TechStars’ class makes pitches to VCs

BOULDER – A former rocket scientist and two teenage truants were among the up-and-coming entrepreneurs who made their pitches Thursday at the 2011 TechStars Demo Day.

The event brought together potential investors and members of the Boulder tech community to hear presentations from the 12 graduates of the startup accelerator’s latest three-month program.

TechStars offers participating startups seed money, mentorship and access to investors.

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The debutante companies were focused on the last item Thursday.

With a few hundred investors in the Boulder Theater and others watching on a streaming TV feed, they had found the right audience.

“There’s billions of dollars of experience in this room,” Boulder serial entrepreneur and TechStars mentor Howard Diamond said.

About two-thirds of the investors in attendance were local, with the other third coming from Silicon Valley and other parts of the country, TechStars chief executive and co-founder David Cohen said.

Most of the startups already had some investment money lined up, which is a welcome recent development, Cohen said.

“We see it more and more. … Mentors and investors are trying to jump in early,” he said.

Congressman Jared Polis, a TechStars co-founder, lauded the companies as examples of entrepreneurs who will launch “the next generation of great American companies.”

“All of these great ideas are not just great ideas in a void, but are being translated into action,” Polis said.

The TechStars Boulder Class of 2011 is listed below with their products.

Creative Brain Studios: Turnkey game development platform that allows software engineers to create and publish games for smartphones, tablets and computers.

Flextrip: Application programming interface that helps online travel companies link customers to the world’s largest selection of tours and activities and enables customers to make reservations and bookings.

FlixMaster: Technology with an easy-to-use interface that helps people and businesses produce branching-path video mashups that incorporate video and audio files, forms and images from across the web.

FullContact: Application programming interface that helps users keep contact information current. Utilizes a database of more than 100 million contact records to help developers write software that purges out-of-date contacts and replace them with current information.

GoSpotCheck: Uses crowd sourcing to help brands conduct secret-shopper style “missions” to verify that retailers are pricing and promoting their products correctly.

InboxFever: Platform and marketplace to build and sell email powered applications and add email functionality to web platforms

Meal Ticket: Provides a mobile, social, web platform that helps food-service distributors engage with client restaurants in order to boost customer acquisition, retention and sales.

Mocavo: First and largest free genealogy search engine that searches records posted online and helps users sort out irrelevant information.

ReportGrid: Application programming interface that helps software-as-a-service vendors and technology platforms give customers deep analytics and insightful reports.

Simple Energy: Creates user-engagement applications for energy utilities that use games and social media to help utility clients manage and reduce energy consumption.

SocialEngine: Software platform that suggests tactics to help social media users manage and grow communities and automates social marketing.

TruantToday: Software application that helps schools track student attendance and inform parents by text message if students are absent from class.