Today 500 Startups hosted a virtual demo day for its 26th batch of startups, a group of companies that TechCrunch covered back in February.
500 is not the only accelerator that moved its traditional investor pitch event online; Y Combinator made a similar move after efforts to flatten the spread of COVID-19 required changes that made its traditional demo day setup temporarily impossible.
In addition to hosting a few dozen startup pitches today, 500 also explained changes to its own format and provided notes on the current state of the venture market.
Regarding how 500 Startups is shaking up how it handles its accelerator, the group intends to pivot to a rolling-admissions setup that will give participants more flexibility; the group will still hold two demo days each year — TechCrunch has more on the changes here.
Regarding the venture market, 500 Startups said venture capital’s investment pace could slow for several months. This seems likely, given how the economy has taken body blows in recent weeks as huge swaths of the world’s economy shut down. What advice did 500 have in the face of the new world? What you’d expect: startups should cut burn and focus on customers.
Got all that? OK, let’s talk about our favorite companies from the current 500 cohort.
Our faves
Juked.gg
Juked is a platform that wants to bring together into a single hub disparate parts of the esports world. The company’s pitch focused on the current size of the esports world (large) and its growth pace (quick). The company is betting that esports’ media landscape isn’t set and that there’s room for an aggregator of sorts that brings streaming, competitive standings and news into a single bucket.
In its taped pitch today, Juked said that since September 2019, it has grown from 750 to 25,000 monthly active users, which works out to 131% monthly user growth.
It’s easy to get the appeal of Juked, but one might question its ability to make money. TechCrunch spoke with Juked’s Ben Goldhaber about its revenue model. He said that the company expects to pursue a freemium model with a paid tier of $5 per month that allows users to remove ads and get access to a deeper feature set. Goldhaber also detailed a number of other revenue possibilities involving tournaments and more.
TechCrunch has a number of esports fans, and as one of them I’ll say that it’s nice to hear that the company doesn’t plan to depend on advertising. I’m tired of racing around the internet trying to piece together a picture of what’s going on in the professional League of Legends and Starcraft 2 scenes, so here’s to hoping that Juked works out. — Alex
Briza
Before 500’s demo day today, TechCrunch covered Briza’s recent seed round. The insurance-focused startup did not present today because, according to 500 Startups’ Neha Khera on a Slack channel set up for investors during the live stream, they’d already raised. Briza is currently tipped to take part in the next pitch session.
But Briza is part of 500 Startups’ 26th batch, so it would be odd to find it cool enough to cover and not mention it here. TechCrunch covered Briza’s round on its Equity podcast in early March. The firm’s $3 million round should help the company make a lot of progress on its small-business-focused insurance API business. Briza is a bit like the mind-meld of the current insurtech boom and the market enthusiasm for API-based businesses that take the complexity out of a service or need. — Alex
Thematic
One and a half billion videos from influencers have been demonetized due to music copyright issues. Thematic helps influencers avoid demonetization and also skip using stock music by connecting them to music artists to license fresh music. In terms of product market fit, I was impressed that the company was co-founded by influencers, such as Michelle Phan, one of the first makeup and beauty presences on YouTube. It has 50,000 users and is growing 20% month over month. — Natasha
Trash Warrior
Trash Warrior is an on-demand marketplace to help people get rid of their trash. According to its website, San Francisco-based Trash Warrior has helped with graffiti removal in SoMa, cardboard removal on Chestnut Street and sidewalk cleaning in The Mission. Beyond one-off individual customers, Trash Warrior has also signed on business customers like Blick, Fort Mason Center and Vanguard Properties.
It has completed more than 1,000 transactions since launch and claims it is a cheaper option than Craigslist and garbage trucks. While listening to Trash Warrior’s pitch, I thought about my experience with one other startup, Lugg, which helps people move furniture but has a built-in option to get rid of your trash too (with an additional, hefty, charge of a disposal fee). While Trash Warrior claims to be cheaper than other services, it has the same standard of charging per-piece with disposal fees when it comes to junk removal. So pricing gets a little weedy depending on the use. Plus, trash removal is an easy feature to add on for companies already handling set up and moving services. I imagine that Trash Warrior’s actual growth will rely on how many business customers it can onboard and whether it can follow up on its strong claim to improve the rate of recycling. — Natasha
The Atlas
Local governments spend roughly $1.6 trillion on technology software and services every year, according to Elle Hempen, a former Obama administration staffer and the chief executive of The Atlas. Her company was founded with other members of the last administration to help ensure that city officials were spending that money wisely. The community that The Atlas built is comprised of government employees and designed for them to share tips and tricks about the best technology available on the market. It’s a clever way to ensure that cities and states around the country have access to new tools that can help them run government more efficiently and provide better services to their constituents.
For vendors, if The Atlas can scale, it’s an ideal entry point into an otherwise opaque world with terrifyingly long sales cycles and an incredibly fragmented landscape. The team has spent five years advising local governments on software systems to implement and is now taking their advisory business and turning it into a product that any city administrator can access. Already OpenGov and Verizon are paying subscription fees to access and market to the company’s community, and the next step is to build out a marketplace for companies pitching wares. Even as budgets become constrained cities will still need to optimize and manage the services they provide. The Atlas gives them a potential map. — Shieber
Shiplyst
Shipping is a global industry that has produced multiple billion-dollar startups. In India alone, freight-trucking startups like Rivigo, Delhivery and Blackbuck have raised nearly $400 million, with valuations approaching nearly $1 billion. Now Shiplyst wants to bring the same local expertise to the shipping industry. In 2019, the Indian export market was some $330 billion, and Shiplyst thinks it can be the software provider to help bring efficiencies to the market. If Flexport is any corollary, it’s a multi-billion-dollar opportunity for the young startup. — Shieber
Pluto Pillow
Pillows are a wildly personal preference, and finding the right one (especially online) is hard.
Pluto’s approach: complete a survey (How tall are you? Does your head get hot while you sleep? How firm is your bed?) and they’ll send a custom-made pillow. Their “modular” design process lets them offer up 35 variations right now, with their algorithm picking the components (Pillow height? Density? What kind of fibers?) it thinks will come together into your perfect pillow.
That I can think of half a dozen people in my life off the top of my head who would want this is probably a good sign. They’ve already sold 10,000 pillows and are making more than $110,000 in monthly revenue. And all pillows, eventually, need to be replaced; if they can hone their algorithm just right, their return customer rate should be sky high. — Greg
GamerzClass
Like any activity, getting good at video games means learning from others. How do the best players time their shots, move across maps or coordinate efforts?
Figuring all of this out can take a ton of time, between watching pro streams, digging through subreddits for thoughts on a game’s ever-evolving meta nuances or trying to find decent highlight reels on YouTube.
GamerzClass wants to be MasterClass for video games. They work with pro gamers to make videos in which they break down their strategies across games like Fortnite, DOTA and League of Legends. Customers pay a monthly fee for a curated knowledge source, and the pros get paid to share their insight. Win-win. About a year in, the company says they’ve got 10,000 paying customers, and are projecting $1 million in revenue in 2020. — Greg
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