobile apps are also in development (which is kind of crucial when you are roaming about looking at apartments and homes).

The second demo was by ThinkNear. (“Demo” is a misnomer, no actual products were demoed today—mostly the startups used video and slides). The company was founded by two ex-Amazon employees with some serious technical chops. They are building a a fairly straightforward way for local merchants to deliver mobile ads to consumers based on their proximity to their stores.

Using existing ad networks and the ability to geo-target the ads, ThinkNear will give local merchants a dashboard that lets them set up offers based on when they need the most foot traffic. “We start by capturing busy and slow times for merchants,” says CEO and founder Eli Portnoy, “and also track redemption data to see what discounts work.” ThinkNear uses all of that data “to figure out what discounts to put in front of consumers.” And does not require the local merchants to continuously monitor the campaign after it is set up.

ThinkNear is platform-agnostic and takes advantage of cheap mobile ads on apps whose fill rates hover around 30 percent. It can deliver discount offers in the form of banner ads inside apps, push notifications, or even text messages, depending on the app. If they pull this off, this could become a substantial ad network. Here’s a video explaining the concept.

Photo credit: Braden Kowitz.

So many companies have tried to topple Craigslist, and they have all failed. Jonathan Wegener thinks they’ve all done it the wrong way. Today at Techstars Demo Day, he introduced Friendslist, a listing service that taps into your social network without requiring the middelmen (your friends who connect buyers and sellers) to do any work. “Craigslist obliterated the classifieds newspaper industry,” he acknowledges, but Craigslist is now “a scary place.” In between the the legitimate listings, there are “lots of scam listings and half of the postings are duplicates.”

Friendslist offers a cleaner interface to start, but that’s nothing new. What it does is connect buyers and sellers, or people who are looking for jobs and people who are hiring, through the people they know. Yes, Oodle does this to some extent on Facebook Marketplace, but Friendslist takes a slightly different approach. If you know your friend Mark is a great designer and you are looking to hire a designer for your startup, you would post your jobs listing to his Friendslist, which shows the listing to all of his Facebook friends. Mark acts as the middleman, but he doesn’t have to do anything.

“Nobody is trying the very approach that made Craisglist work in the first place, the social approach,” says Wegener. “We think people are the best platform in the world. They are the best brands and the best marketers.”

Friendlist right now is only Wegener and his co-founder Benny Wong. Wegener has created a few fun apps, such as 4Squareand7yearsago (an app that tells you where you checked in on Foursquare a year ago). Wong worked at Gilt, where he was the lead engineer who built Gilt City, a sub-brand which now employs 70 people.

Can Friendslist take on the mighty Craig? It will need a little help from its friends (and maybe more than two employees).

As tablets become the preferred digital reading device, every publisher out there is creating their own iPad apps. And soon they will have to create Android apps and maybe RIM Playbook apps and HP WebOS apps too. Or they can keep on publishing on the Web and display their websites differently to people who visit them via tablet browsers.

OnSwipe is a new digital publishing tools company that wants to make mobile browsing as swipe-friendly as a tablet app. The startup will be showing off its software later today at TechStars NYC Demo Day. I got a preview from co-founders Jason Baptiste and Andres Barreto when I visited the TechStars New York office last week (see video above). They are setting out to prove that the browser is the only app you’ll need.

OnSwipe already works as plugin for any WordPress.com blog, and the company is working with publishers to tabletize their Websites. Using HTML5 and other technologies, they publishers customizable templates that make their sites look good on tablets. Articles become swipeable, and rotate between portrait and landscape modes. And using bit.ly data (betaworks is an investor), it can even recommend related articles. The ads also become more immersive (and guess who wants to serve them up? Yup, OnSwipe).

Today is Demo Day for TechStars NYC. I’ll be at the event, but here is a little preview from when I visited last week. TechStars organizers David Cohen and David Tisch showed me around the New York office. In this video, I get a peak at a smart digital sign being developed by Immersive Labs and a very cool learning app from a startup called Veri.

The digital sign is a large flat screen display with a camera on top that detects the faces of people who stop and look at the signs. It tries to determine gender, age, distance from the sign and how long each person is paying attention. Software then tries to serve up the most relevant ads based on whether it thinks more men or women are looking at it, and other factors. Yup, this is exactly the kind of thing that leads to a Minority Report type of world.

The other startup I saw was Veri. Founder Lee Hoffman took me through the basics. It is a way to learn deep topics through fun, multiple-choice quizes. Anyone can create a question and set of answers, and supplement each one with a video or other reference material for people who want to learn more. He will start with a couple topics like wine (with Gary Vaynerchuk videos) and lean startups.

I could see this becoming an interesting front-end for dense sites like Quora or a way to curate knowledge in a fun way. It makes the whole proces sof learning a topic much more approachable.