StartX, aiming to establish themselves as the “YCombinator of Stanford,” hosted a successful demo day today, leaving standing room only at Annenberg Auditorium. The teams, consisting mainly of Stanford undergrads, grad students and alumni, were chosen out of hundreds of applications and were full of praise for the accelerator program that introduced them to the lingo, mentorship and relationships necessary to launch their startups. The event started with a quick message from Board Member and long time supporter, George Zachary, from Charles River Ventures.
Half of the companies in their portfolio pitched today (see below for a list) and did a great job conveying their energy and enthusiasm. While the teams and product ideas were impressive, I was most excited by the program itself which is explicitly providing educational support to entrepreneurs, encouraging them to explore the unique opportunities available to them as part of the Stanford and Silicon Valley community. One of the speakers captured the theme of the day in their statement, “I know many of you could get a job with Google or Facebook tomorrow, but I highly encourage you to join one of the startups you see here, even as a side project.” I loved the positivity around the program and the overall message to explore entrepreneurship and take advantage of the resources right here in front of you (especially StartX.)
Applications for the next round are due this Wednesday, October 5th and they are aggressively recruiting for staff positions as well.
StartX companies that pitched today (in order of presentation):
- Morpheus: creating the first patient-specific airflow simulation software for medical applications.
- Kitchit: bridging private chefs and event planners to create personal, in-home fine dining experiences
- Modewalk: creating the most emotionally engaging shopping experience online for luxury goods
- 6Dot: developing a new portable, easy-to-use braille labeling device based on unique labeling technology
- Black Swan Solar: making solar energy cheaper than coal
- WifiSlam: enabling a technology for indoor positioning, location based tagging/check-ins in indoor spaces
- qWhisper: social search platform that will revolutionize the way people discover and find information from their social graph
- HungryTribe: meal planning and nutrition information targeted for corporations to save money on healthcare costs
- ClassOwl: online app for students/teachers to create personalized planners
- MotionMath: pioneering movement-based learning games for mobile devices
- Tactilize: creating the first publishing app for tablets
- diffbot: applies computer vision techniques to extract useful metadata from web docs.
- Loki Studios: utilizes GPS-enabled mobile devices to bring content-awareness to immersive social gaming
- FountainLoop: website and mobile application to help you find campus events and discover nearby friends.
- AiryLabs: creating the next generation of social learning games for kids
- Gameclosure: multiplatform. multiplayer. HTML5.
- Lark: enables the mobile phone to monitor, alert and improve sleep
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