500 Startups has announced the 33 newest companies joining its accelerator program this Fall. It is a rather interesting and complex set of startups in the group and could be considered the most international, diverse, and exciting group in the history of the accelerator program so far.
This season, the accelerator program has undergone a bit of a update. For the first time, it partnered with AngelList to help create an open application process. Startups who were interested in participating in the program could simply complete the application while also supplementing it with data from AngelList. In the end, 500 Startups’ partner Christine Tsai tells us that eight companies (less than 2%) were selected from out of the hundreds of applications it received through AngelList over the course of three weeks prior to the beginning of the program.
In terms of diversity, seven companies in the new class have at least one woman founder. In addition, it’s quite an international bunch as well — 19 companies are from outside the US, making it one of the largest international contingents in the program’s history. Not bad considering that founding partner Dave McClure has been adamant about supporting non-US startups and recently acquired the Mexican.VC accelerator and brought on two venture partners to help oversee its India investments.
Startups in this class come from far and away, including Argentina, Austria, Australia, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, India, Japan, Italy, Latvia & Estonia, Spain, and Taiwan.
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And now, without further ado, here are the startups that make up the newest class of 500 Startups Fall 2012 accelerator class:
- BabyList: a baby registry that works like Pinterest enabling you to put anything online into your registry
- Chewse: marketplace for groups to easily order great food
- Cinemacraft: a videogram service that produces an “interactive pictorial summary of the video” (aka comic)
- Club W: service that provides curated, personalized wine subscription
- CompStak: create transparency in commercial real estate by gathering information that is hard to find, difficult to compile, or that’s currently unavailable
- Cubie: a free messenger for creative users to chat and draw
- Cuponomia: marketplace to search, discover, and share deals and online coupon codes
- Curious Hat: mobile exploration tools for curious children
- Dealflicks: a movie tickets and concession deal service
- Everbill: invoice and estimate service
- femeninas: fashion and beauty portal for women
- gazeMetrix: service that looks at videos and pictures to help brands measure visibility
- Hunie: community for designers to help them get feedback from their peers
- Iconfinder: site for icons
- iDreamBooks: the Rotten Tomatoes for books
- Instamojo: marketplace to sell your digital creations with just one click
- Kickfolio: service to help brands market their iPhone apps
- LaunchGram: aggregate news service about products and launches coming soon in verticals such as movies, electronics, video games, and cars
- Markerly: increases publisher page views and engagement by providing next-generation social sharing and discovery tools
- Pick1: retargeting service through automated market research
- Privy: online advertising for small/medium-sized businesses
- Qual Canal: service that allows you to track conversations about TV shows in social media
- Repairy: web-based customer relationship and resource management system for car repair shops and dealerships
- SupplyHog: developing a new way to purchase building materials
- Tealet: marketplace designed to connect tea drinkers with growers
- TouristEye: a trip planner that allows you to plan your trip on the web, but view all the info and maps offline on your mobile device
- TradeBriefs: empowering Indian professionals through industry expertise and jobs
- Traity: measurement service that monitors people’s reputation in worldwide 360 feedback
- Translate Abroad: producer of a suite of simple translation apps
- UniPay: mobile payment platform in Brazil
- WalletKit: SaaS platform to create, manage, and deliver “digital passes to mobile wallets”
- Wideo: online platform to produce your own animated videos
- WhoAPI: service designed to deliver “extensive information about domain data”
All 33 of these companies will be participating in one of the three 500 Startups Demo Days taking place in February 2013 (Mountain View, San Francisco, and New York City). You can read more about each of these startups on their AngelList page.
Oh, one more thing. Each class has typically done something fun to “bond” with one another. For this batch, they put together a video for their “coming-out announcement” that is called “Sh*t 500 Founders Say“. This two and a half minute video lets you get to know some of the personalities of this batch of companies and there are some pretty funny moments — I mean, watch it and you’ll laugh at the impression of McClure (“Eat the mic!”), the “500 Strong chest bump”, finding a way to “disrupt the disruption”, and perhaps the best advice? Where you’re told to “pivot before you pivot and when you pivot, you should fake it. Fake it before you make it.”
Photo credit: John Moore/Getty Images
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