There are a number of incubator programs out there and I have been lucky enough to get invited to attend some of them in person. I attended LaunchBox Digital a few weeks ago and I plan on attending TechStars and DreamIt Ventures soon too. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to attand the Y Combinator demo day last week but I did get a chance to look at a few of the startups that launched. TechCrunch covered the 14 startups that launched and I was surprised to see I already knew the names of some of them.
Which of the Y Combinator 'somewhat bright shiny objects' do I like? Here is a list of the products I thought were the most interesting (in no particular order):
TicketStumbler - Aggregates sports tickets from other ticket sites. I love sports. So how could I hate on this startup?
CO2Stats - Measures the amount of overall electricity usage of websites and then enables site owners to automatically buy renewable energy certificates for them to offset their effective emissions. Saving the planet is never a bad thing.
BackType - Creating a searchable index for blog comments. This could be as interesting as Summize is to Twitter if people continue to comment on items on the Web.
ididwork - A management tool to show off what you have done at work. Status reports are always tough to come up with at the end of the week so this tool might help make it easier.
SlickSet - A white label social news platform that allows anyone to start a social news site and integrate it into their own website. Offers a solution to anyone looking to add some social news to their site. Mixx offers a similar white label news solution which was discussed on a panel I moderated at GSP East 2008.
PopCut - A music store that rewards early adopters by paying store credit to the first people who buy a song that later goes on to become popular. It pays to be a music trend setter.
Posterous - A microblogging platform that helps aggregate and manage posting in a number of places. Reminds me of the microblog platform Tumblr with the aggregation of Swurl but with a few more bells and whistles for managing posting to 3rd party sites like Flickr, Tumblr, etc.
Additionally, Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe did get a chance to attend and gave his thoughts and little video piece from his experience.
Let me know which Y Combinator products you like the best in the comments section below.
