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TechStars NYC: Where Are They Now?

The Editors — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:40:08 -0400

We feel a little guilty. We’ve been fickle and easily distracted. Last year, the first two TechStars NYC classes were all we could talk about. But when their programs ended, we kind of forgot about them and directed our attention to the newest TechStars NYC class. Shame on us!

But back in the day, those first 23 companies were all the rage. Like shiny new toys, they were exciting and fascinating. There was even a reality television show about them. So even though their three-month, highly-competitive startup accelerator program has ended, these companies are still around. They didn’t just vanish into thin air. (Well, some of them did).

But all of this begs the question, where are these companies now? How have they fared in the big, bad world? Did they flop? Or surpass expectations?

We didn’t know, so we decided to find out. And it turns out that we weren’t the only ones who were curious about what these companies have been up to.

“When we launched, everything was a concern,” managing director David Tisch told Betabeat in an email. “We were new, a startup.” New York City, he said, brought a unique set of challenges and advantages to these first two classes, but you never how things might turn out. So, Mr. Tisch, what’s the verdict? Have the first 23 New York City companies done TechStars proud?

“The progress shown so far is very promising,” Mr. Tisch said, “and I expect a few very big companies to emerge. There are some early standouts who have shown progress on the product side, revenue side, and team side.”

In the last year, about half of the companies raised over a million dollars in funding from investors (in addition to TechStars's initial $18,000 in each company) and only two companies failed. A third company, FriendsList, also failed, but its two cofounders shifted gears and transformed into another company, Timehop, a popular app that has since raised $1.1 million.

“I think the quality of the people we funded stands out to me,” Mr. Tisch added. “[And] as I look back at the companies from our first two classes at TechStars NYC, I am confident we have funded some amazing teams who are building big businesses.” -Jess Schiewe

TechStars NY Demo Day: The Live Blog

Ben Popper — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:18:28 -0400

Tisch at Techstars

Let's get this party started.

GO: Ben Lerer and Roger Ehrenberg do a fist bump and talk about having a coding sleepover #brogramming

1 - Companies are coming out to Empire State of Mind. Investors high fiving them as they walk down the aisle.

2 - Unlike last year, when Bloomberg was filming, the lunch with investors after demos is private this time.

3 - David Kidder introduces Contently, says he's an investor, and promises this thing has legs. Mr. Kidder says its gotten to $1 million a year.

4 - Contently's Shane Snow talk about how LinkedIn became their client after trying Demand Media and other content farms.

5 - 90,000 Journalists have been laid off in past few years. Contently wants to pair them with big brands who need quality content.

6 - Contently announces partnership with American Express to produce content for Open Forum.

7 - Contently looking for $3 million with $500K circled so far.

Order.In

1 - YES! Order.In comes out to Das Racist Pizza Hut and Taco Bell

2 - At our heart we're an API that can turn any device or app into a way to order food, connected to a national network.

3 - We earn revenue on every transaction and grab great data. It's a $170 billion market.

4 - Calls seamless web a "digital food court".

5 - Four man team has already gotten as many restaurants on their network as Seamless in a fraction of the time.

6 - Virtual room service for Wyndom Hotels 110 million guests, big partner.

7 - Facebook and Microsoft apparently love these guys. MSFT built them an app.

8 - Order.In seed round led by Google Ventures.

9 - Roger Ehrenberg leans forward to tell Dave Tisch this company is boss. Tough act to follow.

URTAK

1 - The Blaze CEO says URTAK takes their commenting engagement to a whole new level.

2 - Coming out to White Stripes. Crowd loves it, clapping along.

3 - Average user answering more than 20 questions. It's addictive. Building rich user profiles.

4 - Less than 1% of audience takes the time to comment.

5 - Blaze story got 555 comments, Urtak got more than 200,000 answers on same story.

6 - 15 million responses. 22.8 responses per session. Average 100 response per comment. "Urtak is 100 times better than comments."

7 - Sponsored posts would generate million of interactions. Not impressions. Actions.

8 - Urtak wants a nice lean $1 million from strategic investors.

MobIntent

1- Lights come on in middle of demo. Entrepreneur stays cool.

2 - This is a nerdy business, and we are the nerds to do it. Crowd applauds.

3 - MIT big brains. Bad boston accent. "My boy is wicked smart."

4 - Running pilot campaigns so far, thinking about going beyond advertising in apps to mobile commerce.

5 - Raising a seed round of $500k. Planning a series A for late 2012.

Spontaneously

1 - Ben Lerer says he's invested. "It's the new hotness."

2 - Find out who's available to hand out! Doesn't Foursquare Radar do this?

3 - Share your plans with anyone. Auto detects your favorites. Send invite. Dave Tisch not invited.

4- Lerer and Accel invest in spontaneously at $700k, "but there is room for more!"

Piictu

1- Photos are new universal language. "Even my mom knows what planking is!" 130k downloads to date.

On stage, Brad Feld tal ks about why TechStars NYC is getting so good: Mentors building on mentors.

El Bloombito

Mayor Bloomberg, who apparently couldn't get enough of Startupland during his debut at NYTM last week, is in the house.

1- "Thanks, you just paid for my breakfast."

2- Mayor Mike tells his favorite revenge fantasy about Solomon Brothers again. (A personal favorite of Betabeat's).

3-"We are looking at every possible way to grow our tech sector: that's what #TechStars is all about." (Wonder if heard about Cornell's big tech campus announcement. Hmmm . . .)

4-Oh, nevermind. This is the best part: the immigration pitch.

5-"NYC has more grad and undergrad students than Boston has people." Hey, you don't get a third term as mayor without being afraid to call it like it is.

6- "The day is coming when people will not remember that NYC wasn't always the #1 tech hub in the world." Err, well let's not get ahead of ourselves here. But sure, why not? Yayayay! We're (fairly close to) #1! Fairly close to #1!

7-People applauding the Mayor, who is stumping for people to pay taxes. Occupy Wall Street would be so proud of the startup scene right now.

Brad Feld is back on stage to do the VC dance/rap. There is only one word for that and that is bomb.

SideTour

1- Foundry Group's Seth Levine loved their Zen class with former Wall Street cat turned monk . . . So they invested.

2-Sidetour co-founder and CEO Vipin Goyal is speaking. The video on screen shows him riding an elephant. Like any good entrepreneur, he left his job. Sold all his stuff and took trip around world.

3-"Got back to NYC and wanted to keep exploring," says Mr. Goyal, whose startup is an online to offline market selling unique experiences.

4- Just 8 weeks into its launch, Sidetour has held 30 experiences and sold out 90% of inventory.

5-Sidetour is making $76 per experience, and the market is "boundless." Hrmm, potential investors might be looking for an actual market cap here.

6- $300k of Sidetour's $1.5 M. round is still open. Okay, angelic types: who wants in with RRE and Foundry?

7-NB: Sidetour, we just heard Jeff Clavier say he wants to go on the monk tour. Make it happen.

Ambassador

1- And they start by offering Betabeat's very own Snooki some props: "Congrats @jasonlbaptiste on winning the internet."

2- Ambassador has 15,000 brand ambassadors.

3- These bros have founded and sold companies already and built Ambassador into six figure run rate. They're raising $800,000 with $600,000 committed, saving a little bit of room.

ChatID

1- Mike Lazerow is investing in ChatID, says they are next great SaaS story out of NYC.

2- ChatID has deep tech. We chat way more than we call, and top 500 ecommerce companies are ramping up chat big time.

3- The conversation can start anywhere on the web or a mobile device, from any site, and hook into a biz-native chat system.

4- A lot of big ecommerce sites already have the option to chat with customer service, but ChatID integrates across the web. So on Apple's site, you could chat with AT&T and Verizon and on Kayak, airlines can chat with customers as they debate which flight to take.

5- Chat ID raising a $1 million round with room for more.

Wantworthy

1- Wantworthy is "time-shifted shopping." Good use of buzz word.

2- Wantworthy has nice Tumblr/Pinterest/Fancy diss. We don't need a new space to oggle objects we can't afford.

3- Wantworthy has $450K committed of $750K. They want big data and social commerce investors.

Dispatch.io

1- Dispatch is "the front door to your cloud." Help you manage your stuff across silo clouds from many firms.

2- Drag and drop across entire cloud and share with social graph regardless of service.

3- Dispatch were early to DropBox API. Built profitable company. About to go big. Not even talking numbers on series A. GroupMe, another TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon-hatched startup, are investors.

Coursekit

1- IA Ventures' Roger Ehrenberg talks about convincing Coursekit to do #techstars even though they were mature and growing.

2- Education is missing its social network, says CourseKit. Subtext: Blackboard sucks.

3- To disrupt market, you need to avoid enterprise sales and go straight to teachers--which Coursekit has already done with teachers and professors across the world. Coursekit is not an enterprise play, it's a social network focused on education.

4- Coursekit has Joel Spolsky as an angel investor--it has a good overlap with Stack Exchange. They are raising a Series A. No number given. So probably real big.

And we're done! Afterparty later tonight.

The 12 Sexiest TechStars Companies: Demo Day Preview!

The Editors — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:05:32 -0400

With Demo Day coming up tomorrow, ten out of 11 companies is the number to beat. That's ratio of startups from TechStars inaugural class that got funded. But keep in mind not everyone had a killer Demo Day. For some, funding didn't come till a few months down the line. "It's like the SATs," one mentor told Betabeat of Demo Day. "Some people are good at testing, some aren't."

There's a lot riding on tomorrow's event--the funding environment isn't quite as frothy as it was for TechStarsNY 1.0, and the companies are well aware of that, mentors told Betabeat. "It's a more fragile period of time than last Demo Day," said the mentor. "They realize that they gotta be on their game." As such, companies have been pounding out the decks, practicing demos for each other almost every week.

Perhaps it's because the cameras aren't around, or perhaps because TechStars New York is more established, but there’s less ego in this class and fewer type-A personalities. Investors promise that this Demo Day will still have plenty of showmanship and say this season’s TechStars class is fundamentally very solid. Many companies have partnerships; some have revenue. Almost all have raised money or gotten commitments–several New York VCs told us they had invested in at least one of the startups. Two companies won’t even really be raising money, one mentor said, because they don’t need it."

Curious to know who pivoted and who's already closed their round? Check out our cheat sheet, get your game face on for tomorrow and pick your ponies in the comments.

Update: SideTour announced their funding today on TechCrunch, a $1.5 million round led by RRE and Foundry Group. We noted in the slideshow they already had their lead investors locked down, but it seems unlikely now they will try to grow their round tomorrow.

Think of a company whose service you use, one mentor said. “Don’t you ever wish you could Gchat them?” Enter ChatID, a customer service solution co-founded by Daniel Herman, Matthew Wild, and Waqas Hussain. The idea is to enable chat messaging for any company, and then integrate that into advertising and FAQ pages and beyond, so that customers are never many clicks away from being able to chat online with a brand representative.

One thing all mentors we spoke to agreed on: investors are very taken with CEO Dan Herman. “I don’t get it, but I would say I agree with everyone who’s really impressed by Dan,” one mentor told Betabeat. “So, people are really blown away by this kid.” Though the website is merely a placeholder right now, “People are already clamoring to work with them.”

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dan-herman.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dan-herman.jpg?w=547" width="150" height="111" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dan-herman.jpg?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="ChatID.com -- Unified Chat Platform for Businesses" /> “We like to think of ourselves as the ‘anti-content farm,’” Contently says.

How so? Contently is a marketplace where bloggers can meet companies that need to put words on the internet. The startup already has a few clients, including Elle and Best Buy, acccording to a TechStars mentor.The database of bloggers is curated, for one, and companies pay real money for the content–about $125 a post, with Contently taking about a 20 percent cut (Ed. note: nice work if you can get it!)

Contently solves a problem. The demand for decent writers to generate branded content, on their own blogs or as sponsored posts on other blogs, is currently met by Craigslist and ad hoc deals. But investors we spoke to saw the same scaling problem that plagues every curated marketplace.

“The guys are great, but as it scales up … to find quality writers is going to be tough,” said one mentor. “Maybe they could get picked off in six to nine months by a Demand Media.” Conclusion? A business, but a small one. “Probably a good angel bet,” said one investor.

Contently has raised $335,000 in seed funding from TechStars and Founder Collective, according to CrunchBase. The original Contently team–Joe Coleman, Shane Snow, and David Goldberg–is from New York, New York by way of Idaho. Contently started in 2010, launched in private beta in January 2011, and continues in open beta as of April 2011.

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/contently.png?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/contently.png?w=598" width="150" height="111" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/contently.png?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Contently.com -- Marketplace for Professional Content" /> CourseKit, like OnSwipe before it, had already raised money before the team got into TechStars–$1 million, according to CrunchBase. Survey says, Joseph Cohen is this season’s Jason Baptiste: confident, bombastic, abrasive, and probably on the path to building a big business. “Like, everyone thinks the founder is uber-arrogant,” one mentor said. “But it’s a type. It’s a particular type of entrepreneurs. and sometimes they’re very successful.” They’re hiring for two engineers, two designers and two interns, and have signed up educators all over the world. “People were buzzing about them,” the mentor said.

Coursekit, co-founded by Joseph Cohen, Daniel Getelman and James Grandpre from Philadelphia, is a classroom management software that aims to make a community out of a classroom, the company says, by adding things like the ability to post links, videos and files as well as start discussions, write a blog post or ask about an assignment.

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/coursekit.png?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/coursekit.png?w=612" width="150" height="150" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/coursekit.png?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="CourseKit.com: Social Learning Management Software" /> Cofounders Jesse Lamb, Nick Stamas and Alex Godin launched Dispatch.io in May 2011 at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon in New York. It started out as a Chrome extension that lets users transfer files easily between cloud services like Google Docs and Dropbox. The goal is to eventually create an easy bridge between cloud services. “It’s very exciting, almost to the point where you’re like ‘why doesn’t that exist?’” said one mentor who thinks Dispatch.io could be huge.

We hear the product is still a basic prototype. “They only have Google Docs and Dropbox,” one mentor said. But Young Godin, the teenaged son of marketing guru Seth Godin, has been tweeting about a big upgrade–perhaps the team will have integrated more cloud services by Demo Day. Dispatch.io has raised money, mentors told Betabeat, brought on Gary LosHuertos as a co-founder, and is hiring for a Mac developer and front end developer.

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dispatchio.png?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dispatchio.png?w=600" width="150" height="117" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dispatchio.png?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Dispatch.io -- Cloud Sharing, Movement, and Management Service" /> FredRover, now going by MobIntent, seems to have pulled the biggest pivot among the current crop of TechStars. It began as an idea between two MIT students. Bryan Adams was working on a degree in machine learning. His co-founder, Matt Chun went on to do biz dev at IAC, where he saw a burgeoning opportunity in the mobile app market. The pair got into TechStars with FredRover, a company that would drive mobile app discovery.

During the program the founders decided this wasn’t an attractive enough market, and pivoted to build MobIntent, a startup that aims to help clients get the most out of ad campaigns across the rapidly growing selection of mobile ad networks.

The company is less mature than several of their peers. “We’re really focused on perfecting the product market fit,” is how the founders explained it to Betabeat by phone. “They are still prototyping and piloting it,” is how one mentor described it. The company has several pilot partners who they believe will help them generate data about the ROI MobIntent can produce, evidence they will need as they try to raise their first seed money at Demo Day.

The company will be entering a crowded market where competitors range from other startups to rapdily expanding firms like Medialets to tech titans like Google.

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/mobintent-e1318847346605.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/mobintent-e1318847346605.jpg?w=500" width="150" height="69" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/mobintent-e1318847346605.jpg?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="MobIntent - Optimizing Mobile Ad Campaigns" /> Anyone who stopped Hackday.tv at General Assembly or the hackNY’s intercollegiate hackathon last month is probably familiar with Ordr.In Networks, a restaurant e-commerce platform. Its API was a popular choice for hackers at both events as it aggregates online food ordering systems from around the country. Developers used it to build hacks that let you order in from Boxee or, for dangerously dedicated coders, order in without even leaving Vim. But the business model is aimed at national sales channels. The same way that publishers add job boards for an additional revenue, Ordr.In lets publishers boost income from viewers who might otherwise have left the site to order food. Chains like Wyndham, Travelodge, and Super 8 and sites like Gayot quickly signed up for the service, which can be used on the web, mobile and settop boxes. We hear the startup already has a term sheet from a top five micro VC in New York and big deals coming down the pipe. Mentors like that there are so many services Ordr.In can be layered on top of (like nachos!). It has good user traction and an experienced team, which includes Founder David Bloom, who used to lead the restaurant industry team at American Express. But others say the layer it provides is “too thin.” (like bad nachos!) One mentor noted that empowering publishers has been attempted before with both jobs and marketplaces. “But you’re never going to go specifically to Eater to order food, nor will you go to Eater to find jobs at restaurants or to buy food.” They might get publisher traction, but “they won’t be able to get much revenue.” As for pivoting to the larger market for online ordering? “Good luck outspending GrubHub and Seamless to acquire customers.”

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/6152767043_74829c6134-e1318829488224.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/6152767043_74829c6134-e1318829488224.jpg?w=400" width="150" height="150" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/6152767043_74829c6134-e1318829488224.jpg?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Ordr.In--Restaurant E-Commerce Platform" /> Before you roll your eyes at yet another photo sharing app, consider this: In just 8 weeks of private beta, Piictu managed to pick up more than 130,000 downloads. That might be because it brings a little something meme-ier to the photo game. “You won’t see pictures from last night’s dinner party, Instagram is great for that,” say brothers Jonathan and Noah Slimak. Rather, Piictu is more interested in photo interaction. You pose a challenge like, “What’s for dinner?” or “Lying down game” (i.e. planking) or “Cute!!!” and users upload photos along that theme.

“It’s really interesting… it’s kind of like a memecreator,” said one mentor. “A lot of applications layer gaming mechanics, but we always understood that the reward would have to come from the photo interaction and not from an extra point or badge system,” said the brothers. Piictu already raised a $750,000 seed round from investors like betaworks, RRE, Softbank and Buzzfeed’s Jon Steinberg. But they’re also in “serious conversations” with other firms. So far, about 60 percent of the users are in the U.S. and 40 percent in other countries, like Japan. Most of the seven man team hails from Venezuela, hence the love for Caracas Arepas Bar in Brooklyn above.

Mentors note the impressive traction. Some question the “narrow, narrow market.” While another says, “If they can harness that for brands you might have something.” Besides, “If the meme aspect isn’t enough, WTF is Tumblr? It’s all memes.” One advisor was even moved to quote Chris Dixon, who said, “The next big thing will start out looking like a toy.”

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/piictu-team.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/piictu-team.jpg?w=500" width="150" height="150" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/piictu-team.jpg?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Piictu--Mobile Photo Meme Game" /> This is the oldest and most experienced team, with all of the members in their 30s. “Around here that makes us senior citizens,” joked co-founder Vipin Goyal. The company offers a peer-to-peer marketplace for “authentic experiences”, like a pasta-making class from an Italian chef or a zen tea session from a Buddhist monk. This puts it in competition with local startups like SkillShare and SkillSlate, but at least they don’t have “skill” anywhere in their name.

With a technical team already in place, the founders have locked down their lead investors for a seed round they will announce on Demo Day, where they hope to fill out the funding. The goal is to get an 18 month runway to build serious traction for their service. There have already been a number of sellout experiences in New York, meaning the company has some small revenue coming in.

“The question is how well will they scale the service,” said a mentor. “They seem to be intent on opening in a number of cities, but hopefully they will avoid that mistake and focus on New York first.”

Update: Sidetour has indeed finished its seed round, raising $1.5 million from RRE and Foundry Group. TechCrunch broke the news.

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/sidetour-e1318848146409.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/sidetour-e1318848146409.jpg?w=500" width="150" height="111" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/sidetour-e1318848146409.jpg?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="SideTour - Peer to Peer Marketplace for Authentic Experiences" /> First Round Capital’s Charlie O’Donnell recently pegged the market for services that help users manage their time in the “multi-billions.” Spontaneously, which changed its name from Time Stre.am wants to get at a piece of that, namely what the founders call “the availability layer.”

The startup’s iPhone app, which is still in private beta, borrows a page from Gchat, so users have a green status is they’re free, red if they’re busy, or yellow if they have plans, but anyone’s welcome to join. The idea is “future-facing,” which helps users make plans beyond just where they are at the moment. Users can share their availability status by SMS and email, so non-members can see it as well. It integrates with your calendar and lets you select whom to send it out to. No “friending” or “following” necessary.

The company is product-focused right now, but sees a potential revenue stream in taking a percentage of direct booking for an event, or suggesting venues when the app sees people are getting together. For example, Spontaneously recently met with the founder of OpenTable.

They already have $700,000 of the $1 million in documentation phase. “It’s beyond soft-circles, it’s almost done,” they said Friday afternoon. Mentors spoke highly of Spencer Lazar, a former associate at Accel Partners (brothers Joshua and David Keay are pictured above), but seem a little skeptical as to how the product will turn out. “I think they’re a little in the bubble on how real people want to deal with calendaring. People don’t do calendaring on the phone. They consume calendars, but they don’t choose what do to in the next few weeks when they’re out.”

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/594795842_a4f4b1549f.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/594795842_a4f4b1549f.jpg?w=500" width="150" height="112" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/594795842_a4f4b1549f.jpg?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Spontaneously: Social Calendar & Discovery Platform" /> Urtak is an idea that has been brewing between founders Marc Lizoain and Aaron Gibralter for four years, ever since the pair graduated from Harvard. The concept was to find a better way to capture users’ response to online content and build user engagement.

The duo came into TechStars and built some quick momentum, raising a seed round which allowed them to hire three additional employees. The money came from Vaizra, the local, early stage investment arm of Vaizra Ventures, a VC fund headquartered in Israel, which is also footing the bill for the Demo Day after party.

“They have a chance to raise some good money on Demo Day, but selling to a lot of publishers is going to be harder than this team thinks. You need a lot of great data before you can convince those customers to use you, and you need a lot of customers before you have great data, so that’s their Catch-22.” A valid criticism, although the service is already being used by two large publishers, The Blaze and The Daily Beast, whose audiences tend to generate large amounts of opinionated data.

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/urtak-e1318846718112.png?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/urtak-e1318846718112.png?w=425" width="150" height="102" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/urtak-e1318846718112.png?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Urtak - Polling Tool For Enhancing User Engagement" /> Lauren McDevitt got the idea for Wantworthy, a fashion bookmarking site that lets you save items from across retailers, after seeing friends use a mess of open tabs or even an Excel sheet to keep track of coveted items. So she and fellow co-founder Josh Wais built a personalized home for consumers to organize, compare and even get feedback, when and if they wanted it. Users click on a bookmarklet to add an item, and the site adds a border and resizes the photo to make it look uniform and pretty. The startup’s focused on building out the product, but is bringing in revenue through affiliate marketing networks, although that might not be the business model going forward. Top fashion bloggers showcased their own Wantworthy lists for a breast cancer awareness campaign. And Wantworthy figures they have data retailers want because it sees what items you’re interested in beyond what you add to just one cart. The aim is build relationships with brands to take a percentage of the transaction. But some mentors worry that it’s an awfully crowded market. Even Pinterest is being used a default showcase for pretty dresses. “It’s Have to Have… it’s Svpply all over again. A million people are doing fashion bookmarking,” said one mentor. Others say a competitive field means they’re on the right track. “Wantworthy I think is sort of the dark horse. It’s one of those products where every girl is like OMG, I want that, I need that.” But the mentor noted, “I don’t think a lot of people think it’s going to be that successful.”

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ww-screen.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ww-screen.jpg?w=450" width="150" height="141" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ww-screen.jpg?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Wantworthy--Fashion Bookmarking and Discovery" /> Founded by a trio who met in the Midwest, Zfferal, which we hear is changing its name to Ambassador, has good traction, with a number of clients using their service and glowing testimonials from tech blogging heavyweights like Robert Scoble.

The company–a platform to create, track and manage referral and affiliate programs–has already raised some seed capital from Ludlow Ventures, a Detroit-based fund that backed buzz worthy startup Hipster. Since they have Jason Baptise and Andreas Barreto of OnSwipe as official advisors, you can expect they are probably being encouraged to shoot high with their series A(wesome) on Demo Day.

" data-medium-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/zferral.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/zferral.jpg?w=436" width="150" height="118" src="http://nyobetabeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/zferral.jpg?w=150" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Zferral (Ambassador) - Manage Refferal and Affiliate Programs" />