Here are your 10 finalists for Vator Splash SF!

Steven Loeb · October 2, 2013 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/324e

10 startups will be pitching their ideas to some of the top tech VCs in California

Vator Splash SF is finally here.

On deck and ready to present are 10 startups that were chosen through an a couple rounds, including an online popular and judges' voting round from more than 80 startups. In just a few hours they will begin to take the stage to pitch their companies to some of the top tech VCs in California.

At the end of the night, the judges will vote for their favorite! That startup will be the Vator Splash Winner. At the same time, the audience will vote for their favorite. That startup will become the People's Choice Award winner. Be sure to check back to the front page of VatorNews to get the codes to text. They'll be up for about 30 minutes. Or join us so you can watch them live and give your favorite startup support!

Get tickets here. https://vatorsplash2013.eventbrite.com/

Use "vatorfan" to get 20% off tickets. But hurry. Ticket prices go up at the door.

Here are the startups vying to win Vator Splash SF!

SweatGuru is the first marketplace that brings people together around fitness classes and experiences.By allowing anyone to organize, discover, book and share fitness classes online, SweatGuru takes the work out of working out.

The company also helps small and medium-size fitness businesses get online and be more successful. By offering the first easy to use, affordable tools for marketing, scheduling, payments and staying in touch with clients, SweatGuru allows fitness professionals to spend more of their time teaching, and less time behind a desk.

Presenting will be founder and CEO Jamie Walker and CPO Alyse Mason Brill.

Verificient is a New York City-based Platform as a Service (PaaS) firm specializing in scalable continuous identity verification solutions through machine learning and biometrics. It works with institutions and corporations in a variety of industries and verticals who are looking for automated solutions for verifying the identity of end users.

The company delivers the world’s only proctor-less identity verification system for online test taking. Its patent pending technology was first developed for the TSA to detect facial patterns and anomalies.

Presenting will be CEO and co-founder Tim Dutta.

Temnos offers scalable content intelligence services on a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) model.

In essence, users send content (documents or URL’s) to Temnos' API and they give the customer back metadata or metacontent for each item of content that was processed by theplatform. Armed with this information, users will gain insight into what their pages are about, which pieces of content are most relevant to each other (and why), and the various ways that pages can be characterized or re-packaged to their benefit.

Presenting will be Founder & CTO Tim Musgrove.

Whitetruffle is one of the fastest growing disruptive tech recruiting platforms on the web. With over 2,000 employers and more than 30,000 software developer and creative professional candidates in the network, it uses a proprietary technology to match qualified candidates to job openings.

It helps employers cut down their time to source talent and directly introduce them to qualified candidates who are willing to speak with them. Since the Beta launch in late 2011, several hundred companies like Eventbrite, Pebble, Asana, TaskRabbit, and more have hired using Whitetruffle.

Presenting will be CEO Alex Deve.

eShares eliminates paper stock certificates and options by replacing them with a fully electronic workflow for the issuance, signing, and acceptance of shares and options. It will also provide sophisticated cap table management tools and other financial services.

The eShares Certificates product are given to companies that issue new shares to employees, investors, and other shareholders. Additionally the company is partnering with banks who pay it to access the companies and employees that need to transact on their shares and options during liquidity events.

Presenting will be CEO and co-founder Henry Ward.

GetAFive is a video-base course review for high school students taking Advanced Placement courses.

The company offers about a dozen hours of video-based review, practice quizzes, and full length practice exams. The core product is free for teachers and students, and we fill a void by offering a robust tool geared to our most promising students.

The content is tailored directly to the AP syllabus for each class put out by the College Board.

Presenting will be CEO Lindsay Cohen.

PandaDoc is a tablet and web-based app that allows you to Send, Track, Negotiate and Sign Documents on the go, fast and easy.

We've all been there: you’re trying to close a deal, you’re fumbling with your paperwork, trying to negotiate back and forth over email, the phone, in person. The disorganization distracts from the clients’ needs. Then, you’re left waiting while they’re downloading, printing, signing, scanning, losing versions, losing your mind while tackling disorganized old-school filing systems. You waste so much time that your client starts to rethink.

PandaDoc works to solve that problem.

Presenting will be co-founder Mikita Mikado.

Traveling Spoon is an online marketplace that connects travelers with vetted, authentic food experiences, from cooking class to homemade meals, in people’s homes around the world.

It provides travelers with meaningful experiences and cultural exchange, and local hosts the opportunity to interact with foreign travelers while making an income.

Traveling Spoon has developed exclusive contracts with its channel partners, including tour operators and experience aggregators.

Presenting will be co-founder Aashi Vel.

FindIt connects multiple Gmail, Dropbox, and Google Drive accounts and searches across all of them at the same time. It takes the complexity of an advanced search and makes it natural and touch friendly so anyone can do it, even using a phone.

FindIt is the first to innovate on the actual process of search to make it work on a phone. The problem isn't the technology of search, but the experience of search. We understand the problems with the experience of search on a mobile device and have a solution with a UI and UX that makes the experience of search natural and touch friendly.

Presenting will be CEO Levi Belnap.

Collegefeed is a new social platform that acts like a personal career assistant to help students and new grads land their dream jobs. Employers use Collegefeed to brand themselves more effectively to students and find the perfect candidate for entry-level positions. Companies use Collegefeed to find the right candidates without spending the time and resources needed to canvass dozens of campuses.

With Collegefeed, companies get a branded presence to help increase mindshare with students, to reach more campuses and showcase alumni, and to select specific students they want to interview or hire. Students have already made connections, secured interviews, jobs, internships and financial awards with companies like YouTube, eBay, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Saavn, Adroll and many more.

Presenting will be founder and CEO Sanjeev Agrawal.

Who's judging?

These companies will be presenting to distinguished group of VCs and entreprenuers.

They include: Tony Conrad, True Ventures, Rob Coneybeer, Shasta Ventures, Jenny Fielding, BBC Worldwide, Howard Hartenbaum, August Capital, Charles Hudson, SoftTech VC, Jed Katz, Javelin Venture Partners, Lars Leckie, Hummer Winblad, Rick Lewis, US Venture Partners, Ben Ling, Khosla Ventures, Charles Moldow, Foundation Capital, Rick Moss, Hub Ventures, Andrew Ross, Grant Thornton, Dave Samuel, Freestyle, Kristian Segerstrale, Initial Capital, Alan Chiu, XSeed Capital, Deepak Gupta, BBVA Ventures, Erin Håkansson, Ackrell Capital, Alex Roizen, Jules Walker, and KPMG.

We hope to see you there tonight!

Steven Loeb

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Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs

Whitetruffle

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 13, 2013

Whitetruffle is one of the fastest growing disruptive tech recruiting platforms on the web. With over 2,000 employers and more than 30,000 software developer and creative professional candidates in the network, it uses a proprietary technology to match qualified candidates to job openings. We help employers cut down their time to source talent and directly introduce them to qualified candidates who are willing to speak with them. Since the Beta launch in late 2011, several hundred companies like Eventbrite, Pebble, Asana, TaskRabbit, and more have hired using Whitetruffle.

Whitetruffle’s name stems from white truffle hunting, drawing similarities between candidate sourcing and the hunt for that gourmand “jewel”, the white truffle, buried deep within forests in Europe.

Established in 2011, Whitetruffle is privately held and headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information and to register, visit www.whitetruffle.com.

Whitetruffle Homepage

True Ventures

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on July 26, 2007

True is a venture firm for early stage entrepreneurs. Founders of high growth companies deserve partners with experience, creativity and strength in the earliest days of company growth. Our team has directly founded over half a dozen startups and has over forty years of successful venture capital experience. We like to put that experience to work for our entrepreneurs.

GetAFive

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 4, 2013

GetAFive is video-base course review for high school students taking Advanced Placement courses.

We offer about a dozen hours of video-based review, practice quizzes, and full length practice exams.

The core product is free for teachers and students, and we fill a void by offering a robust tool geared to our most promising students.

We will disrupt the $4B enrollment marketing space, by offering colleges and univerisites the chance to interact directly with students that they want to talk to.

GetAFive preserves the best of both the Ed Tech and Lead Gen business models while simultaneously removing much of the friction.

We launched in March 2013 with incredibly impressive results.

Ackrell Capital, LLC

Service provider

Joined Vator on December 12, 2011

Ackrell Capital is an investment bank founded by senior technology investment bankers and entrepreneurs. We are headquartered in San Francisco, and have a network of partners throughout the U.S. and in key international markets. Our bankers provide each of our clients with:

EXTENSIVE DOMAIN EXPERTISE

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

SIGNIFICANT DEAL EXPERIENCE

FOCUSED SENIOR LEVEL ATTENTION

LONG-TERM, OBJECTIVE AND INDEPENDENT ADVICE

As a registered broker/dealer and a member of FINRA, we offer a broad range of financial advisory and capital raising services.

Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on April 23, 2012

Hub Ventures

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on August 17, 2012

Hub Ventures helps high caliber entrepreneurs build their world-changing startups better and faster. We operate 12-week cohort cycles at Hub Bay Area, during which participating companies receive seed funding and engage in best-in-class mentorship, collaborative sessions with program peers, and workshops and speaker events on topics relevant to impact oriented startups. We also connect companies with our extensive network of investors during the program and at Investor Day, an opportunity to pitch to hundreds of Bay Area investors.

SweatGuru

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on December 21, 2012

SweatGuru is the first marketplace that brings people together around fitness classes and experiences. By allowing anyone to organize, discover, book and share fitness classes online, SweatGuru takes the work out of working out. The company also helps small and medium-size fitness businesses get online and be more successful. By offering the first easy to use, affordable tools for marketing, scheduling, payments and staying in touch with clients, SweatGuru allows fitness professionals to spend more of their time teaching, and less time behind a desk.

View screenshots here.

Khosla Ventures

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on January 24, 2007

Khosla Ventures offers venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs. The firm helps entrepreneurs extend the potential of their ideas in both traditional venture areas like the Internet, computing, mobile, and silicon technology arenas but also supports breakthrough scientific work in clean technology areas such as bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, battery and other environmentally friendly technologies. Vinod was formerly a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins and founder of Sun Microsystems. Vinod has been labeled the #1 VC by Forbes and Fortune recently labeled him as one the nation's most influential ethanol advocates, noting "there are venture capitalists, and there's Vinod Khosla." Vinod Khosla founded the firm in 2004.

Traveling Spoon

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 3, 2013

Traveling Spoon is a fast-growing startup based in San Francisco that connects travelers with authentic food experiences -- from homemade meals to cooking classes -- in people's homes around the world. They launched in July 2013 with 65 curated, vetted hosts in India, Thailand and Vietnam, and are expanding with experiences in China and Japan soon.

The mission behind Traveling Spoon is to facilitate meaningful travel experiences by connecting travelers with local people, in their homes, around food.

Traveling Spoon: Travel off the Eaten Path from Traveling Spoon on Vimeo.

Foundation Capital

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on March 22, 2012

At Foundation Capital, we're dedicated to the proposition that one entrepreneur's idea, with the right support, can become a business that changes the world. We helped Atheros create the mobile Internet, EnerNOC invent the energy demand response market, and Netflix revolutionize media distribution and consumption, among many others. We're currently invested in more than 80 high growth ventures in the areas of consumer, information technology, software, semiconductors, and clean technology. Recent public offerings of companies we helped found or grow include Reponsys, Financial Engines and Envestnet.

Verificient Technologies Inc

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on August 30, 2013

At Verificient Technologies, we utilize artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer visioning and biometrics in forming our Trusted Identity-as-a-Service (TIaaS), platform for identity verification and authentication. Over the last 5 years, we've become a leader in the industry to deliver continuous identity verification and digital remote monitoring. Weaving these advanced technologies together with user-centered design and award-winning customer service, our patented automated approach, pairs usability with accurate results and true scalability.

Today, we're serving a variety of markets, including Higher Education, HR and Recruitment, and Remote Labor-Force Management (virtual work at home agents).

August Capital

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on June 3, 2008

Founded in 1995, August Capital is a leading venture capital firm actively investing in entrepreneurial teams throughout the information technology market spectrum.

Collegefeed

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on August 30, 2013

Collegefeed is a new social platform that acts like a personal career assistant to help students and new grads land their dream jobs. Employers use Collegefeed to brand themselves more effectively to students and find the perfect candidate for entry-level positions.

For a college student or new grad, getting that first job is as painful today as it was 20 years ago. Even despite all the changes in technology that *should* make it simpler, like social media, real-time technologies, crowd-sourcing, etc. Collegefeed brings together all the resources students need – whether that is online data or real-life networking – into one free platform. And since it’s a social media site, it’s delivered in a user-friendly way that the millennial generation is not only familiar with, but actually has come to expect.

Companies use Collegefeed to find the right candidates without spending the time and resources needed to canvass dozens of campuses. With Collegefeed, companies get a branded presence to help increase mindshare with students, to reach more campuses and showcase alumni, and to select specific students they want to interview or hire. Students have already made connections, secured interviews, jobs, internships and financial awards with companies like YouTube, eBay, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Saavn, Adroll and many more.

Temnos

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 10, 2013

Temnos offers scalable content intelligence services on a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) model. In essence, you send content (documents or URL’s) to our API and we give you back metadata or metacontent for each item of content that was processed by our platform. Armed with this information, you will gain insight into what your pages are about, which pieces of content are most relevant to each other (and why), and the various ways that pages can be characterized or re-packaged to your benefit.

Metadata Products

Temnos Brand Safety — detect and filter spam and potentially unsafe or objectionable content
Temnos Categories — organize content into major categories based on a standard or custom taxonomy
Temnos Elements — identify the elemental components and characteristics of a document such as the title, author, publication date, language, and reading level
Temnos MetaTopics — create customizable collections of related content whether that content exists within or across categories and topics
Temnos Tags & Topics — extract concept words, phrases, and entities that identify the subject matter contained in a body of text

Metacontent Products

Temnos Headlines — generate new, compelling, alternative titles for documents
Temnos Summaries — auto-create abstracts of varying lengths that encapsulate the essence of an article

Technology

The Temnos technology stack has been field-proven with major technology, industry and media companies including CNET, About.com, IDG, General Motors, Federated Media, Disqus, and Metaweb. Blending several methodologies together from semantics, AI and other diverse fields of knowledge, the Temnos platform enables developers of document-centric applications to optimize the value of their content and make their products richer and smarter.

Case Study

Drawn from Discussion: Smarter Promoted Discovery (Temnos & Disqus, PPT)

eShares, Inc.

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on July 15, 2013

eShares eliminates paper stock certificates and options by replacing them with a fully electronic workflow for the issuance, signing, and acceptance of shares and options. We also will provide sophisticated cap table management tools and other financial services.

FindIt

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 10, 2013

Searching for emails and files on your phone sucks! FindIt makes it easy and touch friendly.

FindIt will make your phone the first place you search for your information.

We are changing the way you search using your phone, making search across cloud applications visual and natural.

FindIt connects multiple Gmail, Dropbox, and Google Drive accounts and searches across all of them at the same time.

FindIt takes the complexity of an advanced search and makes it natural and touch friendly so anyone can do it, even using a phone!

Link to FindIt Youtube Video

BBC Worldwide Labs

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on August 9, 2013

Corporate business accelerator for digital media start-ups

KPMG

Service provider

Joined Vator on January 30, 2013

KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm, is the U.S. member firm of KPMG International. KPMG International's member firms have 137,000 professionals, including more than 7,600 partners, in 144 countries.

KPMG's Venture Capital (VC) Practice was created to provide the unique guidance and insights our clients in the VC community need to ensure success in the marketplace. Our services are specifically designed to help venture-backed companies navigate each stage of development—from inception to market leadership. Our seasoned VC professionals are dedicated to assisting clients through the many challenges faced in founding and growing a new venture.

Just getting started? Closing that big growth round? Contemplating an IPO? KPMG’s Venture Capital Practice can help prepare you for the opportunities as well as the obstacles that lie ahead. KPMG developed its service suites to align with the interrelated needs of growing companies on their journey to leadership. Each service suite draws on KPMG’s
knowledge, experience, networks, and commitment to quality and can help deliver significant benefits to growing companies. The Venture Capital Practice includes a large network of professionals who have experience working with new and established companies.

PandaDoc

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on July 26, 2013

PandaDoc is a tablet and web-based app that allows you to Send, Track, Negotiate and Sign Documents on the go, fast and easy.

Then, you’re left waiting while they’re downloading, printing, signing, scanning, losing versions, losing your mind while tackling disorganized old-school filing systems

You waste so much time that your client starts to rethink.

PandaDoc works to solve that problem