My Picks for:<p>- Most likely to succeed in a big way: Parse<p>- Most interesting/clever (want it to succeed): Verbling<p>- Most scary (wary of it succeeding): Double Recall
No one mentioned Mixrank in the comments, I like the idea. Maybe someday it will be one of those essential marketing tools like SEOmoz. I for one, am lazy and would prefer just mimic my competitors ads instead of making 10 different ads and A/B testing them.<p>Coverage seems quite narrow at least for .fi domains. They probably need to get some ad-crawler servers with IP addresses(according to GeoIP) from Finland or any other country they want to have coverage in.<p><a href="http://www.mixrank.com/a/groupon.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.mixrank.com/a/groupon.com</a>
lol @ "90% off"
I'm amazed at how many "Groupon for X" startups have been popping up. In this group there is Munch On Me (restaurants) and Aisle50 (groceries), but if you look through a site like <a href="http://startupli.st/startups" rel="nofollow">http://startupli.st/startups</a> there are a lot of others. Opez also says they want to turn independent professionals into their own Groupons, which doesn't really equate. I presume they really mean giving the independent professionals the ability to publish their own coupons.<p>With as much criticism as GroupOn has received, and the suspect way they have measured their success it seems there must be a better model of comparison. Saying you want to be the LivingSocial of X would likely give a better impression.<p>Still, I'm not sure applying that business model to a specific industry like restaurants or groceries will lead to success. For restaurants, LivingSocial and GroupOn already give out a lot of restaurant deals. Google will soon be moving in the market also. It's quickly becoming saturated. How long can restaurants give away meals for half price?<p>Aisle50 is at least attacking an area that isn't really covered by existing businesses.
The S11 demo day writes up are probably one of the best ways to get a sense of what the early stage ecosystem looks like right now. Its not a bad picture either. These are some great startups - mature and refreshingly diverse. It's a good time to be an entrepreneur in the valley.
Quite a few of the companies mentioned have traction and that is pretty impressive.<p>I haven't seen anyone else say it but kicksend looks a lot like getcrate from sahil lavingia with facebook integration added to it.
I wonder when exactly it was that TechCrunch was like, "wow, all we really need to do is write YC articles all day." They're playing this site like a violin.
VidYard isn't really much of an innovation, in fact, Bits on the Run has been doing this - better - for quiet some time. VidYard is caught in between trying to emulate YouTube and being a streaming hosting provider without convincing me of either strengths.<p>BOTR offers an elegant API, skin-able players, pay-as-you-go usage, statistics and, as an option, a totally configurable ad platform plugin for the player that works with more than one ad platform. FWIW, I know VidYard does a lot of this, too, but what's the YouTube angle doing for them? Other than having a chart comparing them to <i>community-based</i> video platforms?<p>EDIT: Down-vote if you want, but provide a reason. Otherwise, I'll assume: "he said something about my startup, get him!"