South by Southwest Interactive announced today the 48 companies that will participate in its SXSW Accelerator program this year.
SXSW received applications from more than 670 companies and selected 48 companies to present in the fourth-annual SXSW Accelerator, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark.
The SXSW Accelerator competition takes place on Monday, March 12 and Tuesday, March 13 at the Hilton hotel in downtown Austin.
Six Austin companies made the cut including SceneTap, Hoot.me, Umbel, Foreca.st, Toopher and Tugg.
Tag: Foreca.st
Eric Katerman, one of the founders of Austin-based Hurricane Party, spoke at Austin Startup Week at the Tiniest Bar in Texas. He said the team at Hurricane Party spent a year building a product that no one really wanted. They’ve since created Foreca.st, which is in Beta testing.
Hurricane Party was party of The Capital Factory’s startup class of 2010. The founders, Rene Pinnell and Katerman received $20,000 in seed stage funding to develop their idea.
At South by Southwest 2010, Hurricane Party generated a lot of buzz. It’s free app for smart phones that helps people plan parties on the fly.
But as Katerman explains in the video, they created something that didn’t gain enough traction in the marketplace.
So they went back to the drawing board to look at what worked and what didn’t work. (The whole adage about failing and learning from it in a startup environment.) That’s when they came up with Foreca.st, an app that lets a select group of friends know where you’re heading for lunch or a party or any kind of get together.