Cool Startups at Pitch San Francisco

Pitch San Francisco ’11 is now over. An interesting gathering of over 90 startups presenting their products and services to VCs and the public, ended with the following winners:

• LawPivot and NetPlenish won VC Judges Award
• Doot won People’s Choice MVP Award

Congratulations!

More Cool Startups

But other startups are worth mentioning. For example:

• DealAngel: Could potentially do for hotels what HipMunk did for air travel, DealAngel has a proprietary algorithm that statistically compares hotel deals in an area to tell you which ones are actually good deals in a beautiful display that makes it easy to spot hotels and the best deals. According to Co-Founder and COO Bob Rogers, Expedia, Orbitz and the usual travel sites are not completely transparent when it comes to presenting you with the best price and they are aiming at disrupting this market. If they can crack the code and present users with a better way of saving on travel, that’s a huge market potential.
• Let’s Listen: Yet another music site? Not quite. Let’s Listen is unique because it allows you to listen to music with your friends, online. It basically allows you and your friends to share your music library, then select a song to play and everyone will listen to the song at the same time while chatting. Simple, yet powerful. At first I was skeptic, but after watching my 15-year-old niece chat with her friends on Skype for hours while listening to music, I’m sold. Worth checking out.
• CheckInOnMe: Want simple tech that works? I was impressed with this service. Imagine you are a girl leaving that late night study session at the college library, preparing for tomorrow’s exam. Now you have to walk all the way through the parking lot to your car or bus station. You activate CheckInOn.Me and every few minutes you get a text checking in on you. If you reply to the text, everything is fine. If you fail to reply or you reply without using the correct pass phrase, the service will alert your friends and family (you decide who) that something is not right. Is simple SMS tech used in a clever way. The possibilities are many (families checking on their kids, realtors going to other people’s homes, even babysitters).

If you missed this year’s event, make sure to sign up for the next one!