Our Four Favorite Companies At The 500 Startups Batch 12 Demo Day
Oh look, it’s already that time of the year again — we’re down in Mountain View for another demo day from the 500 Startups accelerator.
Thirty companies pitched their products and business models to investors and the press today, and they all had impressive stats for revenue, addressable markets, and growth. Still, some startups just hit the right buttons with their pitches and got gears turning in our heads.
In the order they pitched, these are the companies that wowed us this afternoon:
Alfred – lets users repurpose old Android phones as Dropcam-style home security cameras that can be accessed from anywhere. In their first year, they had 1,000,000 phones added to their service, keeping literal tons of electronics from being sent to dumps. Their app has also become a daily habit for their users, who check up on their cat, kids, or empty home an average of 10 times per day.
Raur – building a podcasting service that brings together feeds from popular shows to listen to and tools for generating your own live and recorded content in a single app on your phone. This combined approach means there’s plenty of content to enjoy now, but down the road it could turn into Periscope or Meerkat for audio.