August may normally be a slow month for tech news, but it has become a busy time for startup incubators.
Launchbox Digital launched its second batch of companies on Wednesday, Berkeley Ventures announced its first four investments, and Y Combinator has a demo day coming up in a couple of weeks. Add Boulder, Colo.-based TechStars to that list — it just held an Investor Day where it announced its latest batch of startups.
TechStars puts companies through a three-month session where they work on their products while receiving advice and up to $18,000 in seed funding. This year, TechStars says 527 companies applied for a spot in Boulder, a 35 percent increase from 2008. The incubator also launched a Boston program with 10 more companies.
This is TechStars’ third round of startups — of the 20 companies from the last two years, 13 are angel- or venture-backed; two are profitable; and three have been acquired, the incubator says. Here are the new startups:
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Everlater — A site where users can “document and remember travel experiences.” It allows users to share photos with social networks and print them as scrapbooks, postcards, and photo albums.
NextBigSound — A data service for band managers and music industry professionals that measures the popularity of bands across major websites.
Mailana — A service to help you take advantage of the connections in your company or social life. It extracts data from email and social networks to determine who you should talk to when you need an expert on a particular subject or an introduction to a particular person.
ReTel Technologies — A tool to help restaurants and stores improve the customer experience by analyzing footage from in-store security cameras.
Rezora — Provides online marketing software for professionals in the real estate industry.
SendGrid — Aimed at companies that send transactional email, i.e. messages that require some kind of confirmation or response. The service helps ensure that these emails don’t get caught in spam filters and provides data about whether the email was read.
Spry — Monitors the tools being used by a software development team, then generates a news feed around that activity, giving managers a better sense of what’s happening on a project.
Take Comics — Transforms traditional comic books into a digital format without requiring extra work or cost for the publishers.
TimZon — Allows people to communicate visually by recording audio, video, and screen captures.
Vanilla — Open source software for running online discussions.
For more information, check out these Investor Day notes from Microsoft’s Don Dodge.
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