One thing we’ve always noticed about Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator companies, come Demo Day: they imagine pain points just a bit differently than most and focus on making our personal and professional lives just that much easier.
Which is why this latest batch has taken on things like automating API testing; helping patients determine the best place to go for their pressing health care needs; improving sharing and personalization of mapping data; coordinating of event calendaring in ways that make sense; improving image collaboration; helping universities connect with their alumni; getting the whole news story, starting from what set events in motion; getting the real deal when it comes to travel, from fellow travelers who’ve been there, done that and get paid for their knowledge. One company has even updated, upgraded and reimagined the baby book.
We hate to drop the ‘D’ word, but we can’t help it in this case.
API Fortress
API Fortress is an API testing company, testing and monitoring your APIs, and notifying you immediately – with detailed reports – when errors or other issues occur. Our platform continuously monitors latency and validates the response of any API—your own or third party.
Since becoming part of ERA, they’ve onboarded over 180 APIs – and counting.
“We are live and onboarding customers. We will gladly go head-to-head with any competitor on the market” said CEO Patrick Poulin.
Spoken like a true New York founder.
“API Fortress was a product built to solve headaches my cofounder and I were dealing with as API builders and owners. It was created with a purpose and vision, and now we’re bringing that solution to customers.”
Blinkbuggy
Blinkbuggy is a product that lets you capture a life in video, three seconds at a time. The company’s mobile and web tools give parents a powerful way to keep up with the huge volume of digital memories, and automates the creation of personalized, time-lapse videos.
Considering that the Blinkbuggy platform helps families capture, organize, share and preserve memories in a simple yet structured way, think of it as the Baby Book, perfectly reimagined for a short attention-span world.
It shows. Since becoming part of ER Accelerator, Blinkbuggy has significantly increased the rate of registrations in Q1 2015 as compared to Q4 2014, secured initial Seed funding, and announced the launch of a new mobile-video product that has been very well received by the target consumer.
“Blinkbuggy has secured a key strategic partnership that will significantly increase our reach to new moms and families. We’ll be announcing the partnership at Demo Day,” said Founder and CEO Emma Weisberg. “We’re proud to be a part of the NYC startup ecosystem and thankful for the opportunity to share our vision and our progress with the audience at Demo Day, which represents a large and important part of the community.”
Place Pixel
Place Pixel is a mapping app that allows people to find useful, fun, and interesting information that’s missing from current maps. Whether it’s quiet spots in New York or public art in San Francisco, Place Pixel users can find anything they care about. And by allowing free and open contribution, there’s no limit to what can be mapped.
“Google Maps is missing so many things that make up a productive, rich, and enjoyable life,” said Place Pixel CEO Scott Liang. “Place Pixel is filling this gap.”
Evidently, and being part of ER Accelerator certainly helped.
“We successfully fundraised and released a beta build on the App Store to test with our first batch of users,” Liang continued. “We added huge amount of New York datasets, like free wifi, bike sharing stations, and great schools, and we’re making tremendous progress with our mobile and web products.”
The team certainly picked the perfect city to build a search-and-discovery app like theirs.
“There’s an endless sense of discovery” when it comes to New York,” Liang added. “It seems like there’s an art piece, pocket park, or other hidden gem around every corner. And Place Pixel is getting better and better.”
Rollinglobe
Rollinglobe is an ecommerce platform that lets you make money recommending your favorite trips.
In other words, it allows anyone to create his or her own virtual travel store in mere minutes, and make money on recommendations.
“Trusted recommendation is consistently ranked as the most important factor when deciding travel plans, yet there is currently no good way to make money from our travel recommendations. . . So the biggest asset in a $300 billion industry is going un-monetized! Rollinglobe is the key to unlocking that asset,” said Founder Michael Nobiletti. « Just like we went through a dramatic shift in monetizing empty apartments and idle cars, Rollinglobe is revolutionizing the travel industry by allowing anyone to make money from their travel recommendations.”
And ER Accelerator helped to accelerate the process.
“We designed and built the first full iteration of our product; and we grew our revenue by 3x last month alone.
Since we’re talking travel recommendation app, it begs the question, what does Nobiletti personally feel that the city has going for it ?
« My favorite part about NYC is the convergence of cultures. I love walking down the street, hearing different languages, and having access to authentic cuisines from every corner of the globe.”
Alumni Spaces
We all know that getting ahead, or getting to where you need to be is all about connections, and it starts in school. Alumni Spaces is a platform for university alumni associations to empower and better connect and engage with their member groups. This socially-integrated platform gives local chapters a unique digital presence, while simultaneously allowing national administrators to better understand and efficiently connect with their members. Best of all, it gives both the groups what they need, and the staff what they need.
“We combine what associations have been doing via excel, email, Powerpoint, pivot tables, databases, etc. into one easy-to-use platform. We save alumni association staff and volunteers countless hours by making the data they input once work harder and turn that into real-time actionable results. Alumni association staff are better able to serve their chapters by having a higher resolution view into what’s happening on the ground,” said company CEO Nick Trusty,
Too cool for school: They’ve already gotten traction with two global alumni networks, and 50+ independent groups representing 16 universities. Which means that they’re already helping over 500,000 alumni stay in the loop.
Bunchcut
Bunchcut is a B2B collaboration engine to intelligently manage visual content in one place and in real time. Professionals who work with visual content waste countless hours in this process and need a new tool to make better data-driven decisions.
“Our platform is a powerful solution to the multi-$billion visual content overload problem,” said CEO and cofounder Nathalie du Preez, who has been there, done that, having worked with images and collaborated with agencies herself, in a past life.
Participating in ERA paid off.
“Interactions on our site in April are 4x that of January.”
The accelerator gave Bunchcut easy access to some of the world’s top brands, marketers, and creative directors.
“These beta users have been instrumental in building our product,” du Preez added.
And come April 29th, the company is officially launching Beta 2.0.
We know. We know. Good things come to those who wait, but don’t you hate the wait?
Connect2Care
How many times have you gone to a hospital emergency and waited for hours for something that could easily have been managed otherwise? If only you had known!
And now you can.
Connect2Care is a location-based healthcare recommendation engine that analyzes patient symptoms or conditions and suggests the most appropriate, cost-effective and convenient medical provider options available nearby.
The platform also reduces waste and saves money for both consumers and payors. Not to mention the fact that it’s a time and energy saver.
Eventable
We all have things to do and places to go, and why are there so many steps to keep track of it all – and keep everything up to date?
Eventable is a marketing platform that connects customers and brands through calendars. In real time, and geo-targeted. The platform populates events directly into customers’ daily schedules on their calendar of choice—including Google Calendar, Outlook, and iOS. And brands and businesses can send geo-targeted promotions, personalized content, and push notifications directly to any device in real-time, without having to spam people with a constant barrage of those email updates we’re all so fond of.
Not!
The Eventable recommendation engine also automatically identifies consumer personas and picks which of event are most relevant for each individual.
Think of fans who want to stay in the loop on their favorite sports teams. Talk about a game-changer!
Ketchup
Ketchup is a special sauce: it’s a mobile newsreader that creates a timeline of events to accompany news articles, so readers get the whole story, starting from what set the day’s events in motion. Users are provided historical context of a story to help create a deeper understanding of how events have developed over time, not just what happened last night.
It’s ‘ketchup’ as in ‘catch up on news.’
Ketchup provides an engagement tool for publishers to give their readers the context necessary to understand a story – and look at it this way: you have all of that great news, and it’s not just yesterday’s news. It’s another revenue stream. The module displays contextually relevant articles from the last few weeks, months and years. And news aficionados get the whole story.
SELECT
SELECT isn’t just another credit card. SELECT transforms any credit or debit card into a members-only “black card” for the next generation.
Think of it as a combination credit card and daily deals done right, giving members insider-only rates, access and VIP treatment at premier restaurants, hotels, nightlife venues, retailers, events and more.
In other words, it’s the Other Black Card.
