Washington DC based LaunchBox Digital, an early stage investment firm and incubator founded in 2007 by John McKinley, Sean Green, and Julius Genachowski (now the new head of the FCC and divested from LaunchBox), just wrapped up its second annual 12-week program. Modeled after Y Combinator, LaunchBox invests seed capital of around $20,000-$25,000 into teams, and provides them with 12 weeks of education, mentorship and access to a small army of advisers.
Drawn from a pool of over 275 applicants, eight teams were selected to make up the class of 2009. (For the class of 2008, read last year’s post). Below is a brief description of each with notes written by LaunchBox founder John McKinley, as well screencasts of their products and links to their websites.
SEC Watch
URL: http://www.secwatch.com
SEC Watch deals with a big problem facing individuals interested in research and investing—a mountain of invaluable data exists in SEC filings, but those filings are really difficult to deal with as an information source.
- Most people are dealing with filings many hours after they are issued, letting those with real-time access have first mover advantage
- The sheer volume of filings each day is massive (in 2008 alone, there were over 1MM filings, totaling 15 million pages )
- The search experience offered online by finance sites and the government is very crude in functionality
- There is no easy way to collaborate with others on the analysis, and share comments/observations
Why does this all matter? Well, if you had looked at AIG’s filings, for instance, you could have found information about their sub-prime mortgage exposure almost a year before things blew up. It was just buried in a footnote.
SEC Watch brings state of the art search technology, combined with user annotation and sharing capabilities to the problem, and has crafted a compelling product that both retail and professional investors and analysts can use. It is easy to track companies and keywords (e.g., “subprime”,”litigation”, etc.), and get automated results in near real-time when filings are posted that match your criteria. You can then dive down to the relevant sections, and annotate a given filing for your own personal use, your team’s use, or to share with the public.
Bandsintown
URL: http://www.bandistown.com
Bandsintown addresses a big shift in the whole economics of the music business. Nowadays, 70% of a band’s income comes not from music sales, but from touring. That’s up from 20% only four years ago. Ticket sales have never been more important, but the marketplace for tickets has become incredibly fragmented. There are 70+ separate ticket marketplaces on the web. That makes for a bad experience for a fan, but also a bad experience for music sites trying to encourage ticket sales for all the different artists they feature.
Bandsintown has dealt with this problem by building interfaces to 62 different ticket marketplaces, and then exposing all ticketing information as a simple to use API that music sites can integrate. They have increased their traffic to over 500K monthly unique visitors in the five months since they launched their API, and have a global partner base (including Spotify, the Hype Machine, and PureVolume among others).
Bandsintown automatically plugs into music players such as iTunes, last.fm, Pandora and other sites to learn your artist preferences, and then lets you track your favorite artists (and related ones) and receive alerts when events of interest are coming to your area. They are also preparing to release a new iPhone app (it’s awaiting approval from Apple) that lets you see local concerts based on your musical tastes and geo-location— think of it as Urban Spoon for live music.
There is lots of other good stuff too, like live event twitter integration to allow you to easily track both yours and others’ concert experiences. If you love live music, you’ll love Bandsintown.
Social Collective
URL: http://www.thesocialcollective.com/
Social Collective addresses the huge market of conferences and corporate meetings. There are an incredible 1.2 million conferences and corporate meeting in the US each year. It is a huge industry—close to $11 billion is spent worldwide. The problem is that in these tough economic times, revenue for event producers is down, and the demands from attendees and sponsors is up, as they want more for their dollar.
Social Collective is a browser-based service targeted at event marketing and the enhancement of the event experience for both attendees and sponsors. They powered SXSW this year, as well as the Oracle Open World and other big events.
They bring innovation to a pretty under-served industry by allowing things like crowd-sourced agenda design, social graph importing for attendees to reach out to friends and associates attending the same event, marketing tools for pre and post event awareness building by conference organizers, and tools for vendor communications and networking with attendees.
The service has been great in helping both long-standing events re-invigorate themselves, as well as first-time events get their word out to the marketplace. They have both web and mobile experiences covered, and do some really nice things like allowing you to build your own tailored agenda for an event, and then import it into your online calendar. (FYI, this custom-agenda function was very popular at SXSW, with over 60% penetration).
TapMetrics
URL: http://www.tapmetrics.com/
TapMetrics is a tool designed by a team of iPhone application developers that brings together sales data, user feedback, software metrics, and other information into a consolidated dashboard to allow developers to manage a portfolio of applications quickly and easily.
The whole experience starts with a dashboard that lets you view important information about how your application portfolio is performing, and then lets you drill into each application to investigate any issue that is highlighted. The nice part of the TapMetrics solution is that while it does a great job on the business metrics of running an iPhone application, it does just as good of a job serving the needs of the engineer. Everything from detailed environmental data (which iPhone/Touch hardware is being used, which OS level, which release level of the application), to detailed crash reporting, to application messaging/event logs, and session tracking are supported within the integrated TapMetrics experience. That integration of both business and technical data (including session-level tracking) in a single dashboard is something no one else does today.
They also have a free iPhone app called TapMini that you can use to track sales data for your applications. If you are trying to get more out of your iPhone application portfolio (both in terms of improving the consumer experience and making more revenue), this can be an essential tool.
Unblab
URL: http://www.unblab.com/
Unblab is trying to attack the email overload problem by answering the question “What emails should I be reading”? They are approaching this by building a cloud-based service that uses common and user-specific rules to identify and prioritize important email messages. Think of it as attacking the email overload problem from the opposite end of the spectrum as the anti-spam vendors, but using similar technologies.
The latest productivity studies have white-collar workers now spending 4 hours a day in email-related activities, and the volume of legitimate inbox messages increasing 10% per year. The challenge is how to approach better management of that legitimate traffic.
Unblab has two products it is deploying initially to help refine its algorithms and demonstrate the value of its ranking system, which it calls “Importance ranking.”. One product is a Gmail add-on called GTriage, and the other is a mobile app called iTriage. The goal is to get early-stage learnings on the differences of what’s “important” when you are on a mobile device with limited real estate as compared to when you are using a pc-based webmail experience.
The API for the service will be opened up to developers to define their own user experiences (and to allow additional training events/algorithmic enhancements).
KeepFu
URL: http://www.keepfu.com/
KeepFu is a simple note-taking and organization tool to help manage consumer-defined “projects” like trip planning, event planning, and important purchases. The team has built a good Evernote-like note taking tool called Ubernote, and while they got some decent initial traction, they realized there were some key unmet needs that the whole web note-taking space was failing to serve.
Feedback from their own user based shaped this next-generation offering. This new product, KeepFu, is addressing the organization of information, not just the collection of it. KeepFu collects data through one-click and passive data collection while a user reads an email, visits a website, IMs with a friend, or send a Tweet. It then supports a quick drag and drop experience to organize these information snippets into community-created project templates (predefined file folders specific to an activity, like planning a trip). These projects are then easily published or shared.
The goal is to allow information capture without forcing a user to change context and leave the experience they are engaged in, and then support automated and manual classification and organization of the information when it is appropriate, a bit like the weekly photo tagging activity of Facebook users. Simple collection, organization, and sharing is what KeepFu is all about.
Keen Guides
URL: http://www.keenguides.org/
Keen Guides started from the personal experience of its founder, a hearing-impaired woman who was visiting a very popular museum in Washington, DC and wanted to have her own tour experience. They handed her a dog-eared pile of paper, and sent her on her way. Trying to come up with a better experience, she went home and made a sign language version of the commentary as video clips she then viewed the next day on her iPod as she toured the Gallery. It was a transformative experience for her, and that’s when Keen Guides was born.
The goals of the company are simple: Leverage new platforms (especially the iPhone) to replace outdated audio wands as content delivery tools. Create self-paced custom tours, based on prior visitor feedback, what time you have available, and your unique interests. Encourage social interaction and sharing of comments, photos, etc., by tour participants. Support access by all, including hearing and vision impaired visitors, as well as non-English speakers.
They are using the iPhone as their initial tour delivery platform, and will support tour content creation (and monetization) by both themselves as well as third parties like DC By Foot. Initial deployments include museums, city walking tours, and college campuses (for orientation tours.).
Legal River
URL: http://www.legalriver.com/
Legal River is focused on providing a marketplace for matching small businesses with legal professionals. Looking at search queries, you see a lot of businesses searching for uniquely skilled legal professional in areas like patent law, contract disputes, and other specialties.
While there are numerous directory sites for lawyers, they don’t encourage the concept of competing for a given business’s project, and do little to give prior client feedback and other useful data that would help a business owner to make an informed decision.
Legal River has created a marketplace where a business can anonymously post a given project and get competitive bids from multiple subject-matter experts. The system allows easy side-by-side comparison of credentials, prices, and prior client feedback on similar projects. The net result is a better, more transparent process that serves both the business owner as well as the legal professional, who gets access to high-quality local leads.
Legal River has signed distribution deals with a number of sites to both get their service offering in front of small business owners, as well as qualified local lawyers.
Embarrasing if that’s the best 8
Hmm, depends on what your expectations are.
I reckon Bands In Town are the best of the bunch.
Of all these, I think TapMetrics looks the most interesting and promising.
But, most of these either seem like a feature set of a different service already available, or a re-hash of older ideas.
Not that they’re not good startups or won’t succeed, I was just looking for something a little more exciting.
Tim, you left the house without your sweater. I will leave it in the principal’s office.
Tim’s mom, I don’t love you anymore. I need some time away to think so I’m going to Bali with my secretary on business.
i know a lot of us building and hoping to get this kind of coverage, say “oh my idea is so much better”, but in this case I think that most of us are right. Silicon valley has nothing to worry about from DC
wow, your sense of advanced technology entitlement due to your geographic location is truly amazing.
@andy a perfect response. +1
@cease you probably can’t even configure your own Wordpress site, punk!
Certainly I’m biased as the marketing partner for LaunchBox’s 2009 program, but seriously, there were some very promising technologies showcased today. I’m a betting man so here’s my wager:
At least 4 of 8 of these startups get a Series A round. And at least two of them do it before the end of August. If I lose, I’ll buy any gloating west coaster a drinks next time you’re in the greatest city in the world – DC.
How about you wager about how many of those companies get profitable or have a successful exit?
I’m going to bet 0.
I don’t know about that llya. A couple are already generating revenue and are targeting profitability in 6-12 months.
Tim, you are so right! Embarrasing [sic]!
I could build all 8 of those in a single weekend! In fact, I probably have… SUBCONSCIOUSLY!
Very interesting start-ups I like The Social Collective best. Good luck to all of you.
Disclosure: participated in launchbox 2008 program.
Congrats to all the LB teams! Very diverse set of companies.
I really like tapmetrics. If they can help me monitor, track and analyze mobile apps accross several platforms they can really help me improve user experience and sales. I would definitely pay for this.
Why pay for it when you can already do all of that using Flurry, which is free?
how about FCCWatch?
Some of these ideas are outright ridiculous. Why oh why would anyone put money into this investment firm?
I like Social Collective, but is look VERY similar to CrowdVine which launched 2 years ago.
http://www.tech...nce-organizers/
Thanks Phil. It’s actually a good sign that there are competitors in this space. When we launched it was very lonely. Now there at least seven companies, which is validating and does a lot to help push the idea that event social networks should be a standard feature.
There is not only lot of competition but the events market isn’t easy to handle. You need lot of scale and lot of handholding to do. We launched Mobinett http://www.mobinett.com which not only has the features Social Collective has but also includes audience response and mobile interaction. It was featured in eWeek http://www.yout...h?v=wQV0hBHT5Ew too. Had a tough time convincing VCs. With LinkedIn getting into the space too, we’ll have to see how many startups in this space go bust.
My prediction is that SEC Watch gets purchased. There is a lot of institutional money in that space. LegalRiver might go a long ways if it doesn’t get purchased by FindLaw. However, my gut is that TapMetrics gets snapped up the fastest.
Justia is another potential suitor for LegalRiver.
What is the revenue model for SEC watch?
Huge amounts of info in SEC filings as I show every day on footnoted. Hedge funds/portfolio managers know this and very interested in digging in. Info is available on SEC site for free, but not easily digestable or searchable. And no API available either. The thing that coms closest to SECWatch– 10KWizard — was bought by Morningstar back in December.
Admittedly I’m reading this post because one of the companies on this list is trying to creep into our space, but I would have said something anyway: what’s the difference between this post and a press release?
The guest author is an investor in each of these companies. When you cover a class of YCombinator companies you have one of your staff writers do the writeup, not Paul Graham.
Which one is competing with you?
You mean have one of your staff writers copy and paste their press release.
Point taken, much journalism starts with a press release. But here’s the actual TechCrunch article on the last YCombinator demo day. It’s pretty clearly original journalism.
http://www.tech...ay-spring-2009/
Also, for the three times we’ve been covered the author did listen to our pitch but also verified our claims by using the software. The knock on TechCrunch is most often that they’re writing with an agenda, which is the opposite of what’s happened here by letting the companies write their own description.
Tim’s mom,
You forgot to take your medication dear; guess there will be sideeffects!
Here at Launchbox event in Reston. Packed room. Lots of good energy. Good to meet the next wave of entrepreneurs.
Also, interesting to see a 500k raise seems to be the new amount companies are seeking. It used to be everyone was looking for $2-3m.
Thanks to everyone for putting this event together. I know it was a lot of hard work this summer.
I think Bands In Town is best from a consumer perspective. Unless someone like Ticketmaster or LiveNation takes an interest in them I don’t see any acquisition possibilities for them though.
Unblab or KeepFu might see interest from someone like Google or Microsoft looking to expand their office products. They will have to get a good user base first though.
I like the Keen Guide objective – nice to see something that deals with making the world more accessible to all. Best of luck!
Gut feeling: Keen Guide, done right, will do well – not only for the deaf community, but for any travelers. Sure, it’s all out there, but who wants to surf around the Web on your IPhone when an app button can put it all together in a way a visitor wants to see it?
Uouh!
Nice
SECWatch looks interesting to me. I have spent years going through SEC filings and it is always a pain. The main problem I have always had is finding contracts within a filing. For instance a Ex-10 License Agreement might be on the end of another filing making it difficult to find the license agreement.
How is this better than 10k Wizard? I like that it has an API.
As the co-founder of a startup myself, it’s impressive to me to see how young companies are looking to enter the marketplace with new ideas. As well, it’s cool that there are firms like LaunchBox that offer the seed capital (though minimal) for these ideas to potentially get their wings.
SECWatch is the only one addressing an expensive problem.
The rest? Blah.
SEC Watch holds promise. There’s a lot of room for value-added services, which might even be worth charging for!
Everything else is just a niche play. Unless they gain enough traction to expand beyond the niche, they’ll stay that way.
Underwhelming…
I like a couple of them – the challenge is how lean and mean they are, in terms of burn rate. At $20K-$30K/month, you’ll find people interested in kicking the tires.
Am surprised by the amount of negative commentary. Much seems petty. Especially in this economic crisis, with high unemployment, and concerns USA has lost its mojo on innovation, we should celebrate the amount of innovation these folks have accomplished in a very short period of time. Will any of these become giants? Who knows? Some of the most adopted apps and technologies were surprises to those involved, and some of the “sure thing” bets went nowhere. It seems to me LaunchBox isn’t promising these are all worldbeaters. Suggesting you have something better? Go prove it in the market, don’t knock somebody down here. Criticizing McKinley for doing the write-ups, like a proud parent? Take a pill.
negative comments on TechCrunch?!?
Shocked, truly Shocked, i am!
(agreed, but trolls rule until TC decides to eliminate anon commenters… which i doubt happens soon)
Was able to see the event live yesterday as well as last year. I liked a number of the companies, and their typical funding asks for 12-18 months of runway was in the couple of hundred grand range, which I think was the right positioning for them.
I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a really solid program like this on the East Coast. It was sorely needed, and the support by local VCs and angels was really nice to see.
Let’s face it. This is a seed stage portfolio. You will have some winners and losers, but the fact that 6 of the original first LB class are alive and kicking a year later, with 4 A rounds under their belts in a tough funding environment, is nice to see.
Congrats to the eight new LB teams, and to John, Sean and the LB crew. To the cynics, anyone criticizing the various programs like this for early stage companies just isn’t cut out of the entrepreneurial cloth, in my opinion.
My vote goes to Keen Guides. So many museums and cultural institutions are not accessible to deaf and hard of hearing patrons, and Keen Guides is paving the way to create that access for all. Bravo!
Congrats! A lot of these are innovative, but the more difficult task is to monetize them. I can see SEC Watch and Legal River as offering practical applications that people will value and pay moeny for. Its hard to find affordable and competent legal help, so I get that. Bandsintown seems pretty cute but tough to create the network around it to make money. Seems really disaggregated. Unblab makes sense – but would I pay for it? Nah, don’t think so. Collective Social sounds like something out of a big brother 1984 book.
So. Good luck! The hard work is just ahead!