***UPDATED***
The finalists are in and they’ve all just showcased what they want to bring to the world at the Vator Splash event in San Francisco, Ca. These companies were chosen mainly based on peer voting held on the Vator Splash competition page where more than 176 companies participated and well over 3,000 votes were cast.
Here’s a little bit about each startup and what they are all about.
Vidli helps anyone buy, sell and rent streaming videos online. It’s an open video distribution platform that solves several problems, from piracy to getting the videos you want to watch. It is a virtual video store of popular and long tail videos on demand to watch and/or use on other websites. For content owners, Vidli provides all the technology required to upload, transcode, license, stream and protect videos. Vidli plans to make money by charging a fee, based on a proprietary licensing algorithm, for all transactions done on or through the site. It’s free for content owners to create licenses and sell their videos. The company said it is home to the world’s most lovable avatar, the Blue-footed Booby.
Thumbtack, is an online marketplace for local services. Users can find anybody from handymen and cleaners to tutors and errand-runners. Right now, people can find these sort of services on sites like Yelp, CitySearch, InsiderPages, or Craigslist. Thumbtack wants to improve or iterate upon these listing and review services by enabling the transactions for the service provider. Thumbtack states the local service market is greater than $500 billion, according to the Department of Labor Consumer Expenditure Survey. When hiring random people as opposed to actual companies, there is always a concern over safety. Thumbtack said it understands this issue and argues its safety by providing transparency and continues monitoring of every profile in its database.
AskYourTargetMarket.com offers a service for anybody looking to survey their target market. The company has built a platform where users which could be small businesses, startups, or even students, can set up surveys, pick out exactly who they want to get information from, and pay as they go. So no monthly subscription fee. AYTM said surveys start at $29.95, a significant price cut from going to research firms to get the same thing done. Surveys take between 24-72 hours to be completed and you can build them for free, you just have to pay once you want to deploy them.
Vokle is a live video streaming site with a focus on showcasing high profile speakers. The startup has built a platform where users can vote for who they want to meet, and then interact with them at a live online event hosted by Vokle. So for example, on Vokle’s site, one of the top requested speakers is Michael Jordan. If he were to end up participating, it would be set one a particular day and time. He’d be online via Webcam to answer audience questions and interact. The audience can either type questions or if Jordan were to select someone, show up through their own Webcam for an interactive chat with Jordan in front of the audience. The tagline for the company makes perfect sense, “Meet your hero.” The company is currently running an ad supported business model and in the future will be offering ticketed events which are free to create and sell tickets, while Vokle makes a percent of the profits. 
RentCyle, is looking to bring the rental industry online. For rental businesses, RentCycle offers a system to track inventory, manage reservations and increase distribution of goods. Unlike Zilok, which is a P2P rental service, RentCycle wants to focus on being the software platform for large rental companies, like Home Depot. On the consumer side, the startup wants to be the central marketplace for renting anything online. Some potential items that could be rented on Rentcycle include tools and equipment for construction, parties and events materials, consumer rentals like electronics and sporting goods and even video rentals. It offers its services free for consumers and a subscription model and commission fees for the rental business. The company recently launched Rentcycle Version 2.0 which brought in a directory of over 30,000 companies consumers and potential renters can search through to find that next bicycle they need to rent when they visit a foreign country. Check out our latest episode of Startup Sessions which features Tim Hyer, the founder of Rentcycle hard at work in his entrepreneurial lifestyle.
Controlbox is out to address an online issue the entire society of the Internet is vulnerable to – fraud when it comes to buying and selling things online. It’s mainly focused on private sellers and buyers, for example, I’m trying to sell my car on Craigslist and I decide to list my phone number for potential buyers to call me at. By listing that phone number online, I’m risking myself to get picked up by telemarketers who found that number. Finally, let’s say Joe, the buyer, decides to call me and tells me he’ll wire the money to my account and I believe him, he could be a fraud and just want my account number to steal money from me. Contorlbox comes into play as a central hub both buyer and seller have to go through. Monitoring and recording the entire transaction from starto to finish.
CinemaShare.com coins itself as, “crowdfunding for entertainment projects.” The company sells single shares of stock in a NASDAQ Capital Market IPO and free DVD as a stock dividend. It basically can work with movie companies or other entertainment companies to get to get their content funded. If a movie fan decides to invest, they would buy a share of stock, later receive a DVD plust their share of the film’s earnings. Other benefits come into play like video from the set, voting, contests, tickets, merchandise, etc. The company said its model works for any company with distributed media and a large fan base – ie, movies, music, NASCAR teams, video games and broadway shows. The startup holds a US patent for its product.
YourVersion offers a free iPhone app and Firefox plugin for users who want to get relevant Web content delivered to them. It grows with the user the more they use it. On the iPhone version the user can pick a topic and see relevant articles. If they like the article, they can thumb it up or ‘x’ out the articles they don’t find interesting. YourVersion then begins to learn your specific interests and tries to deliver better results. The company differentiates itself from similar services because of it’s real-time search. It also offers sharing features like posting to Twitter and Facebook. Its business model is to deliver highly relevant pay-per-click ads. It also plans to experiment with sponsored results.
MyeGamer.com has built a site focused on the competitive video gaming industry. Its vision is to be the single destination where all competitive gamers go to read news and find out where and when the next big tournament will be. At the same time, it offers its readers updated strategies on how to beat their next opponenet. It plans to integrate social features where gamers can get to know other gamers in their cities or across the globe and find out what people are playing the most. Its tagline: “We connect gamers to the competitive gaming scene.”
Intelligent Papers wants to be, “The next textbook.” The startup’s vision is to rid the world of texbooks by creating a handheld device which enables students to have all their textbooks on, take notes, highlight, take tests, and even do their homework. Besides being a technology company, Intelligent Papers could be considered a green company since its product could save trees and carbon emissions due to distribution of textbooks and all the materials that go along with it, like pens, papers, notebooks, etc. Its business plan is a combination of software licensing and a service model. It licenses its software to schools for a yearly, per student license fee and also provides backend cloud servers. These would be for content management and syncing of student data as well as classroom activities.
