In the two and a half years since ER Accelerator first launched, Managing Directors Murat Aktihanoglu, Jonathan Axelrod and Charles Kemper have overseen and guided five previous classes, encompassing 50 startup companies. Graduates have since nabbed funding by investors including some of the top names in startup financing including 500 Startups, Cowboy Ventures, ff Venture Capital, FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital, Founder Collective, High Peaks Venture Partners, iNovia Capital, Lerer Ventures, Lightbank, Matrix Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, NextView Ventures, Payment Ventures, Pilot Group, RRE Ventures and True Ventures, as well as a variety of other angel investors and seed funds.
More applicants than ever before vied for the ten coveted spots in the Winter 2014 class, not all of which were captured by New York-grown startups. Now, without further ado, meet ERA 6, here to solve problems that range from distance learning to transportation management, from data security to business intelligence, ad tech and e-commerce, to where and how to get a good, affordable cup of coffee in one of the Caffeine Capitals of the World:
Bookalokal is a social dining network for curated gourmet events, helping you to discover your inner foodie. Whether traveling to a new city, or exploring locally, guests can choose from group dinners to food tours, cooking classes to cheese workshops. Events are hosted by people who love to cook, host and share—from food bloggers to aspiring chefs and wine connoisseurs.
CommonKey is a cloud-based password management platform, that allows small businesses the ability to share passwords securely across a team, based on the highest industry security standards. Teams can securely share login credentials and easily manage permissions, while giving management statistics on a company’s security activity and strength.
CUPS is a mobile-first subscription service for coffee connoisseurs and the independent coffee shops that serve them, and a company that AlleyWatch has written about previously. The app makes the city’s coffee scene accessible and convenient by offering Unlimited, Cup a Day and Prepaid subscriptions for use at participating coffee houses.
Dashride is a cloud-based mobile dispatching platform that simplifies ride management for the livery industry. Its white-label platform integrates with existing software, helping livery companies reduce costs, maximize driver efficiency and provide an app to end-consumers—and helps them complete with new industry entrants. The company also seems to have a sense of humor, as evidenced in the testimonials on their site, including: “Since using Dashride, I’ve noticed that food tastes better, air seems cleaner, and I think I’ve even become more attractive to the opposite sex.” – John Johnson. Should help make for an interesting class.
Farmivore is a box subscription service that sources the highest-quality produce from local farms and delivers it fresh to your door – all harvested within hours of delivery. Farmivore offers custom options that ensure the right mix of fruits and vegetables for any size household: build a box based on personal preferences or select a right-sized variety box.
Franchise Fund is crowd funding platform that helps job creators raise the money they need to open a franchise in their local communities. The platform allows local residents to propose a new franchise for their area and leverage cutting edge crowd funding tools to help bring the products and services they want into their local area.
LingoLive is a distance learning service for personalized foreign language instruction. For a fraction of the cost of a conventional private tutor, students get live one-on-one instruction anytime with accredited native-speaking tutors. Tutors follow a curriculum developed by PhD linguists and track student progress with real-time reports.
Mezzobit is a trust-based tag management platform that helps website and app publishers better manage how they exchange data with their business partners, addressing the concern of data leakage. Customers use Mezzobit’s portal to configure data flows for their properties, enabling visibility and control of third-party data collection tags.
RetSKU is a business intelligence and analytics platform for retail brands selling via traditional brick-and-mortar merchants. The platform collects in-store competitive placement data in real-time, analyzes it to provide actionable insights, helping to improve promotional effectiveness and new product launches.
Shopalytic is a suite of easy-to-use business analytic tools which help e-commerce merchants better understand their customers. Shopalytic’s cost-effective products provide small to medium-sized merchants key insights, which help them to improve customer retention and, most importantly, increase sales.
Editor’s note: Bonnie Halper is a mentor at ER Accelerator.
