In it’s second year, the Chicago startup accelerator Excelerate Labs has just announced its new class. The program runs from June to September and offers $15K to $20K in funding and mentorship throughout the summer months. Last year, Excelerate Labs launched ten startups as we previously covered on demo day. In the six months since Demo Day, the Class of 2010 raised a combined $7.2 million in equity funding and added 65 new employees to their payrolls. For example, TapMe Games raised $1.4 Million, Edulender raised $1 Million, GiveForward raised $500,000 and FeeFighters raised $1.6 Million and was voted hottest Chicago startup in our 2011 poll.
Today Excelerate Labs released the list of the 2011 Summer class which includes ten more startups and some familiar names:
- A Space Apart ‐ A new breed of social media. We connect people and businesses in context wherever they come together.
- BabbaCo ‐ A lifestyle brand creating parenting solutions via “simple. functional. super cute.” products and video content.
- Beyond Credentials ‐ Gives young professionals the tools to create an online presence, stand out, and connect with great companies.
- Buzz Referrals ‐ With a single line of code, BuzzReferrals turns your best customers into your brand advocates by eliminating the hassle so you can track the results of your own custom referral program.
- CookItFor.Us ‐ We get recipes made by connecting Cravers & Makers in a social fresh‐food marketplace.
- Exchangery ‐ An exchange platform as a service that allows you to create an online marketplace to buy and sell commodity goods.
- Food Genius ‐ Suggests dishes based on individualized taste profiles and tracks what you eat in a game to establish expertise.
- Joystickers ‐ We give people a fun way to physically interact with their touch screen phones and tablets with products like removable gaming buttons and paintbrushes.
- MapDing ‐ A completely mobile, hyper‐local, location‐based marketplace.
- Power2Switch ‐ An electricity cost reduction and energy use monitoring/management portal for residential and small business customers.
We look forward to seeing these startups on demo day in August in Chicago.
