MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The month of September was jam-packed with the launch of more than 100 new start-ups and services at high-profile conferences like Demo Fall and TechCrunch50. In a much smaller gathering Tuesday night at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus, just 10 companies--all in the seed stage--got to pitch as part of Vator.tv's Juice Pitcher event.
Some were new, while many were already launched and looking to pick up investments to get off the ground. These range from a new service that helps you rent out your car to strangers when you're not using it, to a mobile app that lets you haggle with local retailers on prices for goods and services. Here's a rundown of the presenters:
Viralogy (which actually launched back in May) calls itself an "Alexa for people." It lets you pit people and blogs against one another to determine who has the higher online social rank. Its "Vscore" system figures out those rankings using a mix of things like Google Pagerank, how much traffic your blog gets, how many people are linking to your blog, and your popularity on services like Twitter.
All these factors are rolled into a person or blog's Vscore, which can be compared with others and tracked over time.
In Viralogy's pitch, CEO Yu-kai Chou said that the Vscore system will eventually incorporate other social services like Facebook, YouTube, Digg, LinkedIn and FriendFeed.
IDNTITI is a social-rating tool that's trying to get rid of a standardized rating system in place of having users etch in the merits of a particular business or product using one of the rating systems it provides.
What's really odd about the system is that IDNTITI is not making these ratings a public affair. If you rate a business or product, others cannot see that you left that rating unless you decide to make it visible, either through a widget, or if a user goes out of their way to request to see who left that rating. That's a very different approach to something like Yelp, where a users' reviews define them.
RelayRides is a peer-to-peer car sharing network. Car owners can put their car up for rent so that they can make money when it's not in use. RelayRides then provides insurance and keeps a records that cars, and all the times it's rented out to others.
The company installs an unlocking and starting mechanism similar to something like ZipCar, so that the owner doesn't have to worry about being around to swap off the keys. Owners also get to pick how much they charge, where they're going, and when they're available. In turn, the company picks up a 15 percent transaction fee for each rental.
The service is launching in Baltimore in the next few months and plans to roll it out to other markets if successful.
TribeVibe lets users track how content is seen shared and linked around the Web, basically providing a dashboard to see all the places it goes once it's up. It measures its reach across the Web, then turns that into a "drumbeat." This number can then be stuck into any particular piece of content's to show users how popular it is--kind of like the retweet or Digg button but more passive.
(Credit:
CNET / Josh Lowensohn)
The company is currently in stealth mode and going into private beta later this month, and plans to go mainly after bloggers who want to know a little more about their audience. Along with its core analytics tools, TribeVibe will also have a way for users to plug the system into their own analytics tracking tools for $20 a month.
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Vator.tv, the "YouTube for start-ups" has a new feature going live on Tuesday morning that lets companies post short updates to their Vator.tv-hosted information pages. Similar to Twitter, the messages are limited to just a few hundred characters and other Vator users are simply able to follow a company to keep tabs on what it's doing.
Companies with access can post new updates anytime they'd like, and interact directly with users who can reply in the threaded commented section below each item. Vator has borrowed a page from Facebook in letting users get notified of any changes companies have made, be it edits or additions to the company pages.
Vator Co-founder and CEO Bambi Francisco told me her company isn't trying to replace the idea of the company blog, company Twitter profiles, or online customer support solutions like Get Satisfaction with this news feed. Instead she says it's an attempt to give people a simpler way to keep up with any changes companies have made, while giving the companies a more structured place to post information where they might already be doing so.
Vator has already been testing this out with a handful of companies for the past two weeks. New sign-ups to the service get an offer to sign-up for these companies' updates right from the get go, and all of the information is fed straight into their dashboard.
One thing that's missing, and something Francisco tells me is planned in a future release, is a way to take this stream of information elsewhere. For the time being the only place to get it is in your e-mail in-box through notifications, or on Vator's company pages, both things designed to keep users coming back.
Vator now lets companies post status updates that other users can respond to. The service also tracks changes companies have made to profiles.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Bambi Francisco, formerly of MarketWatch, is taking the wraps off her own business tonight: Vator.tv. It's a YouTube for entrepreneurs, a place where people looking for funding or partners for their business ideas can display their "elevator pitch," and connect with those who can help them out. Other people in the entrepreneurial ecosystem can also post pitches. There are venture capitalists explaining what they want to invest in, for example, as well as service providers pitching their services.
The embedded video here is a sample from the site: A pitch from a company making emergency evacuation systems for skyscrapers.
There's nothing terribly complex about the site, but it could work very nicely for all parties involved. The site's focus makes it a better destination for people who are pitching businesses than either an undifferentiated video site like YouTube, or even a business-focused social network like LinkedIn.
The focus also reveals itself in a few pitch-centric functions and editorial features. For example, each idea pitch has a "pitch network" of people listed on it, and each of these people can have his or her own profile page on Vator.tv. These profile pages list affiliations with other pitches. This bare-bones social network helps the potential funder see who's behind a company or idea. Although Francisco told me she's trying to create a "network around ideas," not people, in truth the smart funder or investor only invests in people. Ideas are easy. Implementation and passion to follow through is the hard part.
Vator.tv will also run contests. For example, there's a Wine 2.0 competition run by Redpoint Ventures on the site right now. This VC firm is looking for wine-related businesses to fund, and entrepreneurs can add their pitches to this competition page. Vator.tv users can then vote on these pitches, which makes the business into a bit of a game.
Francisco will also contribute editorial features to the site in the News Room, where she also has commentary on some of the video pitches people have uploaded.
The site is free, and will carry advertising and sponsorships. (I think Vator.tv should also charge service providers to post their videos; Francisco said she'd consider this later.)
As a network of ideas and the people behind them, Vator.tv looks very promising. In addition to offering good functionality for entrepreneurs and their potential partners, the site is well organized and has good entertainment value. It's interesting to browse even if you are neither an entrepreneur yourself nor a venture capitalist with millions to invest. If you want to see great ideas (and bad ones) communicated directly by the people who are most passionate about them, spend some time looking through the site.
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