An audio-messaging service, a new board for soldering chips, and a corporate performance management system are among the wide array of products making their debuts at DEMOfall, the quick-fire conference where startups get six minutes to pitch an audience of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and journalists.
Many companies worked around the clock to prime products for the conference, which concluded on Wednesday in Huntington Beach, California, after getting off to a rocky start on Tuesday. The adrenaline of all the coincidental launches helped soften the disappointment of a rainy day, but the show was plagued by network outages that threw a wrench into many nervous CEOs’ plans.
Chris Shipley, DEMO’s long-time executive producer, corralled a mix of 65 companies with impressive range.
Among a sea of small software startups seeking a first round of funding, one company stood out for presenting a better child car seat. Westfield, Indiana-based IMMI, founded in 1961, is profitable with 750 employees, but it timed the launch of its SafeGuard Child Seat to align with DEMO.
Email for Grannies
YackPack, a company run by StanfordUniversity professor B.J. Fogg, was among the companies launching on Wednesday. The Santa Rosa, California-based company has been bursting to come out of stealth mode.
Mr. Fogg spent a couple of years interviewing women, mostly elderly, and found existing technologies like email, phones, and instant messaging weren't good tools for communication on a personal level. “After talking to maybe 80 women,” he said, “I realized that email is just really damaging to personal relationships.” YackPack is a browser-based messaging system built on this focus-group philosophy. Images of contacts are displayed in a circle with the user at the center, along with big, brightly colored buttons in an uncluttered control panel. Its basic functionality, for now, is to transmit sound recordings between users, something like emailed voicemails.
The 25-employee company just raised its first round of funding from Ron Conway, Esther Dyson, First Round Capital, and a few others. Mr. Fogg has filed for seven patents covering YackPack’s technology.
'Schmart' Idea
The other companies at the conference include a glut of enterprise software firms promising to organize desktops and manage documents. A couple of other startups, SuccessFactors and Workshare, presented their plans for workforce performance management and controlling confidential information, respectively.
One of the only companies with a tangible product was Fremont, California-based SchmartBoard, which launched a new $10 circuit board that will make prototyping chips a much more feasible process. SchmartBoard’s new “ez” board has grooved pads into which integrated circuits can easily slip.
That means nearly anyone, including many curious conference attendees, can solder a tiny chip onto a board. SchmartBoard also makes tiny plastic links to fit chips. The company wants to make it much easier and cheaper for engineers, students, and hobbyists to play around with new chip designs.
The five-employee company, founded in 2003, is courting its first round of investment.
While some presenters were obviously quaking in their shoes, Green Array CEO Miles Walsh was a bit less unnerved—even when network problems foiled his planned presentation.
Mr. Walsh, a veteran of Silicon Valley, was debuting his new company’s corporate planning tool (somewhat similar to SuccessFactors), which helps businesses make decisions using rating systems and surveys.
But that doesn’t mean he was bored. Having come out of retirement after selling his last company, ad network Flycast Communications, to CMGI for $690 million in 1999 (later sold to Engage, now called Accipiter), Mr. Walsh was enthusiastic about being at DEMO.
CMGIMoney’s No Obstacle
When an investor expressed hesitation about launching the product so soon, according to Mr. Walsh, the CEO offered to put down an extra $100,000 on the spot to make sure money wasn’t an obstacle.
The lineup of companies also includes firms that are more web-flavored, with eBay tagalongs and plenty of Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which makes web applications snazzy and responsive.
Blog software company Six Apart is announcing future upgrades to its TypePad hosted blogging service. The San Francisco company will offer multiple privacy settings for a single blog, so family members, personal friends, business acquaintances, and strangers will see only the posts intended for their group.
TypePad will also have increased multimedia capability for photos and other objects to be folded into blogs.