StartX, the non-profit accelerator for Stanford-affiliated entrepreneurs, introduced the most recent eight companies to have gone through its program at a demo day in Silicon Valley today. Those companies included everything from a non-profit dance program to a mobile tool for helping to treat autism in children presented to investors and press.

Founded in 2009, StartX was launched to bolster entrepreneurship within the Stanford community. While independent of the university, Stanford has committed $3.6 million in funding toward the program, which also has backing from organizations like Kauffman Foundation, Microsoft, Blackstone Foundation, Cisco, Intuit, Greylock Ventures, and AOL.

Last year, the university announced that it would begin investing in startups directly through the Stanford-StartX fund. Since then, it’s invested $13 million in 29 different companies over a period of just four months.

The program runs three session yearly, with about 10 startups per batch. Since the first class in Summer 2010, 134 startups have graduated from the program, and gone on to raise $2.1 million each on average. Recent fundings include a $37 millions Series B round for Genapsys, a $10 million Series B round for Kidaptive, and a $17M Series B round for InstartLogic.

There have been 12 acquisitions since then, with nine of those happening over the last 12 months. Companies acquired include Luma Camera, which was bought by Instagram, WifiSlam (Apple), Loki Studios (Yahoo), Aviate (Yahoo), Shopwell (HarvestMark), 6Dot (ProxTalker), PeerCDN (Yahoo), Nutrivise (Jawbone), Stypi (Salesforce), Accevia, and Thinkbulbs.

The nine companies presenting tonight include:

  • Apportable – Enables mobile developers to write an app once in Objective-C for iOS and then cross-compile it into a native Android app
  • DynaOptics – Provides technology that allows an optical zoom camera module to fit inside the current footprint of today’s mobile phones
  • Everybody Dance Now – A non-profit program that uses dance to cultivate self-esteem, establish healthy lifestyles, and engage at-risk youth to provide an alternative to drugs and violence
  • Inside Maps – Has a mobile app that enables customers to create 3D models of their homes and visualize furniture inside it before purchasing
  • Nightingale – Provides a mobile behavioral monitoring tool for parents, teachers, and clinicians of children who have autism
  • Nurep – Provides a secure mobile live video platform for virtual, on-demand medical device support to operating room staff
  • Part My Ride – An online car parts marketplace that aggregates parts data from reliable suppliers and provides a single point of contact for buyers to simplify purchasing
  • Travelnuts – Provides infrastructure that enables hotels to sell extra services, such as hotel transfers and local activities, directly from its own website

[Image Source: Flickr / StartX]

Article appeared in TechCrunch

by  (@ryanlawler)startx