500 Startups yesterday announced the companies that will be participating in Batch 9 of their accelerator program. The startups will be working out of 500 Startups’ Mountain View headquarters, and there will be two new entrepreneurs in residence, Poornima Vijayashanker and Malcolm Ong, to mentor and guide them toward success.
The candidate pool is diverse with international startups coming out of the Czech Republic, Switzerland, China, India, Canada, Malaysia, Brazil, Australia, the UK, and Mexico. There will also be a solid share of US representation with startups from New York City, Rochester, Stanford, Oakland, San Jose, San Francisco, Mountain View, and Berkeley.
The bottom line is that Batch 9 is a big one for 500 Startups. Of the 29 companies, 11 of them have at least one woman on the founding team, which is big news when you consider that 500 Startups recently launched an AngelList syndicate, 500 Women, with the express mission to empower women investors and founders.
Batch 9 is shaping up to be a fun one, packed full of diversity, ideas, and individuals.
The 29 companies in Batch 9 are:
- AbbeyPost (New York): A vertically integrated brand that gives customers plus-sized wardrobe choices that fit well.
- ArtCorgi (Stanford): A platform to commission original, personalized art from up-and-coming artists.
- Bohemian Guitars (Atlanta): They rethink music products to create a more affordable, stylish, and sustainable way to make and enjoy music.
- Bonafide (Rochester): A community powered fraud prevention for Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.
- click2stream (Prague): A cloud-based security camera video analysis platform.
- Coinalytics (Mountain View): A real-time analytics platform for Bitcoin that brings big data to the Bitcoin ecosystem via an analytic framework.
- Giveit100 (San Francisco): Choose something you want to get better at, and share a 10-second video of your progress every day.
- GogoCoin (Berkeley): A platform to buy Bitcoin instantly with a prepaid card.
- GoRefi (San Francisco): Their mission is to help homeowners refinance their homes online from start to finish.
- Hobobe (Beijing): A resource for researching, finding, and booking travel experiences in China.
- InterviewMaster (Bangalore): A video and mobile recruitment solution that improves the quality of hires, increases recruiter productivity, and enriches a job candidate’s experience.
- KangaDo (San Francisco): A mobile service that helps busy parents chat and organize activities with friends, family, and caregivers.
- Monetsu (Vancouver): A software startup that uses an open box and protocol independent approach to make crypto-currencies safer.
- Neuroware (Kuala Lumpur): An open-source software solution for digital currency.
- pinshape (Edmonton, Alberta): A 3D printing community that helps you explore, share, sell, and order 3D printable shapes.
- Pop Up Archive (Oakland): Their web application helps media companies improve their productivity and monetize content by adding a semantic SEO-ready layer to media.
- Puzzlium (San Jose): They want to release peoples’ creativity to make the world smarter.
- Share Some Style (San Francisco): A personal styling service that sends a stylist directly to your home.
- Solidarium (Curitiba, Brazil): They connect Brazilian makers with consumers and retailers all over the world.
- Sourceasy (New York): A full-stack private textiles sourcing service that offers technology tools to manage sourcing along with offline support.
- SportHold (Sydney): A game that gives players the opportunity to prove their sports knowledge to the world.
- Stitch (Sydney/San Francisco): A clean version of Tinder for adults over 50.
- Survmetrics (Mexico): An online survey platform that lets you create engaging surveys to improve UX and generate higher response rates.
- TargetingMantra (Delhi): A platform that figures out what people are interested in and surfaces relevant content to them.
- Teaman & Company (London): Their inventory of colored gemstones helps them be the face of custom, colored gemstone engagement rings and artisanal jewelry.
- Thinknum (New York): A web platform for financial analytics.
- Totspot (Mountain View): A mobile marketplace for moms to shop and sell fashion for kids.
- Vessel (Mountain View): A power mobile A/B testing platform that allows product managers to run deep-layered A/B experiments on their native mobile apps.
- ZootRock (Melbourne): They generate relevant, trending content for your social media accounts to help you increase engagement and followers.
