Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Former Googlers’ AngelPad Graduates 15 More Start-Ups

San Francisco-based start-up incubator AngelPad has developed a reputation for its well-pedigreed participants (who are often from Google, as are the AngelPad mentors), and its focus on business-to-business Internet companies, especially e-commerce start-ups (though a few consumer products still make it through).

Today AngelPad launches the 15 start-ups that comprise its third 10-week-long class.

This class was AngelPad’s first to be gifted $100,000 upon starting the program, in line with competing start-up accelerators TechStars and Y Combinator. Though most participants didn’t know about the six-figure funding when they applied, AngelPad leader Thomas Korte said it has had a significant effect on their development, allowing them to hire earlier and do things like pay for outside user interface help and spend $5,000 on Google AdWords or Facebook advertising.

Here is how the companies described themselves in a handout given to investors at AngelPad’s Demo Day this afternoon:

SourceNinja solves the legal pains, maintenance headaches, and security nightmares of using open source. Founders are former Symantec, PGP and McAfee engineers.

SimpleReach offers real-time social intelligence and content recommendation for publishers. Founders are experienced in building high performance ad systems and are repeat entrepreneurs based in NY.

LendFriend is an online platform for friends and family loans. Founders are Stanford grads and repeat entrepreneurs with experience at PayPal, UBS, Deutsche Bank and RBC.

Pipedrive is a pipeline tool for active deal makers helping them stay organized and focused on closing deals. Founders are former Skype engineers and experienced deal makers from Estonia.

Frugalo is a social savings platform enabling online shoppers to discover and share awesome offers through their social network. Founders previously worked at Digg and are engineers with a strong background in consumer products.

iDoneThis is a daily productivity check-in for individuals and teams to track and coordinate progress. Founders are a former Yelp engineer, physics PhD student and corporate lawyer.

Prizzm enables businesses to reward their customers for sharing feedback. Founder is a CRM veteran (Salesforce, Scopus, Siebel) and a second-time entrepreneur.

Buffer is a more intelligent way to share updates at optimal times to social networks. Founders are repeat entrepreneurs from the U.K. and Austria with a Master’s degree in computer science.

Wishery integrates SaaS applications with email clients to help business communicators optimize customer retention. Founders are a serial entrepreneur with deep marketing experience and a Microsoft engineer with a Master’s degree in information security.

Shoplogic gives e-commerce merchants an intelligent way to optimize and manage their promotions. Founders are engineers, scientists, and product managers from data-driven companies such as Adchemy and Khimetrics.

Kout is a dead-simple e-commerce/payments platform, designed to work seamlessly across social, mobile, web. Founders are hackers with deep affiliate marketing & e-commerce knowledge.

LikeAndy is a complete solution to manage and share mobile videos and the only place you need for your personal videos. Founders have PhDs in video streaming and processing and are ex-Googlers (Google Video and YouTube).

Storie is a mobile social media platform for publishing and sharing content in the form of photo-based articles and stories. Founder is an engineer and ex-Google and YouTube product manager.

Vungle is a platform for mobile developers to launch and manage video advertising campaigns. Founders previously ran a video start-up and are outrageous marketers, moving over from London.

Tapviva is mobile food ordering built atop a next-generation restaurant technology platform. Founders have been developing technology products together for over a decade.

Image via CoverHound blog.

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