Accelerators have the great privilege of making the first ‘selection’ of which startups have potential, and which ones need to be re-thought. I often take a look at an accelerator’s selection of startups to identify what trends seem to be popping up in the ecosystem. This past monday, LeCamping announced the 12 startups in their third season, so I thought I’d take a look at what kinds of startups seem to be big:

Platforms: the “API” of 2012

It seems that everyone and their mother’s startup are now offering platforms (note to self: RudePlatform.com, check on Gandi.net). Whether it’s Whale Street‘s platform that helps stock brokers harness the informative power of twitter and other social networks to inform them in their financial decisions, or whether it’s Webshell, the API of APIs which recently was one of 6 teams to win Etalab’s DataConnexions open data competition, it seems that people are catching on to the idea that platforms sell. Home’n’Go, the service that “makes home hunting simple” is also joining LeCamping for season three – their apartment listing aggregation platform has been in beta for a few months, and I’m personally using it to search for a new place in Paris, because it IS that hard to find a place in Paris.
JellyNote and Poutsch have gone the “social platform” route, with JellyNote looking to bring musicians together to colloborate and share musical pieces, and Poutsch looking to “express and collect opinions online.” Poutsch sounds a bit like HeyCrowd, but I’m sure they’ve got some cool plans for the future.
There is also Stormz, a real-time brainstorming platform.

Video + Education

I was surprised to see severaldifferent startups dealing with Video. Fleex wants to help you learn English with your faovirte videos on the web, while Explee is an online software that allows users to create informative videos. They both seem to be touching on the power of video to communicate ideas.

Data – moving it around easily

ForgetBox, a startup that sounds a lot like the Startup Weekend team DropSend from earlier this year, is an application to help you send documents, photos and videos easily. They have no size limits, and no progress bars – the basic idea, drag and drop file-sharing. Ever since Dropbox copycats have been catching up, it seems that everyone’s trying to get into the ‘sharing your information’ space – I think ultimately the key will be ease of use, which was what ultimately made DropBox a success.

Veezio – the 12th startup

One startup in the group touched on all three of the subjects – Data, Video, and “Platform.” Veezio is a fully automatic video analysis, optimization and indexing platform. I’ve known co-founder Steve Morin from when we worked at Plizy together, and I’ve been behind him on this one since day one. They’ve got some powerful technology behind their platform, which can automatically transcribe video, create a search engine for speech, keywords, and characters speaking in a video, and much more. I’ll be keeping both eyes on Veezio for the next few months that’s for sure.

3D – It’s like 2D 2.0

I’ve been watching LeCamping startup Augment for a while – although I knew them under AugmenteDev, as their URL shows – showing off their abiity to use augmented reality technology to allow users to visualize 3D objects in real life. I has happy to see once sole founder Jean-Francois Chianetta team up with Citizensup founder Mickael Jordan along with researcher Cyril Champier, and i’m looking forward to seeing what the three of them can do together. Last time I spoke with Jean-Francois, the technology looked fantastic, but they hadn’t quite hit the product-market fit, a problem I think a lot of AR startups are seeing. I’ll be excited to see how LeCamping shapes this startup.
Sketchfab is also stepping into the 3D space, hoping to become the youtube of 3D objects by creating a platform for designers to showcase and share their digital 3D creations.
So if you’ve got a 3D Video big data educational tool, you might just be on to something.