Six companies presented five-minute demonstrations for an audience of VCs, media, peer startups and advisers at last evening's
Big Summer Geek-Out, presented by
SF New Tech and held at
Mighty
in San Francisco. Some are nascent ideas, some are already backed with
millions of dollars, and all are considering raising capital soon.
Among them:
∙ Snitsig Inc., the developer of
SnappyStuff.com,
a site with related widgets that help people buy, sell and swap their
belongings. The site dovetails with users' eBay Inc. auctions and Amazon.com Inc. buying histories, as well as
their social networking pages. Bootstrapped to date, seeking an institutional round
soon.
∙
MyDogSpace Inc.,
a social network for dogs and their owners. Initially created as a
dating service for pet lovers, now featuring galleries, profiles, games
and even movie tie-ins. A rival to the
angel-backed
Dogster, MyDogSpace claims to be "very profitable" already although
founding CEO Robert Yau says it will consider the right offer.
∙
Govit,
which facilitates the process of writing to elected officials about
current legislation and other public affairs. Still a self-funded
two-person operation, Govit has not yet begun fundraising in earnest
but would like to connect with investors.
∙
TipJoy,
a micropayment service easily hooked into blogs. Incubated by Y
Combinator, TipJoy has also received a small angel funding but is
seeking institutional investors as well. Founding CTO Ivan Kirigin said
he expects its first round will be worth about $1.5 million, after a
rolling close.
∙
Spongecell LLC,
which combines event calendaring with an advertising and marketing
service. Marketers, promoters and consumer brands can publish Web pages
about upcoming events, then build interactivity into the advertisements
so that they push out to social networks, ticket sellers, calendaring
services and devices. Spongecell took a Series A round from Interpublic
Group, Halo Ventures and the Pilot Group in 2006, and is seeking
another round this year.
∙
Backblaze Inc.,
a consumer-facing file backup service that scans a user's hard drive,
locates photos, music, Word and other critical files, and backs them up
in the
cloud
automatically as a background function. Users pay a $5 monthly
subscription fee, and can be charged for convenient options (DVD, USB
drive) if files are lost and need to be restored by Backblaze.
Bootstrapped to date, raising capital now.
-- Paul Bonanos See Tech Confidential's
special report concerning early-stage investing
See "
Social Calling", concerning twelve social media startups receiving early-stage funding
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