I had the pleasure yesterday of being invited to the demo day for the startups that were selected by Launchbox Digital to participate in their summer startup program. There were nine of them in all that were selected out of a pool of over 250 applicants. Those 9 received funding and guidance to take their big ideas from concept to market. There was a great variety of ideas selected.
The demo day was help at the offices of Cooley Godward in the Reston Town Center. Ot was a chance for the group to show off their products to some local media and more importantly some are investors. Here is a list of the companies and links to their web sites for you to stop by and check out.
- BuzzHubb
BuzzHubb is a simple and addictive service that allows users to stay connected to their friends and networks through short messages and network-relevant content submitted via the Web or Mobile phone. website - Heekya
Heekya enables consumers to easily manage and share all of their digital media in the form of a dynamic ongoing story. website - JamLegend
JamLegend brings free, in-browser interactive music online. demowebsite - Koofers.com
Koofers.com provides an interactive community that serves the academic needs of college students through information sharing. Students benefit from collaboration with their peers and the experiences of former students. Many helpful services span the entire academic calendar from course selection through final exams, and include collaborative note taking, course & instructor ratings/grade distributions, and an online library for sharing past exams & study materials.website - Mpowerplayer
Mpowerplayer’s platform drives purchases of mobile games by enabling consumers to browse, experience, sample and purchase mobile games and applications via their PC prior to making a purchase decision. website - MyGameMug
MyGameMug is a global community that connects similarly-minded gamers together through a proprietary matchmaking algorithm. website - Razumé
Razumé is a resume review community that provides job seekers career management tools and immediate expert feedback on their resumes. website - ShareMeme
ShareMeme allows you to easily communicate with your friends on their terms - on social networks, IM, email, and SMS. Gather your friends’ contact info on one site and get started from the web or your phone. It’s the new way to share and communicate. website - Zadby
Product Placement for Viral Video: A structured, scalable, and safe way to build your brand online. Zadby gives advertisers an easy way to create and distribute viral video to targeted audiences on a pay-for-performance model. website
All of them did a great job, but there were a couple that really stood out and we should all keep our eye out for big things. JamLegend I think has the potential to be HUGE. It is an online Guitar Hero with multiplayer playing, indie music platform, and all in all, lots of fun. Sharememe also has a lot of potential as a type of intelligent messaging system with a wealth of other great features.
Stay tuned for some indiviadual posts and reviews on some of the products I found particularly interesting.
Overall it was a great job by the Launchbox team picking and mentoring along the group. I spoke with Sean Greene, one of the founders, and he was very happy how things had progressed. He talked about how impressed he was by each team and also their willingness to work together to help each other through issues they may have been having. He told me they are very much looking forward to Launchbox09, and so are we.
