Incubator program 500 Startups is debuting its sixth batch of companies today, and this group features quite a few that come from not just outside Silicon Valley but also the country.

500 Startups is an early-stage seed fund and incubator program that’s become a brand name over the last few years, mostly through the sheer volume of companies it’s invested in. The Mountain View, Calif.-based group invests between $25,000 to $250,000 in startups, primarily those aimed at consumers and small to medium-size businesses as well as related web infrastructure services.

The new batch contains 28 companies, two-thirds (20) of which are international. 500 Startups also brings lots of firsts in this new crop of companies, such as its first investments in Africa with the lead generation service startup Dropifi and two Middle Eastern startups Dakwak (provides website translation services) and Tamatem, a mobile gaming dev company focused on the Arabic audience. The new batch also contains eight companies with founders that are women.

500 Startups points out that it’s very committed to international companies, with 15 percent of its overall portfolio coming from outside the U.S. 500 Startups also recently added a Beijing-based venture partner Rui Ma, who will concentrate on companies in China.

We’ve gone ahead and listed a short description of each company in the sixth batch below. You can learn more during 500 Startups’ tentative demo day in July.

(And just like in the past, 500 Startups has provided a promotional video — embedded below — that’s a bit different than what you’d expect from other accelerator programs. This time? They’re borrowing those familiar bumpers from Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim programming.)

AppSocially (Tokyo, Japan): Provides an API that lets you track activity and conversion that enables clients to take action using customer data.

BinPress (Israel): Service that increases adoption of open­-source tech in SMBs and enterprise.

BoxC (Los Angeles and Shanghai, China): BoxC makes buying directly from sellers in China easier.

Credii (Bangalore, India): Enables businesses to make smart software and tech service decisions for their company.

Dakwak (Amman, Jordan): Provides effortless website translation technology.

Dropifi (Accra, Ghana): An intelligent replacement for mail­-to’s and dumb contact forms. It makes customer support more effective, increases lead generation, and generates business insights.

Feast (San Francisco): The online cooking school for the common man. It offers simple cooking guides that teach cooking techniques and recipes. It also features an online community where you can get feedback on your cooking.

Floqq (Spain): Makes it easy for anyone anywhere to learn the skills they need.

Flyer (San Francisco): Service that enables commercial real estate agencies to create property flyers online.

Geekatoo (San Francisco): Offers local onsite tech support where customers receive competing bids from rival companies that are verified by Geekatoo.

GreenGar (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Los Angeles): A platform that enables mobile applications and people to collaborate together.

InstaGIS (Chile): Geographic information system that allows retail stores to target their audiences.

KiteReaders (Santa Clara, Calif.): Publishing platform for publishers and authors to create, distribute, and market their children’s books on iBooks, Kindle, and Nook.

Koemei (Martigny, Switzerland and San Francisco): Algorithmic transcription of videos for search and accessibility, helping education and large enterprise get more value from video investments.

Mayvenn (Oakland, Calif.): Service that maximizes profits for hair stylists.

PinMyPet (Brazil): Software that allows pet owners to monitor and track their pets to keep them healthy and find them if lost.

POPAPP (Taipei, Taiwan): An app that lets you sketch out app prototypes quickly.

PriceBaba (Mumbai, India): A product search engine that helps you find things in your general vicinity.

Reesio (San Francisco): Service that simplifies the work process for real estate transactions.

School Admissions (Delhi, India): Service that helps parents choose the right school for their children.

Seat 14A (Delhi, India): From the company’s description: “A complete and affordable ensemble for the discerning man every week.”

SeMeAntoja (Monterrey, Mexico): Service that lets restaurants accept orders online.

Sverve (New York): Self-serve marketing platform for small businesses that connects with female social media influencers to promote products and services.

Tamatem (Amman, Jordan): A mobile gaming development and game publishing company that’s focused on creating culturally revelvant games in the Arabic market.

TRDATA (Ukraine): A self-described “Bloomberg for emerging markets” tht collects accurate real-time market information from remote places.

Tushky (Mumbai, India): Self-­serve online platform to monetize free time by offering interesting activities.

WHILL (Tokyo): Next generation of personal mobility for wheelchair users and the elderly.

Welltok wrangles $18.7M to make health plans better

Social health management startup Welltok has raised $18.7 million in its second round of funding with a goal of expanding into new markets, hiring new employees, and boosting product development.

Bypass catches $3.5M to help sports fans drink more beer

Bypass has raised $3.5 million to address the issue of food lines at sports games are frustrating. Getting up for a beer can mean missing an entire inning, and indulging your craving for garlic fries could result in missing the biggest play of the game, because if there is one thing in this world to be afraid of, it’s angry, thirsty sports fans.

All the details here.

Optimizely gets $28M, boasts 400% revenue growth

Web optimization startup Optimizely has closed a $28 million funding round led by Benchmark Capital. As part of the funding, Benchmark’s Peter Fenton will join the company’s board. Bain Capital Ventures, InterWest Partners, and Google Ventures participated in the round.

More details in our story.

Wandera raises $7M for mobile data optimization service for enterprises

Wandera announced it has received $7 million in funding from global venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners to fund its launch and global expansion. The company also announced the launch of its Mobile Data Optimization (MDO) service that helps businesses manage the explosion of mobile data usage in their organizations. Wandera’s cloud platform utilizes adaptive data compression and real-time processing to dramatically reduce a company’s mobile data usage and spend by up to 60 percent.

CompStak raises nearly $5 million from Canaan Partners

CompStak, which says it is the first-ever comprehensive database of commercial lease information, announced a $5 million Series A round of funding, led by Canaan Partners and with participation from 500 Startups, Founder Collective, and Expansion VC.

Rally Software to IPO on Friday

Rally Software is a provider of cloud-based solutions for managing Agile software development with 168,000 paid users and more than 1,000 customers, including 34 of the Fortune 100 companies. The company plans to IPO on Friday to raise $69 million at a market capitalization of $270 million.

photo credit: Matthias Rhomberg via photopin cc

“If you can wipe your nose, you can be a VC,” Singh said. “Please don’t tweet that,” he added, probably uselessly.

Singh’s presentation was titled The Rise of Angels, which just might have a little do with the fact that 500 Startups plays in the angel field, with investments in the $50,000 range. The startup scene has changed, Singh says, since the time when he raised capital for his first startup 10 years ago. In what has become a truism, startup costs are getting smaller and smaller than ever, rendering the big checks that VCs write unneeded — at least early in the business-building process.

Still, Singh warned startups:

“Most startups, your default state is failure. All I do, and all other investors do, is accelerate you to your endpoint.”

Source: LinkedIn

Paul Singh

Singh also warning angels and VCs that capital is increasingly getting commoditized as more and more sources are opening up, including crowdfunding.

The good news is that transparency is also increasing, with tools like AngelList (which gives you a lot of info on a startup or an angel), or GitHub (which tells you how many commits the development team is making), or even Facebook (which tells you how long those co-founders have really known each other).

Continuing the theme, Singh quoted Naval Ravikant, one of the people behind AngelList: ”Venture capital is open to attack by disruptive new business models and technology.”

One positive thing Singh did have to say about venture capitalists?

“When it comes time to scale your company, you still need the big checks that VCs can write.”

I’m sure VCs are overjoyed to learn that they do still have some degree of usefulness.

photo credit: davemc500hats via photopin cc

I spent yesterday in Mountain View covering 500 Startups Demo Day. There, I listened (and wrote furiously) as 29 startups pitched to a room filled with entrepreneurs, investors, and journalists. The event moved fast and there was a lot of noise.

After the event, I was enjoying a glass of wine with some friends who asked me about the highlights. Whether it is due to their compelling presentations, innovative ideas, or impressive traction, here is a list of the 5 startups I am still thinking about today.

Food is an easy way to attract attention. Chewse is a B2B marketplace for organizations that spend lots of money on corporate catering. Whoever is in charge of ordering the food can search from available options, place the order online, and sit back while it gets delivered. The company is based in Santa Monica and has thus far only tackled the L.A. market. Despite that, there is a waiting list of 700 companies salivating (literally and metaphorically) for the service.

As you may know from my various writings, I am NOT interested in anything relating to babies. However, when a former Amazon hacker takes the stage and tells the room how she grew frustrated while pregnant at her baby registry options, sat down to build a better alternative, and launched a product two weeks before her son was born, I got interested real fast. BabyList lets people aggregate products from multiple sources onto one, master baby registry. She is revolutionizing baby e-commerce, one bootie at a time.

I spent two and a half years living in rural Asia. I am familiar with language barriers. Waygo is a mobile app that instantly translates text just by hovering a smartphone camera over it, no data connection required. This is a brilliant solution for travelers who need help interpreting signs, getting directions, and ordering food. Had Waygo been around while I lived in Thailand, I would never have accidentally ordered rat curry, or ended up in a province 5 hours away from where I needed to be. So far, Waygo is only available in Chinese.

I am a sucker for a tutu. Also for tea. Thus a former Peace Corps volunteer presenting about tea in a tutu grabbed my attention, to say the least.  Tealet is a marketplace that connects tea drinkers with tea growers. Founder Elyse Petersen traveled the world as a global tea ambassador, meeting with local tea growers and helping connect them with consumers. The current business models are not fair for the farmers, and Tealet addresses this by cutting out the middlemen. Consumers can buy individual teas (and read the stories behind them) or go in for a subscription.

Everything sounds better in a Southern drawl. SupplyHog creates a better way to purchase building materials. My father deals with contractors extensively in his line of work,and I am actually intimately acquainted with how inefficient construction projects can be. This is a case of a startup modernizing a vertical largely untouched by the internet with huge potential for growth. The team is from Chattanooga, Tenn. and a “perfect blend between geeks and rednecks.”

A few of the runners up are CompStak, which crowd sources data about commercial real estate and sells it to brokers, firms, and large property owners; ed tech company Curious Hat, which was founded by former DreamWorks employees; ‘priceline for movie tickets’ Dealflicks; and WalletKit which makes it super easy for businesses to set up mobile passbooks.

As someone who has attended her fair share of demo events and been pitched by countless companies, I was impressed by the caliber of the entrepreneurs and startups that presented. Most of the ideas had clear value and were businesses that the average person, even outside of the tech world could understand. There were a few startups that use data in interesting ways, but none that dealt with “unsexy” topics like IT infrastructure, development tools or enterprise tech. There were also no hardware products or products targeting the health sector.

Do I think that any of these companies is likely to change the world? No. But they are eminently consumer-friendly and fueled by excitement about what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Check out full coverage of the event.

“Companies are unfundable until they are oversubscribed,” Ravikant said, before he left the stage and McClure played a pre-pitch video of dancing teenagers.

Here are the final 14 startups sending out their seeds today at 500 Startups Demo Day:

Cubie is a free mobile messenger app where people can create, and share drawings, photos, and videos. It has over 5 million users and has an average of 100,000 new downloads a day. Cubie hails from Taiwan and has spread rapidly across Asia. Founder Cjin Cheng. said it is the number 1 social media app in 16 countries, and is now expanding in the U.S..

Privy is a Boston, Mass. company that provides automated customer engagement services for brick-and-mortar businesses. Founder and CEO Ben Jabbawy said the average local storefront spends $15,000 a year on advertising, but have no idea about the returns. On Privy, merchants set a budget and upload their specials. The technology automates ad buys across search, social, and mobile to deliver customers who want to redeem the specials in-store. Storeowners pay $100-a-month subscription, per location, and McClure said Privy’s “early unit economics” look amazing.

Iconfinder wants to be the world’s leading search engine for icons. The team hails from Copenhagen, Denmark. Founder Steffen Thilsted said they have had 135 million icon downloads to date, and has surpassed Google in this vertical. The content is curated and contains licensing information, to target professional customers. Thilsted said the next target vertical is photos, followed by all kinds of digital media. Iconfinder raised $1.8 million in seed funding last year.

For small businesses and people without extensive expertise, creating animated videos is a challenge. Wideo launched a few weeks ago and claims to be 20x faster than traditional methods of creating video. Wideo is an online platform that allows users to create, quickly edit, and share their own animated videos. The founders are from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and CEO Agu De Marco said anyone can make “awesome animations in minutes.” He demonstrated his point with an animated video featuring Dave McClure’s head, a hot pink background, and peppy music.

WhoAPI provides extensive domain and website information on a massive scale. This “Twilio” for domains hails from Rijeka, Croatia. Founder Goran Duskic said “We may be from a small country, but this is a big ass project.” The Croatian government already invested and there is a long list of pre-orders while they build this service that “many people don’t even understand.”

UniPay is a mobile payment platform for Brazil, along the lines of Square. On stage, founder Sergio Costa compared himself to Jack Dorsey and said that current payment methods in Brazil, like checks and cash, are very inefficient. UniPay turns smartphones into mobile point-of-sales systems and enabling offline transactions.

Australian startup Kickfolio helps publishers promote their iPhone apps. Instead of screenshots or movies, brands can embed interactive iPhone app demos on any web page. Founder Chris Nolet said massive amounts of time and money are spent getting people to download apps. Using one line of code, Kickfolio embeds native iPhone apps into a website, like Facebook or on a tech blog, so users can test it out before they make a decision.

Italian startup Pick1 connects market research information with social media and contextual data, enabling marketers to efficiently exploit this data to better target audience content. Clients so far include Ikea, Nutella, and Toyota. Pick1 has already raised $1 million, according to founder Armando Biondi.

TradeBriefs is a company based in Mumbai, India that helps people become industry experts through a daily email. Founder Sree Vijaykumar said the service has 400,000 opt-ins subscribers in the fast-growing Indian market. TradeBriefs partners with industry experts to compile relevant information to email out. 20,000 C-level execs are using the service and the team is being approached by large brands looking to reach their audience. TradeBriefs is already profitable and sales are growing 20% every month, on track to reach $1 million in revenues this year.

Tealet is a marketplace that connects tea drinkers with tea growers. Founder (and former Peace Corps volunteer) Elyse Petersen took the stage in a pink wig and a tutu, dancing all the way.  ”This tea party started 2 years ago when I assumed the life of a global tea ambassador, she said.” Petersen traveled the world, partnering with local, small tea growers and helping them connect with consumers. Since then, Tealet has sold 100,000 cups of tea to 23 different countries. By cutting out the middlemen and large distributors, Tealet increases margins.

Cuponomia is a marketplace to search, discover, and share deals and online coupon codes in Brazil. The team is based in Sao Paulo. Founder Vinicius Dornela said the company has grown 10% week-over-week for the past 5 months, without spending any money on customer acquisition. E-commerce is exploding in Brazil, and with it, arises interest in innovative digital marketing programs.

WalletKit is a Software-as-a-Service platform to create, manage, and deliver digital passes to mobile wallets. The founders come from Chennai, India. During his presentation, Founder Kevin William David said the typical mobile wallet is complicated to set up. Using this technology, companies can quickly build a mobile passbook, with WalletKit powering the backend.

Club W  is a curated, personalized wine subscription service based in Denver, Colo. It has shipped over 100,000 bottles of wine. Founder Xander Oxman said there is a spectrum of wine consumers, ranging from people buying “two buck chuck” to people buying expensive, $50+ bottles of wine. However, the fastest growing segment is young people that drink $10 to $20 bottles of wine. Club W fills this middle space.

Spanish startup Traity ”measures what is inside people” by crowdsourcing personality information. Founder Juan Cartagena said he met his girlfriend online, but at first she didn’t trust him. Companies will spend large amounts of money on personality testing, but these methods are often antiquated and inaccurate. On Traity, people who know you answer questions about you to create a legitimate personal profile and “improve trust between strangers.” Potential customers include contact centers, graduates, care takers, and advertisers.

SupplyHog creates a better way to purchase building materials, so you can Get-Ship-Done. The founders are from Chattanooga, Tenn., so McClure introduced them “speaking hick.”  Founder Nathan Derrick walked on stage to country music and greeted the crowd with a “howdy.” He was then heckled by an audience member who said contractors “suck.” On SupplyHog, contractors source and price all the materials they need for their projects. They choose their method of delivery and pay online, which makes the whole construction process easier for manufacturers, contractors, and consumers alike. The team is “the perfect blend between geeks and rednecks” and is looking to disrupt this massive, and mostly untouched, vertical.

CompStak says it creates transparency in commercial real estate by crowdsourcing information that is often hard to find, difficult to compile, or not unavailable. It sells the data to brokers, firms, and large real estate property owners. It has made a significant dent in the New York market and recently launched in San Francisco. Founder Michael Mandel is a former a real estate broker. He said half a trillion dollars in commercial real estate transactions happens each year, and CompStak helps them make these deals. It has raised a over $1 million so far and is raising more to promote growth. The headquarters is in New York.

Waygo powers an instant visual translation for smart phones. Founder Ryan Rogowski visited China and struggled with the language barrier. Eating kung pao chicken every day because he couldn’t figure out how to order anything else inspired him to build a simple translation service. Waygo translates text simply by hovering your smartphone camera over the words. The service costs $14.99 for unlimited translations per language.

Chewse is a B2B marketplace for organizations spending thousands of dollars on corporate catering. The platform makes it easier to order food easily. In the two test territories, the startup has already fed 20,000 meals to big customers, including Wells Fargo, the University of Southern California, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Founder Tracy Lawrence said these companies spend $30,000 a year on Chewse just to feed their people, and it has a waiting list of 700 companies. It’s in Santa Monica, Calif..

GazeMetrix helps brands know when their pictures appear in social media. The technology looks inside photos on social media sites to identify brand logos. Founder Deobrat Singh said people are “throwing money” at gazeMetrix because social media is increasingly focused on pictures, but brands don’t know to access or measure this visual content. Singh claims the technology can tell when images are going viral before they do so. GazeMetrix already has more than 40 clients, including Yoplait, Nike, Svedka, Coca-Cola, and Under Armour. The founders come from Delhi, India.

BabyList is a baby registry that helps new parents find, share, and buy the things they need for their babies. Founder and CEO Natalie Gordon is from San Francisco. When she was pregnant two years ago, she created multiple baby registries because she couldn’t find everything she needed from just one store, nor could she ask for things she actually needed, like help preparing meals. Gordon formerly worked as a developer at Amazon and immediately applied her coding skills to the problem. She launched Babylist two weeks before her son was born. Baby “stuff” is a huge industry, and Gordon said she is revolutionizing “baby e-commerce.” Last year, $2.3 million in gifts went through the site.

Founder Harald Trautsch built everbill to provide an easy way to issue invoices and estimates. It is “the last line of communication” between business, customers, and accountants. The B2B is working with large banks, SMBS, and telecom companies, including T Mobile. The founders are from Vienna.

Instamojo makes “selling online as easy as sharing.” The technology enables the sale of digital goods instantly — without requiring complex forms, time-consuming steps, or coding skills — by copying and pasting a link. Founder Sampad Swain is from Mumbai, India, where he previously started and sold a successful company.

femeninas is a social engagement platform for women and fashion in Spanish. Founder Ricardo Lerch comes from Buenos Aires and started the company with his wife. Lerch said onstage that there are 200 million Spanish-speaking women, and they are spending massive amounts of money on fashion and beauty because they “care a lot about their looks.” Lerch and McClure both are excited about opportunities in the Spanish-speaking market.

iDreamBooks is a trusted source of book recommendations, like RottenTomatoes for books. The company is from Canada and India. Founder Rahul Simha is a bookworm and wanted to build a universal score for books. He said the Amazon scores are becoming increasingly diluted and positive reviews are for sale. iDreamBooks aggregates professional and critical reviews, rates it as positive or negative, and generates a “snippet.” Read more on VentureBeat.

Markerly gives publishers and advertisers the access to data analytics about ‘micro content.’ In the nine weeks since launching, it has looked at the activities of 9 million users across its network. The technology sheds light on the “dark web.” It tells publishers what users are doing once they get to a site, based on small actions like copying and pasting. The team is from Washington, DC. Founder Sarah Ware said these “micro data points” provide the greatest insight into user behavior and can optimize their marketing.

Brazilian startup Qual Canal tracks conversations about TV shows and ads in social media. Founder Andre Terra said Brazil has 200 million addicted TV viewers and is the second largest social media user base in the world. People talk a lot about TV in Brazil, and Qual Canal captures (and sells) this data to broadcasters, brands, and agencies.

TouristEye is a web and mobile travel guide that helps you discover, collect, and plan travel experiences for your trips and getaways. Founder Ariel Camus said online travel guides suck, and they seek to do this by making it more personal. It is based in Madrid.

Hunie is a community that helps designers get constructive and honest peer-to-peer critiques. Founder Damiam Madray said these “skinny jean-wearing, tea-sipping geniuses” are in high demand but are hard to find. There are currently 365,000 job ads for designers. Hunie seeks to bring designers together to create more designers, because that is what startups need.

Curious Hat is building a “mobile playground for a curious generation.” The founders, Luca Prasso and Erwan Maigret, spent 20 years working at DreamWorks. Prasso’s son inspired him to create an online environment that creates “new types of real-world interactions” between parents and children.

Dealflicks like Priceline for movie tickets. This Oakland, Calif., company offers movie tickets and concessions for up to 60 percent off to get butts in movie theater seats. Founder Sean Wycliffe dropped out of college to live a party-boy lifestyle. After running out of money, he returned to college and began seeing a lot of movies in theaters. He noticed how many empty seats there were in the theaters and recruited two cofounders to build Dealflicks.

Today is 500 Startups Demo Day. This well-known early-stage seed fund and incubator program has become a brand name over the last few years thanks largely to its colorful leader, Dave McClure. The 30-plus startups from the incubator’s fifth batch are about to pitch their companies to a room full of investors, journalists, and each other in the hopes of receiving feedback, publicity, and, foremost, funding.

This batch of companies is the first that’s run under 500 Startups’ new application process through AngelList. It is also a notably diverse group. Twenty-one percent of the 33 companies have at least one female founder, and 57 percent are based outside of the U.S., a fact made abundantly clear by the polyglot buzz in the room. McClure’s loudly touted investment strategy is to make a large number of small bets in “ugly duckling” startups rather than searching for the next big thing.

McClure showered pearls of wisdom and profanity down upon the audience at Startup Grind yesterday during his “Why Incubators Hate Your Startup” talk. In between f-bombs, he also beat home the importance of customer acquisition, a well-rounded team, entrepreneurial networks, and, finally (and most loudly), that most startups will fail.

Most (if not all) of the founders in the room today are actively trying not to fail. They are proudly wearing their company swag (in one case, a fairy outfit) and handing out business cards (and popcorn) before the presentations begin in the hopes of securing enough financial runway to get their startup to the next milestone.

Dave Goldberg, the CEO of SurveyMonkey, and AngelList founder and CEO Naval Ravikant will open the event with keynote speeches.

Watch a live stream of the event below:

At the end of September a not-so-usual venture gathering occurred in Digital October in Moscow. Just steps away from the Kremlin walls in the 35,000 square-foot space of the former chocolate factory, Geeks on a Plane, the international jet-setting startup, investment and tech tour with the best name on the planet, networked, bantered, and befriended the great and the good in the new Russian tech scene.

Masterminded by McClure, founder and “Sith Lord” of accelerator 500 Startups, and co-organizer of the most imaginative events in the Valley (Smash Summit and UnSexy), Geeks on a Plane takes his ethos on the road (or air), taking investors and executives on a global tour, learning about burgeoning technology markets. Described as having “a sole mission of uniting geeks and exploring cross-border opportunities” GoaP has already touched down in Latin America, Hawaii, and Berlin this year, with next stops planned for New Zealand and the Middle East.

“The market looks pretty fucking good in Russia for the next 10 years”

“Investors definitely should go for the Russian market” said Marvin Liao, CMO of Symbio and one of the Geek-on-a-Plane Eastern Europe participants. And Marvin should know – his former role was as commercial director of EMEA Markets for Yahoo.

“Russia is a big market with lots of talents. Modernization may be not great here but hopefully it’s getting better,” said McClure. He went on to say that the winning combination of Russian engineers and passionate attitude to business are sufficient reasons to compel any Silicon Valley company to invest in local startups.

“Right now, there’s much more engineering talent than design or product management talent but you’ve got one generation of entrepreneurs which have been successful in Russia. Hopefully they are starting to teach and invest in the next generation. The market looks pretty fucking good in Russia for the next 10 years. So the future is fucking bright! Time to buy sunglasses!”

Digital October – the hub of the new Russian digital scene

It took more than three years for GoaP to notice Moscow. This year it was, tellingly, the first stop in the Eastern European itinerary, with the team spending four days in Moscow meeting startups, geeks, and investors and learning about the trends in Internet, mobile, and other tech platforms. And drinking, of course, as McClure admitted.

Established in 2010, Digital October is indicative of the activity around the new Moscow tech scene and has become the focal point of its activities. Aimed at bringing together VCs, leading private investors, government, and private institutions, its activities range from TechCrunch and DLD’s Russian presences, from receptions with Cisco chief futurist Dave Evans and interactive lectures, to hosting the Venture talk-show on Moscow Business FM radio.

Landing Page itself saw the movers and shakers in this Moscow scene represented – travel leaders OktoGo, gaming giants Zeptolab (responsible for Cut the Rope), as well as key digital media players and investors such as Foresight Ventures, Addventure, Russian Venture Company, Glavstart and Yandex.Factory.

This story originally appeared on VentureVillage, VentureBeat’s Europe-based syndication partner.

He may also take the prize for most F-bombs per sentence of any investor.

I caught up with McClure at the GROW 2012 conference in Vancouver yesterday and spent a few minutes asking him whatever popped into my head. Here’s the interview.

VentureBeat: What’s your favorite startup right now?

Dave McClure: Favorite startup right now that I’m not an investor in … if AngelList is considered a startup, that would be my favorite.

VentureBeat: Gotcha — I know you’ve got a passion for AngelList. I heard that today.

Dave McClure: Totally! Actually, full disclosure, I’m an advisor.

Favorite startup in our portfolio — all my children are beautiful [Laughs] — right now, recent favorite I would say probably Refer.ly. Danielle Morrill — I’m really psyched about what she’s doing. Some older ones that I love: MindSnacks, AppStack, Dulio, SendGrid.

VentureBeat: What’s the hottest space to invest in right now?

Dave McClure: [Laughs] That’s such a lame-ass fucking question.

VentureBeat: Yes, it is! [Laughs] But I’m still asking it.

Dave McClure: Hottest space that I think is interesting would be education, particularly like ages 3-10.

VentureBeat: Most clueless founder question you ever got?

Dave McClure: Oh, that’s like … that could be its own show!

Hmm … most clueless founder question … I don’t want to be too harsh, but understanding basic shit that’s on Venture Hacks or AngelList or something like that. There’s a lot of available information online … basic term sheet stuff or valuation.

VentureBeat: What are the three most important things for startups to get right?

Dave McClure: Customers, problem, and don’t spend too much time on it.

VentureBeat: Best investment ever?

Dave McClure: I think right now that looks like Wildfire, an investment I made when I was at Facebook Fund, and it looks like a 40-times or 50-times return … $350 million exit.

VentureBeat: The biggest cause of startup failure?

Dave McClure: Taking too long to ship or not listening to customers.

VentureBeat: What’s the startup you thought was stupid but ended up rocking?

Dave McClure: Boy, there’s a long list of fuck-ups I’ve made in not investing … stupid is kinda harsh … probably AirBnB, because they had the cereal box thing, and I’m just, like, I’m not getting it.

VentureBeat: You’re in Vancouver quite often. What’s the best thing about Vancouver?

Dave McClure: This view is fucking amazing … we’re looking out at Vancouver harbor right now, which is gorgeous, astonishing.

VentureBeat: What’s the thing that pisses you off most about the recent Twitter API changes?

Dave McClure: Ahh … haven’t been following it too closely and I don’t think it’s necessarily irrational … it’s just like they decided to make some relatively hardcore decisions on how their developer community operates, which is quite different from how it used to operate.

Understandably, I know a lot of people are pissed off, but understandably, I think they need to figure the business model also. Maybe not my choice, but … I get it.

VentureBeat: What’s the most important thing you learned when you were at PayPal?

Dave McClure: Offline anything is expensive. Online is much cheaper usually to do almost anything.

VentureBeat: What’s the one thing you want a do-over on?

Dave McClure: Last 20 years? [Laughs].

Ahh … probably the opportunity to invest in Fab, Uber, LivingSocial, AirBnb … all those I had very significant opportunities with the founders — at least most of those I know personally — and totally fucked that up. [Laughs]

Image credit: John Koetsier

MoPix just launched a new framework that helps independent filmmakers create, distribute, and monetize digital video content. Traditionally, this is an expensive undertaking. By providing a user-friendly, web-based system that guides filmmakers through the whole process, MoPix makes it easier for the little guys to compete.

“There are over half a million independent filmmakers and alternative content creators looking to sell their videos,” said CEO Ryan Stoner. “If you decide to make a movie budgeted under $10 million on your own, you have a 99.9% chance of failure due to lack of distribution opportunities you can directly control. The crisis of independent filmmaking is really a crisis of viable independent film distribution.”

The platform can be used by anyone from aspiring Sundance auteurs to amateur chefs looking to document a cooking demonstration. Filmmakers upload their content to the site, as well as other featured content.

From there, the creators can deliver their content across a range of devices, incorporate in-app purchases, embed widgets, and send out push notifications. They can also execute marketing campaigns, refer to data analytics, and dictate their own monetization strategies.

The vision is to cut out the middleman, put filmmakers in direct contact with their audience, and give them ownership over their work.

MoPix currently hosts over 3,000 titles and 2,000 filmmakers. The company today announced a partnership with online community Film Baby that will put more than 2000 additional films into the MoPix library in December.

MoPix is currently participating in the Upstart Labs Accelerator Program. It has received investment from 500 Startups, P.I.E., and Merrick, and is a featured company on BoostFunder. It was founded in 2011. There are currently five employees with headquarters in Los Angeles, CA and an office in Portland, OR.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Continuing in its effort to fill the world with laughter, 9GAG rolled out a mobile app today that makes sharing its “wildly popular irreverent and hilariously funny content” easier than ever. Now, you can spread giggles as quickly as a text message. 9GAG also received $2.8 million in seed financing. Who said venture capitalists don’t have a sense of humor? Or maybe they just like companies with massive followings.

9GAG is a large online comedy community where users can discover and post content they find amusing and share it across social media networks. The platform generates millions of Facebook shares and likes a month and has over 850,000 Twitter followers. It is an extremely efficient way to make memes go viral, with 70 million global unique visitors and more than a billion page views a month. Apparently, the world is starved for laughter.

Aspiring comedians and comedy junkies can put their bit online in an environment far more forgiving than the harsh light of the open mic. Members can collect anything that tickles their fancy and share or comment as desired. Chances are, if you have seen absurd cat photos, cutting cartoons, or painful blooper videos online, 9GAG was somehow involved.

Now with the mobile app, people craving for a chuckle can access 9GAG’s content, photos, and videos from smart devices, download entertainment to peruse offline, and disseminate it. The app is currently available on iOS and will be available for Android later this year.

This initial investment was led by Freestyle Capital and True Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital, Greycroft Partners, returning investor 500 Startups, and notable angel investors like Kevin Rose, Tim Ferriss, and David Tisch. It will be used to help the company accommodate explosive growth and expand the team as well as the platform.

9GAG is based in San Francsico and Hong Kong.

With Humanoid developers can harness the strength of crowd-sourcing and get accurate results, not currently available from existing solutions such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, where people around the world can complete small tasks for payment, or outsourcing hubs like oDesk or Elance. Imagine a 20,000-person workforce at your fingertips completing tasks for $4.99 per hour.

Humanoid founder Matt Mireles wanted to build the API to solve a problem he ran into at his video-transcription company, SpeakerText. ”We launched SpeakerText, and it took us about a year and a half to get actual quality results from Mechanical Turk,” Mireles told VentureBeat. The problem, Mireles said, is that it was extremely difficult to ensure the quality of an anonymous, distributed workforce. For every dollar the team spent on labor on Mechanical Turk, it had to spend two dollars on quality assurance and cleanup. Everyone is trying to game the system, because there’s no accountability.

“Mechanical Turk is a marketplace with no sheriff,” Mireles said.

Humanoid operates like a good boss and does what bosses have done since the beginning of time, Mireles said. When someone is new, the boss pays closer attention to them and ensures that they’re producing quality work. As the quality improves, there is less need for scrutiny, and the employee can operate with more autonomy. This has never been possible before, because there wasn’t a software program focused on assuring quality.

“Businesses demand accuracy, and quality, but they can’t get it, because they have to manage the teams themselves,” Mireles said. In the case of SpeakerText, that meant hiring people to manage the quality of the work produced by the teams doing jobs from Mechanical Turk, a problem that is remarkarkably widespread.

Using statistics to predict how accurately a task will be completed based on a worker’s past performance, Humanoid is able to judge whether a worker is showing signs of fatigue, or if other factors could be interfering with the completion of a task. When these warning signs arise, the job is rerouted to another distributed worker who can meet the company’s standards, so no time is lost fixing work that is not up to snuff.

SpeakerText will live on as a feature of Humanoid and will continue to serve existing customers as needed. Mireles and team previously received funding from Mitch Kapor  and 500 Startups for SpeakerText. Humanoid has received funding from Google Ventures.

The companies are listed below, along with a brief description of what the founders are up to. Definitely stay tuned, as it will be interesting to see how many of the companies are the same on Demo Day, as they are today. It’s not uncommon for a complete pivot to happen during the course of startup school. Just ask Console.fm.

Twilio, SlideShare, ColourLovers and Plancast are just a few of the dozens of companies that have passed through the 500 Startups accelerator, or have received funding.

Here’s a list of the latest batch, with company descriptions in their own words:

300 Milligrams: 300 Miligrams is a priority inbox for team conversations.

72 Lux: 72 Lux offers consumers a universal checkout and personalized shopping experience while also offering a white-label version for publishers.

BrandBoards: BrandBoards is bringing Google Adwords simplicity and reach to live event digital advertising.

BrightNest: BrightNest  is the Mint.com for home maintenance. We help homeowners manage their most valuable asset with customized tips and reminders.

Cadee: Cadee helps golfers understand and improve their game.

 Central.ly: Central.ly wants to connect all of the social media profiles for small business owners.

Chorus: Chorus is customer feedback without the hassle. Automatically extract meaning from thousands of customer messages as they arrive in real time.

Conta Azul: Conta Azul is a web based SaaS accounting system for Brazilian SMB’s.

Contactually: Contactually is a personal assistant for your professional email contacts that connects directly with your CRM.

Dress Rush: DressRush is a ”Gilt for Weddings” Dress Rush is making Bridezilla’s everywhere clamor to get couture without the cost. Up to 100% off retail ain’t bad, right?

 eSpark: eSpark Learning is “Pandora for education” and creates custom playlists of super fun education apps on iPads for elementary school students.

Farmeron: Farmeron helps farmers across the world to manage their production data online and to do automatized farm performance analysis using exciting statistics.

Fileboard: Fileboard is a service accessed from the iPad that helps manage files and attachments across email, Dropbox, Evernote, and other cloud repositories.

Fitocracy: Fitocracy turns fitness into an addictive gaming experience where you level up in real life.

Forrst: Forrst is where developers and designers improve their craft and companies come to hire them.

Gizmo: Gizmo is a cloud-based multichannel marketing platform for mobile, tablet, social, and web.

GoVoluntr: GoVoluntr is a social platform that brings together volunteers, nonprofits, and businesses to solve today’s social problems.

Hapyrus: Hapyrusoffers the easiest way of leveraging Hadoop to make your system highly scalable.

HighScore House: High Score House turns a child’s routine into a game, making the lives of families easier and more positive than ever before.

Intercom: Intercom lets web businesses build powerful, personal relationships with their users, turning them into loyal customers.

LookAcross: LookAcross helps you to have more conversation by improving your odds of connecting with people.

LoveWithFood: LoveWithFood is the easiest way to find culinary deals & samples, curated by a community of foodies for foodies. For every deal, we donate a meal.

Meloncard: MelonCard removed your personal information from companies selling it.

MeMeTales: MemeTales is a mobile game like reading platform for kids. Fun like Angry Birds without the guilt. Meme Tales is a DEMO ’11 startup.

MoPix: Mopix is going to define what the movie experience can be on tablet devices and make distribution accessible to anyone with film or video content.

OneSchool: OneSchool is a free mobile app that connects students to the people, places, and things around them. OneSchool was an Alpha Pitch startup at DEMO ’11.

PayByGroup: With PayByGroup, ever front money for group purchases again. We coordinate your friends’ payments to the merchant so you can plan activities hasslefree.

Redeemr:  Redeemr helps businesses and celebrities get un-ignored by their social media fans.

Rotadosconcuros: Rotadosconcursos is the best test prep to get in to the government positions.

Spinnakr: Spinnakr says, Website targeting triples your conversions, but you’re probably not using it because it’s too complicated. Spinnakr makes it possible.

Swithchcam: Switchcam recreates the concert experience by combining and syncing fan-recorded videos.

Talkdesk: Talkdesk  lets your company have a contact center in the browser. It provides information about the caller by integrating with services such as Salesforce and Zendesk.

Tiny Review: Tiny Review is Instagram for Yelp reviews. The fastest and funnest way to say what you think about a place.

WeddingLovely: WeddingLovely is building tools and directories to promote amazing small and independent wedding vendors.

In honor of the Halloween reveal, 500 Startups put together this video tribute Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Watch it, if you dare.

[Image: Thomas Hawk/Flickr]

Visual.ly’s service is similar to document-sharing site Scribd in that it provides an easy way for people share information. But rather than simply uploading pretty infographics, the startup is aiming to give users tools to build custom visualizations — no design or animation experience required.

“Both regular and interactive infographics [bring in] a lot of interest (page views) for publishers,” said Visual.ly co-founder and chief marketing officer Tal Siach in an interview with VentureBeat. “But, to make a pie chart move is not that easy.”

Siach is correct. A lot of time, effort and energy goes into producing a comprehensive infographic. It requires skilled designers, lots of data collection and superior creative direction. “It would take hours and hours to create an infographic in Photoshop, which is why we want to simplify the process so that anyone can create them by selecting options and entering specific data,” he said.

The company launched an exclusive Twitter Visualizer Project, which shows off some of the capabilities Visual.ly plans to offer its users. Using Twitter’s API, the project generates a personal infographic based on a user’s tweets. You can customize avatars, compare two different Twitter celebrities and/or alter the look and feel of the image.

With 34 celebrities, five mouths, seven hair colors, 12 hair styles, two genders, 11 outfits, two positions and 28 accessories, the Twitter Visualizer can put each Twitter user in 17,592,960 different scenarios, the company said. A tool like could do great things for online news reporting.

The Twitter Visualizer is actually pretty cool. Yet, Siach said it’s just the tip of the iceberg for what the company wants to do.

Eventually, the company wants to create a subscription-based service for publishers, advertisers and anyone else seeking custom data visualizations. The service will go beyond what’s available to the regular community and give subscribers access to several different kinds of customizable data.

Visual.ly made waves when it debuted its closed beta at the 500 Startups Demo Day event in April. Since then, the company has had over 60,000 people sign up for beta invitations as well as a long list of talented graphic designers looking to show off their work. The startup has already forged many partnerships with publishing, design and distribution companies. Those partners include The Atlantic, CNN Money, eBay, Inc. Magazine, GOOD, OMD, National Geographic and Smirnoff.

Here’s a look at Visual.ly’s Twitter Visualizer Project at work: @VentureBeat vs. @MikeTyson: