Four new companies – Curagami, Knomad, Hostel Rocket and CareLulu – emerged from The Startup Factory 12-week accelerator program ready to grow on Wednesday night, being introduced to potential investors in a scaled-back showcase at the American Tobacco District.

Who are they?

What are they all about?

What are they looking for from investors?

  • Curagami

“What does a revolution feel like when it is happening in real time,” asked Martin Smith, CEO and co-founder of Curagami, a company that aims to provide e-commerce clients solutions to common problems with their online storefronts.

“In the past,” said Smith, e-commerce companies relied solely on tactics. “But every tactic is doomed to reach a point of diminishing returns,” said Smith, because competitors can easily understand exactly what you’re doing in order to generate revenue.

E-commerce is still just six percent of the entire retail market, said Smith, though it is a multi-billion dollar industry. He predicts that it will continue to grow and expand. When it does, Smith and co-founder Phil Buckley are betting companies will rely on content marketing rather than email or social marketing.

“We’re going to make you feel like there is an avatar that is your friend,” said Smith, in order to deliver relevant and timely content that tells a distinct story to the right audience at the proper time.

Even a small shift in e-commerce conversion rates – from 3% to 4% – could represent as much as a $2 million positive change in revenues on an annual basis, said Smith.

“Though we’re attacking things that seem tiny and incremental,” said Smith, “these things have a big impact on the bottom line.”

  • Knomad

Here’s an interesting statistic: just 5% of the US population listens to podcasts.

Nearly everyone listens to the radio. People in the US spend 7.2 billion minutes in cars – each day.

It’s not that people aren’t interested in compelling audio content, said Knomad co-founder Alex Carter, “it’s that podcast apps suck.”

There is a better way, said Carter, and that way is the Knomad app. Designed to enhance user experience, the app will feature a comprehensive search feature that delivers better search results than standard podcast search products.

The company plans to archive more than 3,000 shows and 50,000 episodes prior to launching in Summer 2014, and is betting on the idea to spread from early adopters to the general population due to social feed integration and personalized recommendations.

Carter, who grew up in Raleigh, is a self-taught developer that is currently working on building the back-end database the app will require in order to provide comprehensive search results.

Knomad is currently raising a seed round, though Carter declined to share their target raise or any detail about terms. They do intend to seek local investment and stay based in the Triangle.

  • Hostel Rocket

There’s a $94 billion market ripe for disruption: hostel booking.

Though separated by only one letter, hostel booking is radically different that hotel booking, said Michelle McBryde, co-founder and CEO of Hostel Rocket.

“Hostels can’t afford the commission fees of traditional aggregators,” said McBryde, because they book beds rather than rooms, and the margins are much lower.

Yet hostels are a popular travel destination for millions of people worldwide, said McBryde, “300 million.”

McBryde is a former hostel owner and operator that has devoted her time and expertise into building the world’s first meta-search engine for hostel rooms.

“We’ll book you any hostel within five clicks,” said McBryde, “anywhere in the world. Five clicks.”

The average customer spends up to an hour searching hostels, said McBryde, and is often frustrated with the process.

Four companies own six websites that make up the entirety of the search market, said McBryde, yet no one site aggregates all available rooms.

“Until now,” said McBryde, announcing an exclusive partnership that gives Hostel Rocket exclusive rights to aggregate and book listings from one of the four companies that represents 35% of the market (65,000 hostels).

Initial marketing efforts have reached 124,000 people, said McBryde, “people love Hostel Rocket.” The company is currently raising a seed round.

  • CareLuLu

Daycare centers spend $9 billion annually, said Patrick Matos, co-founder and CEO, “and that’s just to market their services.”

CareLuLu serves as a broker between daycares and parents searching for daycare options for their children under the age of six.

The idea is simple: parents want to find the best daycare for their child. Daycares want to generate leads and convert those leads into clients.

The company launched eight months ago in Washington, DC, and recently signed a large network of day care centers as a client, said Matos.

The average combined customer acquisition cost for both sides of the market, said Matos, is $107, and the lifetime value of a customer is at least $429 given their current data.

CareLuLu is raising a round of seed funding and plans to expand to ten additional markets in the next eighteen months.

“We won’t just provide leads to daycare centers,” said Matos, “our goal is to become the single interface between daycares and the millions of families that use their services.”