It is getting rather hectic these days in New York trying to keep track of each batch of startups getting a boost from an accelerator. TechStars New York naturally attracts plenty of attention but the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) program is busy making its own noise in town. The latest round of fledglings to emerge from the ERA program held a demo day Friday morning at Internet company IAC’s headquarters in the Chelsea neighborhood. ERA is an early stage investment fund and part of the growing crop of accelerators in the city out to help startups sharpen their business plans—and in some cases pivot to new strategies.
Companies accepted into the ERA program operate for three-months in co-working space in Times Square and receive $25,000 in funding. This summer’s class, which began in June, offers a hodge-podge of ideas from daily deals on products for Yoga to a rather timely Web-based platform candidates can use to finding funding to back their political campaigns.
The ERA program has graduated two prior classes of startups, including a winter class that had its demo day in the spring.
Here are the companies taking the stage this Friday:
AngelPolitics: An online platform that lets political candidates who need funding for their campaigns search for potential donors in the U.S.
Bizodo: A developer of a cloud-based app for creating forms as well as converting existing Word and PDF documents into Web documents that can be signed online.
CaterCow: A Web-based marketplace that helps users discover and book catering packages—such as mobile wood-fired oven pizza, gourmet hot dogs, and vegan Ethiopian dishes—currently available in New York.
HealthyChic: E-tailing site that offers private daily sales on active wear, food, and beauty products aimed at Yoga practitioners.
Houdini: A digital platform that lets companies outsource repetitive tasks over the Web to groups of workers.
Jetaport: Website for planning and booking flights and hotels for group trips.
Juniper & Trade: Pivoted from an online personal magazine idea called Glossi to create a Web-based market featuring curated custom home goods made by artisans in New York.
mxHero: A platform that adds control features to e-mail such as creating messages that can be read only once, or cannot be forwarded or stored.
SaleMove: Service that helps businesses create a virtual sales experience through video, voice, and joint browsing of Web pages for live interaction with customers online.
VidRocket: A software platform that helps brands and content creators leverage video marketing on YouTube and other social media sites.
