YC winter 2013 demo day: Five startups to watch (afternoon edition)

As we wrote this morning, Y Combinator introduced its winter startup batch on Tuesday in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum, launching 47 companies to the investors and press who were interested to see what Silicon Valley’s most notable incubator has been cooking up.

We picked five startups to watch from the morning batch, and talked about some of the changes in this year’s program. The third batch later on Tuesday is off the record. But here are five startups to watch from the second batch on Tuesday afternoon:

Swapbox

As someone who frequently misses package deliveries when UPS or FedEx won’t leave things on my doorstep, I totally understand the pain Swapbox is trying to solve. The company is doing almost exactly what Bufferbox launched at YC’s demo day last August — before the company was bought out by Google. Swapbox is planning to put delivery boxes in retail locations across major cities, starting with San Francisco, charging customers $ 2 to have packages safely delivered. Having had great experiences using Amazon lockers in San Francisco, I can see why it would make sense to have lockers that any company or delivery service could work with. The key will be having enough lockers in locations that they can be useful, and making sure it’s easy to ship packages to those addresses.

Terascore

As more students start bringing computers, phones, and tablets into the classroom, Terascore is looking to make it easier for teachers to administer digital tests. By doing so, its trying to banish paper bubble sheets and number two pencils forever. The company charges teachers for access to the platform, and then lets them administer, grade, and return assessments to students online. Obviously the challenge with this idea is finding classrooms where all students have computer access — despite gains in technology, not every classroom does. But as the founders noted, eventually this will be the case, and at that point, it makes sense that digital testing will follow.

Meldium

Meldium is a startup that knows that for a lot of small businesses and offices, managing access to shared passwords often involves an Excel spreadsheet or not-terribly-secure means of passing around information. The company provides a cloud-based solution for employees to safely share passwords to more than 20 web apps at the moment, and will be adding more, basing its pricing on the number of apps and users a client needs access to.

Goldbely

Goldbely is trying to make it easier for consumers to purchase and ship specialty foods across the country, accessing items like Austin-based Salt Lick Barbecue or New York-based Magnolia Bakery cupcakes in a short period of time. The company pointed to the success of companies like Harry & David in building a consumer base around food shipping, and is looking to do the same with a wider selection of products. The company announced Tuesday that it’s entering a partnership with Facebook Gifts, meaning you might have access to better food Gifts on Facebook pretty soon.

Medisas

Medisas provides software services for hospitals, and its first product focuses on cloud-based software that allows doctors and nurses to manage the transition of care of patients when doctors switch from shift to shift. When one doctor leaves a shift and needs to pass along information about the patient, that process often takes place with hand-written paper notes, and Mediasas wants to create software that will bring the transition online, ideally cutting down on the doctor-to-doctor errors that can affect patient care.