Came across my list of startups-to-watch from late 20111, while doing some spring cleaning yesterday. It was interesting to go back and see how the companies had fared over the 2-3 years since.
The Risers:
The Survivors:
- Dwolla [CrunchBase]
- Plex (Then: plexapp.com Now: plex.tv) [CrunchBase]
The Pivotor:
- Snapp.tv ( Then: angel.co/snapp-tv-1 Now: snapp.info )
The Acquired:
- Simplenote2 [Acquired by Automattic. CrunchBase]
- Singly [Acquired by Appcelerator. CrunchBase]
The Departed:
- CardFlick [Shut down. CrunchBase]
- Persway.me [Shutdown, founder joined Google. CrunchBase]
- Motorola Corvair [Not a company, more a product. Sank.]
The list mostly conforms to my 3 key areas of interest in startups in 2011:
- TV interfaces (Plex, Snapp.tv, Corvair)
- Finance – Payment – Money Transfer (Stripe, Dwolla)
- ‘Easier’ Business Card solutions (CardFlick)
1st & 3rd were, and to an extent still are, areas that I looked at starting up something of my own if no good solutions emerged. While my itch on bringing business cards to the digital century has been slightly sated by CamCard, the TV itch continues unabated…
If you made similar lists, do share who was on it, and how they did. Might just make an interesting comparison.
And if you too have an itch to work on solving the TV interface problem, get in touch!
1 Admittedly, not all of them were started in 2011. Some, like Kickstarter, had already become successes, while others, like Persway.me, were still to be founded. The list is more an indicator of startups I was watching as the ones I thought would be big time hits, and/or were closely related to areas I was interested in.
2 After dropping SimpleNote from my interest list in 2012, I returned to it in 2013 after Automattic acquired it. As a user. In an interesting turn of events, I now host my notes on the start-ups to watch in SimpleNotes :)