Last night I attended DEN Boston‘s first entrepreneur showcase at the Charles hotel. The event featured presentations from the founders of four emerging companies, all with intriguing business concepts and growing momentum. Here are my notes:
First up was Open Vote, presented by co-founder and recent Tuck graduate Jason Freedman. Open Vote runs a Facebook application that allows people to create and share polls with their community. They have launched in beta at three college campuses where the application reaches about 20% of the student population. The company’s business model has multiple potential revenue streams, including providing qualified leads to Internet survey companies, running customized polls for clients, and selling data to brands. The lead generation business is up and running (he mentioned that online survey companies are very eager to find qualified people for their panels, paying $2-4 per lead), and the other two streams will be developed as the service’s audience expands. Jason’s presentation generated a lot of good questions and interest from the audience on how they might expand the service to reach different types of communities beyond college campuses.
The second presentation was TSI, a biotech startup founded by Alexis Wallace. TSI is developing a biologic drug to dissolve plaque in the critical hours right after a heart attack. They have re-engineered a former Phase III drug candidate to make it safer to use than existing treatments, particularly in combination with a catheter, once the patient is stabilized.
Next up was YouCastr, presented by co-founder and CEO Ariel Diaz. YouCastr is developing technology to enable broadcasting of “long tail” sports events, like college and high school teams. It allows people to broadcast audio of sports events, and chat, rate and comment on the live audio broadcasts. Ariel told a cool story of how the parents of the Alabama Softball team used the site to keep up with the team’s progress in the NCAA tournament. Since starting last summer, YouCastr has built the site, raised a seed round of funding, entered partnerships with the Connecticut School of Broadcasting and ESPN Boston radio, and secured its first premium customers. A highlight of the Q&A session was the discussion of how YouCastr’s strategy has evolved. Initially, the site was aimed to allow sports fans to provide their own running commentary on games — like Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the NFL. As they have developed the concept over the past year, they have shifted their focus to pursue the unmet need in “long tail” sports broadcasting and avoid the legal gray areas associated with professional sports broadcasts.
The last company to present was Zeer, presented by President and co-founder Michael Putnam. I would describe Zeer as “Yelp for the Grocery Store” — it is building a social review site around food products. The company has compiled a comprehensive database of product descriptions, ingredients, and nutritional information for over one hundred thousand foods, and then added social features like comments, reviews, ratings, and shopping lists. Since launching the public beta in June, Zeer has been on quite a roll: they have been named as a top 50 website by Time magazine, been profiled in the Globe, and won the audience choice award at WebInno 18. Currently, Zeer’s business model is based on advertising (AdSense to start) and providing data on and/or access to the users to CPG firms. One question I have is whether food manufacturers could issue coupons to targeted users via Zeer.
