Within the past few months, McClure’s has established 500 Startups funds in Mexico and India and revealed that over half of its latest class is based outside of the US. Germany is taking off as a entrepreneurial hub in Europe, so it is no surprise that McClure wants to have a presence in this market.

Versus IO is a comparison engine based on a natural language algorithm. It culls information from around the web to present a straightforward side-by-side perspective. Users enter two things they want to compare, such as electronic products, cities, or services, and the system will present a list of pros and cons.

Pitting the Apple iPhone 5 against the iPhone 4s indicates that the iPhone 5 is thinner and lighter with higher resolution and more RAM memory. A comparison of San Francisco and New York reveals that San Francisco is closer to mountains, notably more Facebook users, a greater number of singles, and a lower murder rate. New York, on the other hand, has more airports, a younger overall population, and is more ethnically diverse.

The German startup launched six months ago as a product comparison engine. It introduced the city comparison engine in October and now includes 240 cities, factoring in over 100 criteria such as education, crime rates, economy, climate, and infrastructure. Now, the site can make 10 million comparisons, is available in 18 languages, and receives 2.5 million visitors a month.

German investors HTGF and JMES Investments put $879K into Versus IO in April. The team works out of The Factory, a startup incubator in Berlin that received €1 million from Google in November.

Next on the agenda, 500 Startups Antarctica fund?

Sailthru offers several email tools that can be used by companies to optimize outbound email marketing campaigns as well as manage service providers. The first tool, Triggermail, monitors emails sent to customers and what happens once it reaches their inboxes. The second tool, Horizon, tracks customers browsing habits on their websites and helps to format and send customized newsletters based on the information collected. Lastly, GetConnect aggregates email services so that users can send email from one tool, rather than sending via a bunch of different tools separately.

The company claims it doesn’t have any direct competition, though there are others that do enable and track outbound email marketing such as Constant Contact and Exact Target. But Sailthru appears to be the only one optimizing company newsletters based on browsing habits.

The New York City-based company, founded in 2008, is working with a variety of companies, including Business Insider, Tumblr, Bit.ly, OMGPOP, WeGame.com and MusicNation.com.

Funding was led by DFJ Gotham and included Metamorphic, RRE, Pilot Group, Thrive and Lerer Media.