Thursday, January 31, 2013
Capturing The Entrepreneurial Energy At StartEngine's Demo Day
It was standing room only at StartEngine's Demo Day Wednesday afternoon, held at Santa Monica's Cross Campus, as the startup accelerator launched eight of its latest startups into the world, after a 90 day process of mentoring, honing their business model, and heads down development.
In a way, the event--like the Demo Days from the other accelerators around town--seems to have focused the startup community and prospective startup community on the possibilities inherent in a new startup. StartEngine's Demo Day launched BedAbroad (international student housing marketplace); CARBON 38 (online luxury fitness destination for women; Smilu (cross-platform, multiplayer video games); WhereMyDogsAt (mobile social networking for dog owners); Ember (demand side, real-time bidding for online video advertising); Osurv (mobile research and surveys), Fans.lu (white label e-commerce for game developers), and TriplePulse (e-commerce for sports nutrition and expert fitness advice for endurance athletes) to a receptive audience made up of fellow entrepreneurs, angel investors, and venture capitalists.
(Standing room only crowd at StartEngine).
Although maybe not all of the startups at the event might go on to get funding, an entire group of potential startup founders in the audience realize that they, too, have a shot at starting something and getting a chance to take it to the next level. Much of the focus is on absorbing that energy, the enthusiasm of the startup community here has created over the last few years. Will all that activity help create the next big technology, advertising, gaming, or e-commerce startup? It's unclear. However--as one local venture investor confided--what is obvious, is that there are many entrepreneurs who are getting farther, understanding the funding game, getting beyond stage one, and hopefully--either moving their companies to the next level, or perhaps taking those lessons learned and applying it to their next startup or company.
(Howard Marks, co-founder of StartEngine surveys the crowd at Demo Day)