Canadian Startup Makes Fourth Batch of 500 Startups

Dave McClure’s 500 Startups announced their fourth batch of startups for the Spring 2012 cohort today and Vancouver’s Storypanda made the cut.

Storypanda is making kids stories collaborative by by allowing families to read, create and share their own stories on the iPad.

While the Storypanda team has already been working out of the Mountain View incubator program for over a month, today’s announcement couldn’t have come at a better time.

You see, Storypanda had been in private beta until yesterday, when their Storypanda iPad App went live in the iTunes App Store.

Storypanda cofounder Pavel Bains told Techvibes, “We went with 500 Startups because they are very committed to the family tech space—as demonstrated by them producing an entire conference about it [Bains wrote about the MamaBear Tech Conference here]. They are pushing our product and distribution to a further level to help connect families through storytelling. It feels good to be part of one of the most influential angel investment groups in the world.”

According to Bains, Storypanda’s goal is to be the Club Penguin of interactive stories—a safe and closed environment online where parents know their kids get quality content and are not exposed to the rabbit hole that many web applications can lead a kid down.

Storypanda was co-founded by Bains and James Chutter in 2011 and soft-launched at the GROW Conference last summer. Storypanda is focused on building their user base over the next 12 months by releasing one to two stories per month created by us and our selected partners.