i/o ventures has unveiled the second class of companies from its program. i/o ventures is an early stage startup program that focuses heavily on mentorship. They work closely with founders from product launch through the next stage of company development, sharing what has proven to work for product scaling, revenue growth and fund raising.
The following 5 startups made presentations on June 28 to investors, entrepreneurs and friends in the startup space.
CodeEval is a candidate evaluation and discovery platform for the recruiting industry. Specifically tailored to help employers find developers and engineers, CodeEval submits applicants to coding challenges, which are supplied either by the startup or the hiring company. Before founding CodeEval, Jimmy John served as lead developer for enterprise IT company Splunk. The company is seeking a seed round between $750,000 and $1 million.
Pieceable is a mobile development platform for the non-programmer. Without writing a lick of code, developers can piece together the desired style and content of their app all from a library of pre-built components. The company also offers Pieceable Viewer, a service that lets developers run their iOS apps in-browser. Before founding Pieceable, Fred Potter worked on mobile development at Loopt.
PrePay is a mobile marketplace that lets consumers prepay for store credit, in exchange receiving 10 to 20 percent more than what they paid. The credit, redeemable with a smartphone, never expires. The idea is that, while consumers save money, merchants increase customer retention and loyalty, with cash already in pocket. The startup was founded by brothers Brian Schwartz and Eric Schwartz, previously of AppMakr and Castle Harlan, respectively. They’re looking to raise around $750,000.
Cortex wants to be the fastest way to share articles, links, videos, images, music–anything that can be found on the Web–with friends, family and followers on social networks. The free app, currently available in the Chrome App Store, has 16,305 users and sees 2,350 installs weekly. The startup, founded by ex-Googlers and other engineers and designers, is looking for a $750,000 seed.
Mobbles is a casual smartphone game (coming soon!) where you find, collect, train and fight small creatures called “Mobbles.” Sound familiar? Yup. “Think pokemon meets tamagotchi on geolocalized smartphones,” says the company. Mobbles was founded by two CS grads with mobile and design experience.