TechStars Boulder Holds Demo Day

Thursday was TechStars Demo Day in Boulder. Founded in 2007 by Brad Feld, David Cohen and Jared Polis, TechStars is a start-up accelerator that has now expanded to 4 other cities. For each cycle, hundreds of entrepreneurs compete for just a handful of spots: the opportunity to come to Boulder for the summer while networking, learning, working with mentors and growing their company.

Demo Day brings together potential investors and members of the community to hear the “pitches” of the TechStars companies.  On this day, about 400 investors, 200 community members as well as press gathered in the *very warm* Boulder Theater for the big reveal.

This was our third year attending and like most everyone else there, we continue to be impressed with the level of commitment and excitement at this event. Here’s a quick rundown of this year’s group:

DealAngel helps you “find the best hotel for your money.” This is not about finding the cheapest room – but the best time and best room for the place you are headed (a little twist). “Look before you book.”

Verbalizeit brings “crowd sourced translation” to your phone, Skype calls and even meetings in real time with real people. With an iphone app, Skype app and other integrations it’s as easy as “drag and drop” or 1 click to have a translator available.

Rollsale is founded by a team from St Louis to help you answer “how can I get the most money for my used car?” With their site, users upload car info and dealers make competing bids. It gives sellers access to more dealers (than just the one you would have gone to) and gives dealers access to cars that might have been sold person-to-person.

27Perry “Curated Consignment” will be near and dear to our hearts as soon as it goes live. This is where “cluttered becomes curated” and what was “offline and local becomes online and global.” Shopaholics beware.

Ubooly wins the cute award this year! This is a toy with the heart of an iphone – literally. Insert an iphone or ipod touch and the toy comes to life with apps, games and educational content. It is reminiscent of Teddy Ruxpin or Furby, but with the benefit of being able to update content like other phone apps. Available for order today on their website.

Mobiplug has developed a plug-and-play gateway that sees devices already in homes and coordinates them through an app, enabling things like home temperature control, lights, locks and more to be controlled remotely in one place.

SalesLoft brings info about your customers to you, with your filters your way – sales intelligence for sales reps’ CRM. This team from Atlanta already has a live site and some traction.

Digitalocean provides simple cloud hosting, so you can deploy a virtual server in under a minute.

Roximity delivers deal offers and alerts to you based on your location. Sounds familiar. . .except Roximity can do that through your car. Already partnered with Ford, Honda and Subaru with access to 6.5 million cars. Read more about Roximity on Wired.

Birdbox is the “one ring to rule them all” in the photo/video world. Over 1 billion photos are uploaded every day, along with 48 hours of video, and they are scattered over 100 different tools. Birdbox lets you search, find and archive your photos and video among the tools you already use.

Pivotdesk helps startups find flexible affordable space with “no long term business-killing leases.” PivotDesk is an office-sharing marketplace that helps tenants with more space than they need. . .and startups with uncertain needs.

Congrats to the entire group – look forward to additional coverage of the few who are “TechStars of David.”