Hybrid incubator and seed fund 500 Startups hosted its second demo day in Mountain View today, where more than 30 companies in the program presented in front of investors and press.
The program is run by Dave McClure, a super-angel who has invested in the likes of Mint.com and Twilio. The firm makes small investments in companies and provides them with office space. It also gives the startups in the program access to a network of mentors.
The firm has invested in 175 companies and has a mentor network with more than 100 members. You can see the first batch of startups that presented at the firm’s Demo Day today here. Here is a breakdown of the second batch of companies that presented today:
ChirpMe: ChirpMe is a match-making site for blind dates. Users list on their profile an activity they are interested in doing — like test-driving a sports car — and find other ChirpMe users that want to do the same thing.
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ChirpMe has raised $400,000 from seed investors like Zynga founder Mark Pincus and Zynga angel investor Matt Ocko. McClure is also an investor in the startup. The company is looking to raise an additional $500,000.
From.us: From.us is an online site that crowd-sources the gift-giving process. Users go to the site, add a few gifts to a list and invite friends to add other ideas. The recipient then picks the one they want from that list of gifts and everyone chips in for the present.
The company is looking to raise $250,000 in seed funding.
Welcu: Welcu is an online service for managing high-end events like conferences and shows. The site tracks guest participation and planning in real time. The company works with other event-planning and booking sites like Eventbrite.
The company makes around $10,000 in revenue each month and is looking to raise around $600,000. Welcu has already raised $200,000 from advisers and angel investors.
Console.fm: Console.fm finds electronic music on the web. It then populates a playlist that refreshes daily with new music that users can listen to. The company submitted an iPhone application to iTunes for approvatl and it is also working on an application for Google’s mobile operating system, Android.
The site has 40,000 listeners after launching 4 weeks ago. The site has 10,000 users, and 70 percent of those users are active. The company is looking to raise $500,000.
Zerply: Zerply is a professional social networking site similar to LinkedIn. You can search for professionals based on location, expertise and other metrics. The site is designed to less corporate than LinkedIn.
WillCall: WillCall is a mobile application that delivers deals on live shows in a specific area. It’s designed for last-minute plans — such as deciding to go see a show five minutes before the band goes on stage. The app provides users with a short list of “high-quality” events for that same day, and tickets are purchased directly in the app with a few button presses.
Volta: Volta is a call management system for businesses. Volta takes the A/B testing approach for websites, where you try out two different versions and see which one gets the best results, and brings it to phone marketing. Companies can create multiple scripts for their phone calls then mark down which conversions resulted in a sale or whatever else they were looking for, and which ones didn’t.
It’s not much of a surprise that they are showing up in 500 Startups today. McClure said he had a “raging boner” for Volta at the Launch Conference in San Francisco earlier this year. The company is looking to raise $500,000.
Tinfoil Security: Tinfoil Security is a web security provider that crawls websites for vulnerabilities. The company then reports back to the site about the vulnerabilities and gives the site owners a step-by-step tool for fixing how to fix a site vulnerability.
Manpacks: Manpacks is an online site geared toward packs of men’s essentials like underwear, socks, shirts and shaving products. The site bundles together items in packages and sells them at a discount and users can set up recurring purchases — like a quarterly package of socks and boxers.
The company is looking to raise $500,000, and around $375,000 is already committed.
Snapette: Snapette is a mobile application that lets users browse new and nearby pieces of clothing for sale that are popular. Snapette users upload photos of pieces of clothing and other users can vote on the piece of clothing — to weigh in on whether it’s fashionable, naturally.
The company has raised $100,000 and is looking to raise $500,000.
PicCollage: PicCollage is a mobile application for building photo collages. Users select a bunch of photos and the app lets them twist and resize the images to create a photo collage on a mobile device like an iPad. When they’re done making a collage, they can share it on social networking sites or save it for later use.
The app came out around a month ago and iPhone owners have downloaded it around 400,000 times.
CoderBuddy: CoderBuddy is an engine that streamlines building websites and applications. The company publishes those websites and apps to Google’s App Engine.
The company is looking to raise $500,000.
Craft Coffee: Craft Coffee is a monthly subscription for coffee. The company gets three types of coffees from roasters and ships them to Craft Coffee members each month. The package comes with tasting notes and more information about the kind of coffee in the package.
The company has raised around $20,000. The company is looking to raise $300,000, with $200,000 of that already committed.
Loku: Loku is a location-based service that maps out any event that has happened in a given city in the past 24 hours. That includes news events and crime, as well as lighter fare such as daily deals. You can zoom into specific neighborhoods within a city. The map also shows blog posts and reviews on restaurant sites like Yelp.
LaunchRock: LaunchRock creates a landing page for companies that are preparing to launch a whole new site or new content. The landing page includes a number of ways to share the site through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
The company has raised $400,000 to date and is looking to raise $1 million in its seed round, $125,000 of which is already committed.
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