Seed fund and accelerator TechStars put on its “Demo Day” in Boston to present 12 new companies to more than 350 VC and angel investors. TechCrunch’s Rip Empson says in the last five years TechStars has grown significantly in both size and reputation, and the accelerator says seven of the first 20 companies to go through its program have been acquired by larger companies, and about 70 percent of its companies have raised follow-on funding or have since become profitable.
Here’s a list of the startups in the spotlight:
Evertrue is a social donor intelligence platform partnered with LinkedIn that provides academic institutions and non-profits with current data about their alumni as well as tools for alumni to help them connect with each other.
Ginger.io uses your mobile phone to detect whether you are stressed out, have a cold or the flu, or are working on conditions such as Crohns and IBD.
GrabCAD connects its worldwide network of 8,500 highly skilled engineers to manufacturing companies in need of CAD (computer aided design) solutions.
HelpScout helps SMBs provide customer service with personalized email and a helpdesk.
Kinvey makes it easy for mobile app developers and designers to build and manage cloud backends, which the company auto-generates with libraries that can be dropped into an app.
Memrise is a social learning platform that helps people learn factual data 10 times more quickly with language vocabulary as its initial product, later expanding to all factual data from medical terminology to legal facts.
Placester automates the placement of real estate ads, creates landing pages, and tracks clicks and phone calls with a proprietary optimization engine that converts CPC and CPM advertising into pay-per-performance advertising that delivers real value to brokers.
Promoboxx uses a suite of tools that leverage the power of social media to let brands offer promotions to their retailer’s customers.
Senexx provides enterprise professionals answers to difficult questions by routing emails to the people within the enterprise who have the expertise to be able to answer the question.
Spill creates virtual communities for anonymous peer-to-peer support among college students so they can overcomes struggles, stay in school, and not resort to suicide.
Strohl Medical Technologies has developed a portable stroke detection device that greatly improves triage and treatment times in the ER.
TheTapLab is a social gaming studio developing multi-player mobile games based on real-world locations.
For more in-depth descriptions of the startups, go to TechCrunch.
