Vote for your favorite Splash Spring 2016 Startup!

The History Project

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on March 10, 2016

The History Project (THP) is changing the way our history is captured and told by re-inventing a new form of digital time capsule. As a pinterest of emotional belongings, THP has created a space between social media and cloud storage to unify our most important memories and curate them beautifully into collaborative multi-media narratives that transcend generations.  We are the opposite of snapchat and recognize that as digital content explodes there needs to be a place where the most meanigful things can be preserved forever, richly and beautifully.

ScreenMeet

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on March 30, 2016

ScreenMeet is creating a new category on mobile that the incumbent web conferencing vendors are not addressing.  We have unbundled the killer feature of web conferencing, screen sharing, and offer it as a stand-alone app on mobile.  We are first to market with mobile screen sharing. To be clear, we are NOT competing to build a better web conferencing solution for mobile, we are creating the category of screen sharing on mobile. We also enable screen sharing from computers to phone, tablets or computers instantly with no download. 

This unbundling enables new opportunities and new use cases that were previously undiscovered.  Today, after 3 months of commerical availability, our mobile first business consists of direct sales customers (150+) who previously did NOT have a way of sharing their app remotely with their prospects.  Our desktop screen sharing business (50+ customers, 10 companies) is currently software companies that sell to SMB's and consumers.

Extrapolating from these trends, we believe there are huge markets that previously did not participate in web conferencing that will be customers of simple to use and simple to attend screen sharing.  This includes real estate agents, independent insurance agents, financial planners and lawyers. 

DataNovo Inc.

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on March 19, 2016

DataNovo finds prior arts to every patent instantly. Prior art is anything that shows an invention is old or obvious. Companies use prior arts to invalidate frivolous patents and show that those innovations already exist long before. Companies also use prior arts (or a lack thereof) to show why their products are not obvious variations but truly cutting-edge technologies. Prior art is what stands between just an idea and true invention. It’s the holy grail in intellectual property.

But finding prior art is a monumental task. It’s hard because you think it’s there but you don’t know where, if it exists at all. It’s expensive because it’s time- and labor-intensive to look through decades of products and literature to find them. It’s slow because prior art searches today are still done manually, by hands and by human, which take weeks, if not months, to complete. Manual searches often lead to poor quality of prior arts. This lack of quality has led to a historical number of trivial patents issued and litigated. 

Fundamentally, DataNovo aims to solve: 1) how to find the best and most relevant prior arts; and 2) how to find them quickly. 

DataNovo solves these two industry-wide problems by cutting search time down to milliseconds (from weeks/months) and at a fraction of the cost (e.g., at one tenth of the traditional cost). Enter just the patent number. Using machine learning and pattern recognition, DataNovo is able to identify the key invention in each patent. Leveraging on big data and artificial intelligence, DataNovo is able to use the key invention as part of its comprehensive prior art discovery process to identify the best, most relevant prior arts available against that key invention.

With these prior arts, companies are able to challenge frivolous patents, make informed choices on potential settlement terms, or design products around those patents to avoid willful infringement.

Another feature we offer is the innovation checker. You can check if your new product is truly cutting edge. Describe your product in as few as 6 words. That is all it takes for our machine learning system to understand the product that you have. We will then show you patents that might cover that product. 

With these results, you can then take steps to avoid patent infringement by designing around them. Never before do companies have this information without being sued or spending millions in patent litigation. The best part is that you don’t need to hire a patent lawyer or a professional prior art search firm to find these patents for you. The results are now available at your fingertips instantly, which saves time and cuts cost in ways never seen or done before.

Sailo, Inc

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on March 22, 2016

Sailo is a centralized online marketplace for boat rentals that connects people who want to rent boats to boat owners, charter operators and captains.

We use technology to change the fragmented $35B boat charter industry and make rentals easy and online. We take the slow, cumbersome and antiquated booking process and turns it into a seamless five minute experience. Today's consumers want to be able to select and book in minutes: with Sailo, users can search, compare and book in minutes.

Hostfully

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on April 2, 2016

Hostfully is a platform that helps hosts in the alternative lodging industry (e.g. Airbnb, HomeAway) create guidebooks that contain essential hospitality information for their guests - a "virtual concierge". Hosts share key home-sharing information, as well as local recommendations for food, shopping, entertainment and more - on mobile, web, and in print.

Hostfully opens up new sales and marketing channels for local businesses to reach tourists who are staying outside of hotels, a $100B market expected to grow 10% YOY through 2025. The host is "the last mile" to the alternative lodging tourist while they're on vacation, with enormous influence on the buying decisions of their guests.  Hostfully is tapping into this opportunity.

The San Francisco-based team comes from Apple, Google, and other successful startups. Our advisory board includes travel experts from Expedia, Vegas.com, SF.Travel, and Where (in-room travel magazine). We have traveled in home shares around the world, have hosted countless guests in our homes, and know the market well.

You can watch a 2-minute explainer video here: www.hostfully.com/video

Dysh App

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on February 29, 2016

Restaurant-hoppers, choosey foodies and indecisive diners alike will now be able to discover the best items on any menu thanks to the new smartphone application, Dysh.  The free app, launched by Toast Labs, Inc. merges user-generated content and mobile technology to create a conversation around the food, getting straight to the plate.

Users are encouraged to post photos of those hunger-inducing meals (i.e. curate the sort of #foodporn you might find on Instagram), and to help friends decide what to order by rating dishes on a 100-point scale.  Dysh answers both the age-old question, "what do I order?" and the modern quandary, "where do I post it?"

Of course, food sharing is nothing new.  But by adding a level of personalization and gamification to the process, Dysh's concept is to re-define how everyone finds and shares their favorite fare.  Diners can discover the must-have menu item at a particular restaurant or simply search for the best food and drink nearby.  The app is equipped with location services technology and provides custom results based on a user's exact location.  No more sorting through lengthy paragraphs of unknown reviews or crossing fingers that the server will be able to recommend something they will like. Dysh puts an end to eater's remorse by putting recommendations from fellow and trusted "Taste Buds" right at their fingertips.

Download directly from: bit.ly/DyshApp

Laugh.ly

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on March 30, 2016

Laugh.ly is launching the first streaming app dedicated to stand-up comedy. The app not only allows listeners to stream comedy from professional comedians (such as Chris Rock and George Carlin), it allows emerging comedians to upload and publish comedy albums of their own. Laugh Radio has acquired comedic recordings of hundreds of professional comedians. We also have direct distribution deals with the largest media publishers in comedy such as Comedy Central. No other platform has the ability to capture a significant portion of the $10b comedy market. We've built a cutting-edge on-demand platform for entertainment media. 

We've launched and here is a snapshot of our success:

• Selected by the Apple Store editors as one of the "New Apps We Love"
• We peaked at 10,000 downloads, now averaging 3,000 downloads a day and just hit 50,000 installs
• Average app rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars across 100+ reviews
• Overtaken Seeso and Comedy Central.com in category rankings (went up to #33)
• Ranked #1 in search terms Laugh, Standup, and Comedy
• Average listen time per day 48 minutes (compared to Pandora's 22 minutes/day)
• Day 1 retention rates are 33% without any retention marketing efforts (compared to an industry average of 20%)
• Week 1 retention rates above 50% (compared to an industry average of 30%)
• App store conversion is at 60% (compared to an industry average of 40%)
• Our push notifications have a response rate of 11% (compared to an industry average of 3.5%)