What do 12 weeks of furious coding and business planning get you? Nine startups are about to find out: East Coast incubator LaunchBox Digital's first class is wrapping up work and getting ready to demo their products tomorrow in the Washington, D.C. area, and Thursday in Palo Alto, Calif.
LaunchBox is a incubator/investment firm formed last fall by former AOL CTO John McKinley, ex-IAC exec Julius Genachowski, and Sean Greene, who founded Away.com and sold it to Orbitz.
The structure is similar to Y Combinator: LaunchBox invests $25,000 to $40,000 in early-stage tech companies -- enough to cover living costs and some other expenses during the three-month session -- in exchange for 6%-8% of equity in the companies. It hosts the founders while they work on their companies, and offers access to top-notch advisors. The next step for the companies: A real product that they can raise some real money to build.
This year's graduates, in alphabetical order:
Buzzhubb - Retro Facebook. Another crack at by-university-only social networking/group chat.
Heekya - The "Wikipedia for social story telling" -- tell a story, add pictures, videos, annotations, comments.
JamLegend - Free Web-based music videogame in the vein of Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, which artists can upload their music to.
Koofers - Tool for college students: Study guides, old exams, teacher/class feedback.
Mpowerplayer - Demo site/Facebook app for cellphone games: Play mobile games on your computer through an emulator; then buy them for your cellphone. Company already has deals with Electronic Arts (ERTS) and Sprint Nextel (S).
MyGameMug - Fill out an online quiz, find similar gamers to play games with online.
Razume - Resume help, interview tips, aggregated job listings.
ShareMeme - Send messages, polls, links to your friends.
Zadby - Web video product placement market. Get paid to put products in your YouTube clips.
And a few bonus video demos:
