Springtime means rain, the return of flowers and, after all, Y Combinator’s first demo day of the yr. Through the well-known accelerator’s first of two pitch days from the Winter 2024 cohort, a covey of TechCrunch staff tuned in, took notes, traded jokes and slowly whittled away at the handfuls of presenting corporations to provide you with a listing of early favorites.

From AI-generated music and grant applications to neat recent fintech applications and even some healthtech work, there was something for everybody. We’re back at it Thursday for the second day of pitches. Until then, if you happen to didn’t get to look at live, here’s a rundown of a few of the very best from day one.

TechCrunch’s staff favorites

Aidy

• What it does: Uses AI to assist corporations find and apply for grants
• Why it’s a favourite: Landing grants isn’t easy. Max Williamson, Peter Crocker and Greg Miller know this well: They’ve worked between them at The Rockefeller Foundation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where grants are common currency. Finding and applying for grants involves sifting through mounds of paperwork and submitting countless forms — an expensive and time-consuming process. So why not have AI help with it? That’s the concept behind their startup Aidy, which is targeted exclusively on Rural Energy for America Program grants for now. After asking a number of questions, Aidy evaluates a company’s competitiveness for grants by navigating eligibility requirements and scoring criteria, then takes a primary pass at filling out any relevant forms. Aidy is clearly within the proof-of-concept stage, judging by the state of its tooling. However the concept’s an interesting one — assuming the platform’s AI doesn’t make too many mistakes.
• Who picked it: Kyle

Givefront

• What it does: Serves as a banking platform for nonprofits
• Why it’s a favourite: In the event you’re within the nonprofit space, compliance and regulatory requirements force you to do funds slightly in another way. That’s where Givefront is available in. Co-founded by Ethan Sayre and Matt Tengtrakool, who previously launched a startup to assist loan-takers based in Nigeria, Givefront offers banking, spend management and financial governance services for nonprofits. Specifically, Givefront provides accounts to nonprofits to store money and integrate donations, payments and reimbursements, in addition to features for automatic reporting and annual regulatory filings. Givefront definitely isn’t the one nonprofit banking option on the market. However it appears to be considered one of the primary built from the bottom up for this purpose — which definitely has its own appeal.
• Who picked it: Kyle

Buster

• What it does: Software that links databases and enormous language models
• Why it’s a favourite: There’s loads of attention out there on corporations that make large language models – the larger, the faster, the smarter; you get the concept. But on the subject of actually deploying modern AL models within an organization, you run into data issues. For instance, Skyflow, one startup I covered recently, is working to maintain sensitive information out of the improper users of LLMs. Buster was eye-catching since it appears to be working on an issue that a complete mess of corporations are going to run into. Sure, recent models are cool, but selling software picks and shovels throughout the AI goldrush might be a darn good business model. I dig it!
• Who picked it: Alex

Numo

• What it does: Banking services for contractors in emerging markets
• Why it’s a favourite: Creating higher payroll solutions for distant and international staff isn’t recent, but Numo’s approach of specializing in contractors in emerging markets specifically stands out. It’s also smart that Numo is constructing a banking product on top of its payroll system in order that these contractors, a lot of whom could be based in countries with currencies that fluctuate incessantly, have a safer place to store their earned funds.
• Who picked it: Becca

Intercept 

• What it does: Uses AI to assist consumer packaged goods brands aggregate retail fees and dispute invalid ones
• Why it’s a favourite: Many CPG brands, especially emerging ones, have very small margins which might be squeezed by quite a few fees that cover shelving, packing incorrect quantities and shipping damaged products. Intercept says that spotting and flagging invalid fees could give CPG brands back a median of 15% of their revenue that will have otherwise been spent on inaccurate fees. This looks like an issue value solving.
• Who picked it: Becca

Nuanced Inc.

• What it does: Helps detect deep fakes and misinformation
• Why it’s a favourite: I’m interested by any technology that seeks to search out ways to parse through the inevitable rise of deep fakes and misinformation we’re already encountering. Artificial intelligence is becoming more sophisticated by the hour, and we’re about to enter a world where right, improper, fact and fiction have already began to get blurry. Deep fakes are of particular concern for ladies, as seen by what happened to Taylor Swift — and with slow government regulation on this space, I welcome any research and technology focused on trying to deal with our ever-increasing cybersecurity needs.
• Who picked it: Dom

Vectorview

• What it does: Custom LLM evaluation
• Why it’s a favourite: One in all my favorite things to read through when a recent, major LLM involves market is its benchmark stats. For instance, Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus model has a 50.4% 0-shot CoT in “Graduate level reasoning, GPQA, Diamond.” It’s super clarifying stuff. Kidding aside, it’s not. That’s why I like the concept Vectorview is working on, namely the flexibility to check LLMs and AI agents for a corporation’s particular use case. I think that by having its testing tools closer to the top user than the tutorial side of things, Vectorview might be onto something big.
• Who picked it: Alex

Abel

• What it does: Uses AI to assist lawyers undergo legal documents quicker
• Why it’s a favourite: Abel co-founder Sean Safahi said that this eliminates the necessity for lawyers to decide on “depth over breadth.” I feel any tech that helps lawyers make more informed arguments and decisions is a very good thing. Speeding up the legal process and making it more accurate looks like a solid strategy. It’s value noting that bringing AI and automation into the legal process does add a layer of privacy risk and users of Abel can have tread rigorously.
• Who picked it: Becca

Soundry AI, Sonauto

• What it does: AI-powered music generation
• Why it’s a favourite: Soundry AI’s technology might be incredibly useful to create music that sits neatly within the background. Muzak, elevator tunes, corporate learning soundtracks, whatever they play in loud restaurants which you can never quite make out, but may be a song that you realize. It’s an enormous market, and I can see corporations tuning their very own mixes to get the precise vibe. Then there’s Sonauto, a startup that desires to allow you to make hits. I’m more skeptical here, mostly since the music I really like probably the most takes loads of humans working super hard to push the boundaries of what music might be. The most recent Tesseract record is a very good example. Goddamn, what an incredible piece of art. That said, I’m open to being improper here, and that the robots will eventually write higher progressive metal and pop and experimental jazz than we humble meatsacks can. I really like music, I really like tech, so I presume that I’m going to eventually love their union. (Though I even have copyright worries here regarding source material, I have to add as I’m no fun.)
• Who picked it: Alex

Starlight Charging

• What it does: EV chargers and management software for apartments, condos and industrial buildings
• Why it’s a favourite: Most EV charging happens at home, unless you reside in a multifamily constructing, where infrastructure might be scant and forcing drivers to search out power elsewhere. That’s not only a headache for drivers, it’s unrealized revenue for constructing owners. Starlight Charging centralizes key parts of the infrastructure to maintain costs down. “Since our installation costs are so low, we will actually offer our solution for no upfront cost and still become profitable,” founder Andrew Kouri said. “Our payback period is lower than one yr. The corporate appears to be sweating the small stuff, too, offering its own charging equipment that adheres to the Plug & Charge standard for payments and comes with a removable cable that’s easy to swap in case of injury or vandalism. That ought to help with maintenance, something that’s tripped up many other EV charging networks.
• Who picked it: Tim

Eggnog.ai

• What it does: Online video creation and hosting for AI-generated clips
• Why it’s a favourite: I muted the Demo Day stream to offer this a try — you’ll be able to try my creation here — because one thing I’m consistently bummed out by is the dearth of latest sci-fi movies for me to look at late at night. We want more! So, video creation tools that lean on user prompts are super interesting to me. Mix within the undeniable fact that AI-generated stuff may not discover a everlasting home on mainstream video platforms (brand safety, copyright concerns, the list goes on), Eggnog might be onto something. Still, while my little video clip was neat, it’s about as near a feature film as my doodles are to the very best animated series on the market.
• Who picked it: Alex

Pump

• What it does: Bundles small businesses in order that they can save on AWS
• Why it’s a favourite: That is a terrific approach to assist small and emerging corporations get the cloud services they need without having to spend a significant slice of their capital on software. Pump’s decision to monetize through AWS, not the small corporations themselves, is wise and makes it far more likely it could generate strong traction. It’s easy to get enthusiastic about an organization called the “Costco of cloud compute.”
• Who picked it: Becca

Pico

• What it does: Seeks to prepare screenshots
• Why it’s a favourite: It’s a favourite because I actually have, like, 13,000 photos on my phone, most of that are screenshots. And when I want to search out a screenshot, I’m stuck looking through the abyss of my phone’s library. Having something that helps group these photos might be a lifesaver that permits me to take care of the essential tasks, like sending out timely memes to the group chat. The founder billed this as Pinterest for screenshots, which also grabbed me as I’m an avid Pinterest user. Anything that makes photo grouping and sharing easier and fun, is a product I’m certain to make use of.
• Who picked it: Dom

TrueClaim

• What it does: Uses AI to assist self-funded corporations save 7% on medical health insurance
• Why it’s a save: Medical health insurance costs are skyrocketing. Large corporations can “eat” the fees, but absorbing the high cost is way harder for small and medium-sized businesses. SMBs are sometimes forced to pass a big a part of what they pay to their employees. Seven percent may not feel like rather a lot, but since medical health insurance can cost hundreds of dollars a yr, the savings might be meaningful for a small business or startup.
• Who picked it: Marina

Manifold Freight

• What it does: Aggregates spot freight
• Why it’s a favourite: The founders’ discovered demand for spot freight technology constructing an analogous solution at Convoy and noted it was the one profitable a part of the shuttered company that was snapped up by Flexport. Manifold Freight is specializing in corporations which have 50 or more trucks, which implies they’re targeting a customer base that other freight software is overlooking. Plus, targeting larger carriers means their customers likely have more funds to spend on recent technology.
• Who picked it: Becca

Shepherd

• What it does: Personalized teaching assistant that mixes human tutors with AI
• Why it’s a favourite: I liked this because unlike other learning assistants, Shepherd works with academic institutions. This implies the startup will not be only authorized to tutor students, it also knows exactly what material must be learned. Shepherd also claims that it may help plan and manage students’ time. I’d have liked to have had this after I was in college. It wasn’t at all times clear which learning task could be most difficult, and that ate up loads of helpful time. A number of the countless hours I wasted learning to write down code and get this system to work, might have been higher allocated to calculus, which wasn’t easy either.
• Who picked it: Marina

Senso

• What it does: AI-powered knowledge base for customer support in regulated industries, starting with credit units
• Why it’s a favourite: I hate being stuck on customer support calls. A conversation can appear to last without end as an agent puts you on repeated multi-minute holds to assist work out regulations or whatever other problems I’m trying to unravel. If customer support specialists can quickly find a solution to an arcane regulation issue, it could save customers and banks (or insurance agencies) money and time.
• Who picked it: Marina