Boston VCs gets first look at Y Combinator Demo Day

Y Combinator held its Demo Day in Boston unveiling 19 new startups to VCs and investors. The event was hosted by Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston. The companies covered areas like; video streaming; concert recommendations; enterprise wikis; a music player; an ad network; music games; hosted forums; price search; file synchronization; web promotions; an image editor; music rating; a stock-picking community; video dating; fantasy sports betting; music sharing; hosted applications; universal login, and Wikipedia like biographies.

Prominent VCs from around the country came to Boston for the event including; Fred Wilson (Union Square), David Hornik (August Capital), Jeffrey Bier (North Bridge ), Eric Hjerpe (Atlas), Austin Westerling (Charles River), Rich Levandov (Avalon). There were also people from Highland Capital, General Catalyst, Matrix Partners, Fidelity, Venrock, and others. That is Fred Wilson on the left in the photo.

Most of the companies are two person, very early stage, startups still in stealth mode. We got a good look at all the teams and technology, but I can only mention four of the companies that have actually launched a beta. They are; Adpinion, Anywhere.FM, Fuzzwich, and Versionate.

The companies were much higher quality than I expected. The founders were nearly all coders and hackers but did a surprisingly good job at presenting their idea, target market, and business model, and usually a demo in just 7 minutes. That takes talent. Several VCs said the presentations were better than many they see in their offices.

Like any VC portfolio, the Y Combinator companies will include a couple big winners, a handful of moderate successes, and a large number that will fail to gain traction. However, even those that fail to gain traction will try again and emerge with a new idea. These guys are real entrepreneurs.

Anywhere.FM looks like a (possible) winner. There are several others still in stealth mode that I can't talk about but they are focusing on music, fantasy sports, and photo editing.

Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe writer, was at the event and wrote a blog noting that several of the companies are planning to relocate to Silicon Valley because the VCs are more aggressive and the partnership opportunities are better. Come on Boston VCs! Step up and make the investments.

Next week I will be at TechStars Demo Day where 10 more companies will show their stuff to investors. And later next month I will be at TechCrunch 20 where Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis will promote their top 20 picks. Fifty hot startups in less than a month. That is my idea of a good geek time.

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Comments

[Rob]

Don -- looking forward to seeing you in Boulder next week.

[TechDumpster (living in First Life)]

Don you're just building up the hype here. Anywhere.FM is nowhere close to being a success. It looks like you're drinking the Kool Aid faster than they can produce it.

[Don Dodge]

Hype? Kool Aid? Maybe you missed this line "Like any VC portfolio, the Y Combinator companies will include a couple big winners, a handful of moderate successes, and a large number that will fail to gain traction."

Most ideas don't get funded. Of the ones that do, many of them fail. VCs and Angel investors take enormous risks. They are eternal optimists and work really hard to help entrepreneurs succeed.

I applaud them. Call that hype if you like.

[Dharmesh Shah]

Looks like I missed out on a great event.

Thanks for the write-up. Unfortunately, I'm out in Oslo, Norway this week so wasn't able to make it.

Look forward to your review of TechStars.

[Ravi]

Just posting this from one of Paul Graham's essay which I read only yesterday.

"I know when we started Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as competition for the startups we funded. In fact, we've never even invited them to the demo days we organize for startups to present to investors. We invite Yahoo and Google and some other Internet companies, but we've never bothered to invite Microsoft. Nor has anyone there ever even sent us an email. They're in a different world."

Interesting to see that Microsoft was invited after all :)

[Theron]

Don - Can't wait to show you what we have done while you have been away from TechStars.

[Sandy]

After being with Yahoo! in Sunnyvale and Yahoo! Canada in Toronto it is great to see them spread the 'start-up vibe' to the East Coast.

Maybe we can spread it up north as well... :)

[Steve M]

That's really a smart and quick sloution for video conferencing, without much efforts and time.
http://www.sony-conferencing.com/

[Amy]

[...]mm interesting. Well it says it “lets you video chat“, but it still doesn’t specify whether you can actually HOST it.
Sony Video Conferencing Sytem
[...]