Philadelphia-based DreamIt Ventures incubator opened its first New York session in May with 15 companies culled from more than 500 applications, a three percent acceptance rate. Three months later, those companies are taking the stage at the McGraw Hill Conference Center in Midtown. There were a couple pivots in the class, but probably the most extreme came from the five founders who left their families back in Honduras to build a Facebook-integrated classroom management platform for teachers, Class.io.

The site is slick and the idea seemed great. But after two months of DreamIt boot camp, which emphasizes market research, the founders decided there wasn't enough need for it. So they decided to pivot--or whatever you want to call it--to a completely different industry: travel. Now Pictour, the start-up aims for a better way to document travel. Co-founder Alejandro Corpeño showed the audience at DreamIt's demo day, which was well attended but had plenty of empty seats--a tour of venture capital firms in New York as an example.

DreamIt founder David Bookspan reminded the audience that many of their successful portfolio companies changed ideas--SeatGeek, arguably the hottest alumnus--started out as a blog before it was a ticket vendor.

Pictour is raising money now, Mr. Corpeño said, as it rounds out a marathon month of coding. "So, we just have fun working together 20 hours a day," he said.