Today marks DreamIt Ventures’ first Funding Day, during which the new startup incubator will introduce a dozen new companies to a collection of founders and venture capitalists. DreamIt is a program in the same vein as Y Combinator and TechStars, offering startups seed funding, guidance, and connections in exchange for equity. We’ve written brief introductions to each of the startups, which you can view below:
SCVNGR: SCVNGR is a promising startup that allows users to create mobile games without any technical knowhow. The games are free to play from any cell phone, and don’t require a download. SCVNGR games are ideal for group activities, like school orientations, corporate team building, and promotions.
Vuzit: Vuzit offers an embeddable document viewer, allowing users to include documents in their web pages and blogposts. Very similar functionality by Scribd and Docstoc, but Vuzit is aiming to become a tool for individuals and companies who are interested in managing access to their content instead of a destination portal.
Phrazit: Phrazit condenses reviews down to 30 characters or less by allowing users to create tag clouds for just about anything. Users submit words or phrases associated with each word, with the most popular results displayed in a large font. For example, the Phrazit for Harry Potter describes the series as “Bloody Awesome”. You can see our full review of Phrazit from last month here.
DropCard: DropCard hopes to be a solution to the problems that plague business cards (namely, you don’t always have them with you, and they’re practically useless if you have too many of them). DropCard remedies this issue by asking users to text their new acquantince’s email address to a 41411, which will send their contact information and ask them to repicrocate by signing up and sending theirs. For a similar service, see Rmbrme.
BeanStockd: BeanStockd is a news site and media company hoping to further bring the green and enviornmental movements to the public’s attention. The site currently features a blog, and also plans to release a web-based game, which users can advance on by participating in real-world green activities.
InterviewBest: InterviewBest helps users prepare for their job interviews by generating printed presentations that can be used during their interviews. The site also helps users write their post-interview follow-up letters. InterviewBest will offer a trial version, and will generate revenue with a paid subscription plan.
Anthillz: Anthillz asks professionals to review their colleagues, which can be used as a “social pitch” for future job applications. In order to request a review from one of your colleagues, you have to write a review about them first – a design that may help the site increase its content, but may also lead to inaccurate or careless reviews.
Sleep.fm: A self-described “social alarm clock”, Sleep.FM allows users to set their alarm and have their friends leave messages which will wake them up in lieu of a standard buzzer. The site also promises to allow users to set up “smart” alarms, such as a weather report or a notification if a flight has been delayed.
SnackFeed: SnackFeed indexes premium video content on the web and tries to ascertain which shows will interest you the most. The site also intends to offer an activity feed for video, allowing you to see what videos your friends have uploaded or watched.
TapInko: TapInko looks to simply the often time consuming process of purchasing ad space in the real world. The site plans to offer users a variety of ad placement options, including newspapers, restaurant walls, vehicles, or even as a tattoo on someone else’s body part (who had previously put a portion of their skin up for sale).
Trendient: Trendient is positioning itself as a promotions and sales intelligence solution for the long tail of e-tailers, who may not have the time or resources to track such data themselves. Details at this point are slim, as the site is currently in alpha testing.
There seem to be more and more of these Ycombinators type schools. What is the success rate so far?
Im waiting for the first startup college. I want to build my startup and get my MBA at the same time. funny article on this at tinycrunch.
Wow, these are really crappy. I can’t tell whats worse- the names or the ideas.
You hear it right from me. Web 2.0 Bubble is building. The sign: many similar and look-alike sites and services are popping up. Economics 101: when supply way exceeds demand, you know there is a problem. It is a question of time (when) the bubble will burst. History repeats itself.
Geez. STFU already.
The original “bubble” came from the web companies going IPO or being acquired by public companies at valuations that were unjustifiable compared to revenue and/or profits. Boot-strapped or VC backed companies will only cause disruption in a small number of people’s lives. There is nothing to burst.
Is there a “bubble” in the restaurant industry too? Because so many restaurants are started and fail every month it is not even funny.
What would you call opening crappy coffee shops, sometimes three to a block.
Dropcard sounds like a simplified version of Tagga, who we helped craft a product explanation for.
I like vuzit . These startups are all in different niches and may appeal more to different people depending on their needs or problems .
There is no bubble .. These are not public companies also depending on revenue model they may not all need to have millions of users to succeed .. Good Luck to all these ambitious entrepreneurs …
I’m one of the founders for Vuzit and we’re glad to hear that you enjoy our product and thank you very much for the feedback. We use the feedback to continue to enhance our product, which we have discovered gives Vuzit users a very positive experience.
Thanks again,
Chris
i’m personally ready to dump business cards so glad to see someone is working on that.
I work in recruiting and if a candidate came at me with a presentation during an interview (see interviewBest), I would think he/she was an oddball and most likely pass on hiring him/her.
Huh?
Coming in with a presentation is a negative?
Were you the one who told me you were looking for a Java programmer with 5 years experience? When java just made it out of beta.
Java has no beta. Java is not a webapp
Jaime,
As the founder of InterviewBest, I am curious about your comment. Please tell me more about what you find to be oddball about a person using a presentation to communicate how their background, skills, and experience match the critical requirements of the position and why they are a good candidate for the job.
Do you have suggestions about how we can improve the interview process for both the candidate and the hiring company. As you are probably aware, there are 56,000,000 job interviews every year in his country and the interview process could use improvement. I am very interested in any ideas you might have.
Also- Last week I posted a question on LinkedIn about how much interview training recruiters do with their candidates. Candidates responded that they received no training, recruiters said they spend about 30 minutes. Could you share with me how much time you spend and and how you prepare your candidates for interviews.
Thanks
Eric
I’m from the software/tech industry and if you’re suggesting candidates give a presentation during the interview process, this is weird and misguided no matter what kind of spin you want to put on it. Add to this, the fact that many candidates aren’t even getting the basics right – and you’ve got a solution that doesn’t fit the problem.
You’re correct that the interview process is broken and that candidates need to learn to “present themselves” in the best light. But you do this by having an error-free resume, showing up on time, dressing appropriately, researching the company, preparing for questions by understanding your strengths, weaknesses and goals, and learning to adjust to the style of the interviewer. If you’re suggesting that preparing a presentation through your service is a way to get these basic skills, I suppose that is fair. But the truth is, most people can do this things with the help of a book and some honest feedback from their spouse or partner.
Are recruiters obsolete yet?
Wow, a social alarm clock… sign me up!
haha. you’d think that would be a tough sell, yet here we have it. perhaps that description isnt doing it justice.
quality is definitely missing here
This really isn’t any different from creating a website to sell all things related to doggie ear muffs and then flipping it.
I am working on a startup called Loo that will make going to the bathroom a social experience. We are going to create widgets hosted in the cloud that will allow you to modify your social graph while “doing your business”. Toilet paper will multipurposed and bring friend comments together into a unique social hub. In v 2.0 beta Flushing will be crowdsourced and leverage real-time metrics to maintain quality.
Can I please have funding?
Not all incubators are created equal – this class is full of crap – a critical mass of poor ideas that will not do wonders for the overall perception of incubators. I think there are decent/interesting incubators like Y Combinator, TechStars, Launchbox, etc., but this one fails to interest me…
Okay, I’ll preface this with letting everyone know that I’m a part of the Philadelphia community, and I know a lot of the guys that were a part of DreamIt.
Some of these comments are very harsh. I am very familiar with many of these companies. I use Dropcard about a few times a week. These guys have made it extraordinarily easy to send a digital business card that you can easily add to any address book. Just try it. It will take you less than 15 minutes to get set up. I’ll certainly be using it at TC50 next week.
Vuzit is a great idea backed by great technology. Some people really are looking for a white label solution for viewing documents and don’t want their documents hosted at Scribd or Docstoc which have more of a YouTube model. They’ve also got some features you won’t find elsewhere.
Anthilllz also has some great potential. LinkedIn lets you recommend others, but this entire site is built upon your recommendations and others’ opinions of you. Imagine you’re looking for a new web designer. What is more important, a LinkedIn profile (essentially a resume) or a place that has truly honest reviews? If Anthillz is successful at building out its network through its “Trusted Colleagues” feature (which is a great viral feature), then you’ll find it quickly become a place where people’s reputations live and die.
I can’t really speak to the other companies as I’m not too familiar, and I think that maybe some of the ideas for some of those companies might be a little flaky from these summaries, but there are some very promising companies in the bunch. They may not ever be huge, but the can certainly be successful.
Web 2.0 Bubble is a different kind of bubble. These companies are not going to the IPO or buyout. This Bubble will affect VCs and Angel investors who find that these look-alike or copycat startups cannot get the next rounds of financing or are not “IPOable”. How many social networking sites we need? How many document viewers we need? and so forth. You get the picture.
I was at the DreamIt event today. Yes, I’m totally biased since I’m from Philly and know a bunch of the companies, but with that said if you were there you would know that this was a lot bigger than this article. A few of the companies are intentionally in stealth mode. Oh, and watch out for SCVNGR.
I would wager a bet that the people bashing these ideas have not built a more successful startup. People who have done it before have respect for these groups, regardless of the incubator, and realize how difficult it is to build a company. People who have not should give it a try first and then come pass judgment. If you’re still sitting on your brilliant idea perhaps you could be profiled here after the next round of DreamIt – assuming you get selected, of course.
I think it’ got to be ok to say whether a company or idea excites us or not, but if the answer is “not,” that we need to keep Kendall’s comment in mind.
PS: I liked it better when all the comments were numbered, then if someone referred to a comment (by number) it was faster to find (no need to search manually or with “search” feature).
10 pounds of sh** in a 5 pound sack.
Geez. On of their startups, http://www.tapinko.com/, has ‘Untitled Document’ as the page title. I am thinking what’s worse: a) they got accepted by DreamIt; b) they got posted on TechCrunch.
I’m pretty new to TechCrunch. I haven’t read all that many posts on this site, but one thing I have noticed consistently is that the people here tend to be assholes. For a blog that spends so much time covering startups, you’d think the reader-base would be slightly less obnoxious and might actually take some time to learn about the companies before bashing them. There’s really a lot more to most companies than can be understood in the one paragraph descriptions above. Thoughtful comments are appreciated, but rude derogatory ones such as many above are not and will alienate a significant portion of the user-base. If all you want in this community are self-absorbed assholes, you’re on the right track. If you want the entrepreneurs who put themselves out on the line to consider coming back and using this as a forum for reasoned thought and feedback, something needs to change.
At least there’s some diversity with these companies. Misguided or not, there are some cool ideas here btwn. SCVNGR, Snackfeed maybe Trendient (hard to tell).
I can’t wait to use DropCard and Sleep.fm. The best of luck to all of the Dreamit companies!
Wow this is kind of like the web 2.0 special Olympics…I am happy that start ups are getting funded, but only one of these has a shot IMHO.