Capital Factory Selects Companies for Startup Incubator Program
Four Austin companies and one California company were chosen Wednesday to participate in a summer startup program run by local technology incubator Capital Factory.
The winners were:
- Cubit Planning: Environmental reports at the click of a button (Austin)
- Famigo: Mobile games that bring the family together (Austin)
- Homstie: Person-to-person marketplace for storage space (California)
- Hourville: A marketplace for services by the hour (Austin)
- PetzMD: A pet health website (Austin)
More than 250 companies applied for the program, which gives the winners a cash investment of up to $20,000 along with more than $20,000 in free legal, public relations, and accounting services. In addition, some of the top entrepreneurs in Central Texas will act as mentors to the startup teams.
"Every entrepreneur we talked to was interested and eager for interactions with the mentors," said Sam Decker, managing director of Capital Factory. "Also, the mentors got more excited about helping these entrepreneurs as we got to know the entrepreneurs and narrowed in on five companies. I think all of us are excited to get started and take these companies to the next level this summer."
Chuck Gordon, the founder and CEO of Homstie, said he plans to relocate his company from Los Angeles to Austin this summer.
"Homstie is at the perfect stage to benefit from Capital Factory because we are in the gap between seed and VC funding. Working with and learning from all 20 mentors will be invaluable to helping us bridge that gap," Gordon said. "We are excited about moving the company to Austin and becoming part of the city's vibrant startup community."
Capital Factory also recognized five startups as the top runners-up among the applicants:
- Infochimps: An open marketplace for data
- Notesmart: Buy and sell classroom notes efficiently
- Pear Analytics: Marketing decision analytics
- POLCO: Public policy portal for measuring your representation
- ProspectIdentify: Sales intelligence tool to find who to call, when, and what to say
The program starts on May 22 and lasts throughout the summer, ending with a "Demo Day" where the five companies will present their business to investors and the press.
