The time has come, once again, for another group of companies to begin the 500 Startups journey. If you’re not familiar, 500 Startups is a seed-level, mentor driven accelerator program, straight from the braaaaaains of Dave McClure.
For 3 months the startups will get a bootcamp-style training about their company and how to make it successful. At the end of 3 months, in January of 2012, the startups will participate in a Demo Day with the hopes of securing additional funding to move their projects forward.
This time, 34 companies are involved, marking the largest batch yet for 500 Startups. Some off-the-top stats? Here you go:
- 24% of the companies have female founders
- 44% were founded outside of the US
- 100% are zombies
No, really. Here’s the proof!
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OK, back to the serious stuff. Who are these 34 companies and what to they do?
300miligrams – Estonia – A priority inbox for team conversations, helping to eliminate the need for water cooler conversations and wasted time.
72Lux – NYC – A universal shopping experience that can be white-labeled for publishers.
BrandBoards – Detroit, Michigan – Digital advertising for live events, but made easy.
BrightNest – Denver, Colorado – Helps homeowners manage assets with tips and reminders. Sort of a Mint.com for home maintenance.
Cadee – Toronto, Ontario – Helping golfers understand and improve their game.
Central.ly – San Francisco, via the UK – A central hub for the social media profiles of small business owners.
Chorus – Sydney, Australia – A sentiment analysis engine for customer feedback
ContaAzul – Joinville, Brazil – A web-based accounting system for Brazilian small businesses
Contactually – Washington, DC – Your personal email and CRM are divided. Contactually is a personal assistant that brings them together.
DressRush – Washington, DC – For bridezillas around the world, it’s a Gilt for weddings.
eSpark Learning – Chicago, Illinois – Custom playlists make learning on iPads fun. Targeted for elementary school students.
Farmeron – Osijek, Croatia – Helping farmers around the world manage production data online.
Fileboard – Netherlands – Manage files across the cloud via your iPad
Fitocracy – NYC – Turn fitness into a gaming experience, so you can level up in real life. Check out our early coverage here.
Forrst – Brooklyn, NY – A place where developers hone their craft and companies come to find them.
Gizmo – Carbondale, Illinois – A multi-channel marketing platform for mobile, tablet, social and the Web.
GoVoluntr – Silicon Valley – A social platform to combine volunteers, nonprofits and businesses.
Hapyrus – Tokyo, Japan – Self-service leveraging of Hadoop to make scalable systems.
HighScore House – Montreal, Quebec – Turns children’s routines into games, making life easier and more positive for kids and parents.
Intercom – Dublin, Ireland – A powerful CRM system for websites. We wrote about Intercom here.
LookAcross – Minneapolis, Minnesota – Helping you to have more conversations by increasing the chances of connecting with people.
LoveWithFood – Silicon Valley, via Singapore – The easiest way to find culinary deals and samples.
MelonCard – Chicago, Illinois – Your personal information is being sold by companies. MelonCard removes it.
MemeTales – Seattle, Washington – A mobile game-like reading platform for kids.
MoPix – Los Angeles, California – Defining what the movie experience can be like on a tablet.
OneSchool – Penn State – A mobile app that connects students to the things around them.
PayByGroup – Washington, DC – Coordinating payments for group purchases.
Redeemr – Boston, Massachusetts – Helping businesses and celebrities to gather attention from social media fans.
Rota dos Concursos – Brasilia, Brazil – Test preparation for government jobs.
Spinnakr – Washington, DC – Making website targeting easier to engage more conversations.
Switchcam – Sydney, Australia – Combining fan-recorded videos of concert experiences.
Talkdesk – Lisbon, Portugal – A contact center for your company, in the browser, integrating features like Salesforce and Zendesk.
Tiny Review – Washington, DC and Palo Alto – A fast, fun way to say what you think about a place.
WeddingLovely – San Jose , California – Building tools and directories to promote smaller wedding vendors.
So let’s start the list. Who are your favorites for the upcoming demo day and who do you want to know more about? You can rest assured that TNW will be covering the best and brightest, and of course we’ll weasel our way in to Demo Day, just like we did last time.
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