Top 500 startups companies

Early-stage VC fund 500 Startups today held the first of several demo day events for the fifth batch of startups graduating from its accelerator program. It was a fun event, with 32 high-energy founders pitching their companies to a room full of investors and tech press.

All of the companies were compelling in their own ways, covering a wide range of technologies, geographies, and sectors — you can check out the full list right here. It was tough, but we narrowed down a list of some of our favorites.

In alphabetical order, here are the standouts we saw:

CompStak: Founded by former NYC real estate broker Michael Mandel, CompStak has built a platform that compiles crowdsourced information about all things commercial real estate. In particular, the site tracks what’s known as “comps, ” which is industry-speak for comparable price rates on real estate leases for similarly sized and featured spaces. This information is valuable, but it’s also historically been nearly impossible to find — people who have this kind of data tend to keep it close to the chest, even while seeking it out from others. CompStak has created a platform where people can trade info they have with info they need, giving incentives to all sides. We’ve written about CompStak before, which you can check out here.

Cubie: Like a super lightweight and more fully featured Draw Something, Cubie is a mobile messaging app for both Android and iOS that lets people create and share drawings, photos, video, and voice messages inside a social chat client. It has become hugely popular, according to the founders, rising to the #1 social app spot in 16 countries, and amassing 5 million total downloads. The company has already attracted some hefty investor attention, with $1.1 million raised from a group of international investors.

Dealflicks: This company has a simple mission: To get more butts into movie seats. Up to 88 percent of movie theater seats end up empty, Dealflicks says, so it sells movie tickets and concessions for up to 60 percent off to make sure spots that would otherwise be vacant are filled with moviegoers. The company says it is now on track to have $5 million dollars in annual bookings flowing through its platform, and its app boosts online and mobile movie ticket sales by 40 percent. Filling last-minute vacancies by offering discounts is a strategy that has worked well for other apps such as Priceline and Hotel Tonight, so this could really be one to watch.

GazeMetrix – What if you were a brand marketer and you could take all user-generated photos and recognize when your logo or product showed up on Facebook, Intstagram or Twitter? That’s the kind of tool that Gaze Metrics provides, scanning photos posted to social networks and alerting brands when those photos start to go viral. The company is already working with more than 30 brands, and is sure to sign up plenty more as they learn about the technology.