From the outset, we planned to fund 5 companies. We did so in about 6 months from when we launched. It’s been a fantastic experience working with each and every founder that joined Year One Labs. Three of those startups have since gone on to raise follow-on capital, which is our initial (but certainly not ultimate) measure of success. This concludes the incubation phase of Year One Labs.

We now move into the active management phase. This means we will not be investing in any new startups. And we have no plans for making future investments. We’re very pleased with the results so far, and continue to work with the companies on a regular basis, but less actively than before when the companies were inside the accelerator. Much of our responsibility now is to open up our network, help the companies raise follow-on capital, recruit and scale.

We want to take this moment to thank all of our investors and mentors. They’ve been an incredible asset to us as partners and to the startups as well. And they continue to participate, working with and mentoring the companies. Those relationships will last for many years to come.

We’re excited to see how the Year One Labs’ graduates evolve and ultimately create successful companies.

Ben, Ray, Alistair and Ian

They use game design to motivate kids to take on new challenges and help develop important habits like delayed gratification.

Parents create a virtual economy in their home where kids earn stars for completing tasks and redeem them for real parent approved rewards.

The company was founded by Kyle Seaman and Theo Ephraim. It’s still just the two of them (with the help of some freelancers), and they’re doing a great job. They’ve embraced customer development and Lean Startup best practices, have qualitative and quantitative feedback coming in on a constant basis, and the support of investors to scale.

Most importantly right now: HighScore House is hiring!

This is a great opportunity to join a startup at a very early stage, but with some of the risk eliminated. The team is executing well and has a plan of attack. And they need help to see the potential of HighScore House realized.

They’re looking for a: Lead Developer, UX Designer, Flash Developer and iOS Developer.

The best fit might be someone that’s a “jack of all trades” with skills in a few of the areas listed above. Here’s a portion of the description they’ve posted:

About You

• You know many languages and you’re comfortable learning a new one in a couple days
• Despite your preferences, you’re willing to use whatever tools are necessary to get the job done
• You think that Flash, when used properly, can be an amazing tool
• You don’t use the newest frameworks just to impress your friends, and you’re comfortable building from scratch when it makes sense
• You know your way around a linux box and know how the web works
• You want to work in a startup environment (fewer meetings, more freedom, more responsibility)
• You care about attention to detail and build solid code, quickly

Bonus Points For:

• Experience with AS3
• Experience with iOS and/or Android
• Knowing your way around Photoshop & Illustrator
• Having children
• US Passport

The team is currently operating out of Mountain View (for a short stint, initially) and Montreal. So people in either place or willing to re-locate are ideal. Here’s the link again: http://highscorehouse.com/static/jobs/.

You can download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/please-stay-calm/id431638774?mt=8.

A couple weeks ago, the company announced their seed financing. Now, Please Stay Calm is available for anyone to download and play. This is after a month or so of beta testing in Canada.

It’s great to see Ken Seto and Garry Seto, the founders of Massive Damage, get their game launched to a big audience, and we’re incredibly excited to see the results. They’ve built a fun game with a number of innovative features that we think push location-based gaming in the right direction. And this is just the beginning – as the team scales up quickly on user acquisition, they’ll be working equally hard on the game itself with lots of improvements, enhancements and cool stuff on the way.

Congrats Ken and Garry — and to your entire team — enjoy the moment and keep going!

A few weeks ago they announced the launch of their first game, Please Stay Calm on the Canadian iOS App Store. The results have been very impressive so far, watching how actively players get into the game, stay engaged and enjoy themselves. The goal of the Canadian launch was to test things, vet some of the core concepts, work out the kinks and get lots of feedback. Massive Damage accomplished all of that, and is gearing up for their US launch in mid-October.

The funding will be used for continued development and marketing of the game to a broader audience. It’s great to see the guys (Ken Seto and Garry Seto + their team) get to the next stage after 9 or so months with Year One Labs. We’ll continue to work closely with Ken and Garry, helping out in any way we can. A couple of the Year One Labs partners also happen to be expert zombie killers…

Learn more here: http://nextmontreal.com/massive-damage-closes-angel-round/

You can download the game now: http://endlp.me/plzstaycalm

Ken and Garry Seto have been working on Please Stay Calm for awhile – and you can clearly see the craftsmanship and level of detail in the game. The artwork and cinematics are also top-notch and add a real element of fun and interest.

Here’s Localmind’s official announcement: http://blog.localmind.com/post/7574018517/localmind-closes-funding-and-is-moving-to-sf

TechCrunch also picked up the news: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/13/location-based-qa-platform-localmind-raises-600k/

We’re excited to see Localmind move on and “graduate” from Year One Labs. They were our second investment back in mid-November – 7 months later they’ve got the traction, team, strategy and funding to accelerate and execute on their plan. It was a great experience for us at Year One Labs and we look forward to continuing our relationship with the team for many years to come.

Qidiq is focused on the feedback space – helping people and organizations get ongoing feedback from a targeted group of users. There are lots of interesting use cases: events, politicians, companies, education and more.

This is a good example of the lean startup and Year One Labs process at work – they came into Year One Labs, explored an idea, invalidated some hypotheses but found something interesting inside of their analysis. They took that, expanded and changed the vision, re-examined it and talked to as many people as they could. With enough validation to continue, they started building their MVP. And that’s where they’re at now.

Jon and Elan have already released an iPhone application and are working on a bunch of things that they’ll have rolling in the next few weeks.

If you’re interested in getting early access, you can sign up here.

Why should you be attending next Monday’s event?

We know it’s a statutory holiday but then again entrepreneurs don’t really recognize holidays do they? You should attend because this is the most highly concentrated source of practical startup wisdom you’ll receive as a startup. This isn’t fluff about “vision” and “passion”. It’s about real entrepreneurs sharing stories and techniques they’ve used to build their startup the Lean way. It’s honest, metrics driven and no bullsh*t (which we assume you are too right?).

It costs $5 so we can order pizza and not have to collect everyone’s pocket change. Plus we have a cool 80s arcade game at Year One Labs. Honest.

Sign up here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1651424455

Raymond

There aren’t many details to share just yet, but they’re focused on helping people easily deal with all the stuff they have and want.

Sign-up here: happystuffapp.com.

They’ll be putting the product into early testers’ hands soon and focused on learning from the market, so it’s a great time to sign up and see what they’re up to.

“We prefer to call it a merger,” says Raymond Luk, Managing Director of Year One Labs. “Actually, we prefer to call it a takeover of Real Ventures but that didn’t fly with their PR firm. ”

The combined entity has also shifted its investment focus towards what is emerging as the hottest trend in technology investing: the undead. Several of the partners at Real Ventures are already members of this important target demographic.

“It’s clear that the undead represents a huge and growing market opportunity,” says Ben Yoskovitz.  “Startups can learn a lot from zombies, specifically about viral marketing, and tenacity.”

Startups are encouraged to apply to the new fund: braiiiiiiiiiiins@undeadventures.com

We’ve updated our home page quickly to reflect the merger: