I attended the Techstars NY S17 demo day today. Here is the TC overview of each startup. Note that TC messed up, Ryan Shank is with Phonewagon, not Parakeet.

Most interesting

The two most interesting startups were Geopipe and Phonewagon (pitch here) with honorary mention going to SVRF.

Geopipe showed off probably the “deepest” tech which is funny to observe for a tech accelerator program. They combine open and licensed satellite data scans to build 3d models (including texture models eg. they can tell the difference between concrete and glass) and I am aware of how deep of a pain point this is. Their demo failed on demo but they pulled through the presentation decently. On speaking with Chris (CEO), it was interesting that they had not yet implemented a bunch of the easy web dev wins and were lookign for a part time web dev. I threw my hat in even though I probably can’t work for them. I think they are very likely to get acquired at some point down the road.

Phonewagon is kind of the opposite of Geopipe - shallow, mass market SaaS platform that applies to SMBs. Their key advantage really comes from marketing and CEO Ryan Shank embodies that with humor and personality (I mean, he has a videographer follow him around for his daily vlog - inspired by Gary Vee). He has had a prior exit (to HomeAdvisor, part of IACI) and was self aware that he does risk coming across as a douche (he won’t as long as he’s funny). I also had a good chat with VP Product Mike Horton about the challenges of working with an indian dev team to create a product in the US. Overall I think they have a unique offering for the SMB market and should find some decent traction, although who knows if its the $50m opportunity Ryan is looking for.

SVRF was an odd beast. It was an instantly entertaining tech demo (go to this on your phone) but the CEO seemed somewhat high (EDIT: I regret this suggestion and it was meant to be light hearted/not taken seriously. Decided to leave it as memory of my mistake. I apologise) and flat out admitted they ~had no business plan~ were going for distribution first. But they were super super fun and they reminded me of Giphy which is worth $600m.

Could be better

EDIT: people seem to be taking this segment very personally. please don’t. criticism/personal take is not “hate”. I am a nobody and everyone at techstars has done way more in their time at techstars than I have done in my entire life. I admire every one of them.

Then there were the rest. CottageClass seemed run of the mill. Gather had a great UI but was insufficiently differentiated from existing solutions I am familiar with. Ditto Parakeet. Hawthorne had the best website but is solving a problem no one has. Matchaful is only really worth tracking (to me) if matcha kills coffee. Obsess’ CEO was singularly unconvincing, with Vitally a moderately close second. Virgo has great focus but the traction has been extremely disappointing so far to my inexperienced eye. TypeLead was very unusual as an accelerator company but didn’t seem all that different from raw Haskell (which I have experience with, working with Neil Mitchell of Hoogle fame)

overall

Was overall a great evening and inspiring to see the kind of company Techstars supports. I do wish there was more orginality and flat out WOW moments.