Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($14-20k + an $80k note) in a large number of startups twice a year, since 2005 and have seen startups launch into companies such as the famous Reddit, Dropbox, Airbnb, Disqus, Songkick among others. Last night 47 startups were graduating from the class of 2012 in YCombinator’s traditional Demo Day pitch to investors at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
A Demo Day is when the cohort of startups present to a large audience of investors after being moved to Silicon Valley for 3 months, with intensively coaching and mentorship.
YC last night helped launch a number of startups including one nonprofit. Some of the startups worth to watch are:
- Teespring : A clothing startup that wants to make you proud of what’s you wear. Taking advantage of the communities rallying for causes and interests. Teespring lets any group upload a clothing with the group name on it like a logo ,slogan to put on a t-shirt and setup a page to sell it. They promote the page to their group members and when people click to purchase: Teespring prints and delivers the clothing and splits the profit with the group. Its one of the hottest startups to watch currently it’s profitable.
- BuildZoom: It connects contractors with remodeling jobs. The goal of the startup is to build a national remodeling brand across the world. The startup claims to be the leading contractor listings in San Francisco and to offer deeper information in those listings. The company makes money by partnering with contractors and charging them 7% commission. Will it disrupt this huge market?
- Zaranga : Zaranga wants to bring demand-based dynamic pricing to the vacation rentals. It wants to disrupt the already high demand market driven by Airbnb. With the success experienced by Airbnb Zaranga is exploiting plenty of still unused inventory in many verticals from property managers, special integration and custom terms and other variables that increase space ratings.
- Flightcar: Flightcar is a car sharing startup that is specifically focused on travel around airports.car owners drive to the Flightcar location that’s five minutes away from a given airport, drop off their cars and get black car services to their flights. With Flightcar owners get guaranteed free parking , car wash ,pickup and drop-offs. It’s also one of the hottest startups to watch currently its making $12k in revenue just under a week
- Wevorce : offers a system for handling divorces that attempts to avoid the pain and cost of going to court. It covers six broad steps that’s divorce planning, co-parent planning , a parenting agreement ,financial mapping , financial agreements and divorce settlement. Currently the startup is satisfying its customers at 95% .With the huge divorce market Wevorce will be huge and the impact will be felt.
Other startups that pitched at Demo day include Airware ,FiveTran ,Thalmic ,Circuitlab , simply Insured ,Errplane and padlet.