BOULDER - During the last week of September two TechStars teams closed series A rounds of funding, and many of the other teams say they are close to signing deals.

The young founders of Internet companies aren't looking for particularly big bucks - at most about $500,000 - because they are building products whose primary equipment isn't labs or machines but brainpower.

madKast, one of the 10 TechStars teams that built their businesses during the summer in Boulder, said in its blog it will use most of the $300,000 it raised on product development including hiring "a couple of rock star developers."

Investors in madKast's Sept. 29 round included Centennial-based venture capital firm eonBusiness Corp. along with TechStars co-founders Brad Feld, managing director of Foundry Group; David Cohen, executive director of TechStars; Jared Polis, founder of Fuser, BlueMountain.com and ProFlowers.com; and David Brown, founder and president of ZOLL Data Systems. Angels Paul Berberian, founder and CEO of Raindance Communications; and Marc Silverman, executive director of CTEK Boulder also participated.

The four founders - Johann Moonesinghe, Josh Larson, Doug Ludlow and Tony Restuccia - have relocated to Boulder from Los Angeles and work at the new TechStars office at 1375 Walnut St. in downtown Boulder.

madKast's product is a "share widget" that lets blog readers share favorite posts via e-mail, text messaging or social bookmarking sites.

Like many Internet companies, MadKast's revenue model relies on ads embedded in the shared e-mails and text messages. It could also include premium analytics and enterprise installations of the share widget.

The company has a long-term business model as well, "(charging) other blog widgets to use the proprietary installation technology that we've created to make installing blog widgets ridiculously easy," Moonesinghe wrote in an e-mail.

EventVue raised about $300,000 on Sept. 21 from a syndicate of investors from Colorado, California and South Carolina.

The round was led by Feld and included Cohen, Silicon Valley investor Dave McClure and Wendy Lea, chairwoman of Superior-based Newmerix Corp.

The company is using the money to hire a few more people and "cover our expenses while we seek to validate our revenue model," EventVue Co-founder Josh Fraser said in an e-mail.

EventVue, which relocated to Boulder from South Carolina, provides a set of tools for conference organizers that enhances community and drives more registrations to the conference. EventVue only gets paid when people register for the conference.

Fraser and co-founder Rob Johnson recently hired their first employee, Kevin Musselman, a developer who is helping build out the product.

J-Squared Media, developers of Sticky Notes, started making money through advertising within weeks of launch and turned down a formal acquisition offer worth millions in September. "We've had two other parties approach us as well," co-founder Jesse Tevelow said in an e-mail.

The company is considering a "substantial institutional investment," he said.

The business, which moved back to Philadelphia after its summer in Boulder, continues to grow. Sticky Notes - a "micro-messaging" system that lets Facebook users communicate with each other - is among the top 1 percent of all applications on Facebook in terms of total users, or about 3.5 million, according to Tevelow.

 The company recently launched its second Facebook application, GlitterBox, which lets users send sparkly messages and graphics to their friends.

"We've set up some interesting partnerships with several ad companies like VideoEgg, and we've also done a few direct ad deals ourselves," Tevelow said. "Businesses large and small are contacting us daily."

Intense Debate is still raising money toward the $500,000 it's seeking and should close the round soon, said Co-founder Josh Morgan.

The company, which developed a blog-commenting widget that adds verification features such as user profiles and reputations to comments, released a multi-language version in late September that's helping Intense Debate gain an international audience.

One of the reasons the company wants to go global is that Co-founder Isaac Keyet is Swedish. Once the funding comes in Keyet should be able to return to the U.S. to rejoin his co-workers, Morgan said. Intense Debate will hire two additional workers with the cash as well.

During the three-month TechStars "summer camp" for entrepreneurs Intense Debate decided to remain in Boulder. Originally from St. Louis, Co-founder Jon Fox simply stayed in Boulder, and Morgan went back to Florida to retrieve his wife who was happy to make the move, Morgan said.

Although today the company's business model revolves around advertising, Morgan said Intense Debate has big dreams. "Intense Debate wants to be the standard for comment systems across the Web. Newspapers, e-commerce - wherever there is or should be a comment system that's where we want to be."

Carmin Turco and Sebastian Replanski's Search-To-Phone is in the middle of fundraising for an amount they won't disclose.

New Yorker Turco and Argentinean Replanski stayed in Boulder and are building their "personal search assistant," which lets consumers conduct voice-activated Yellow Pages searches and then connect to merchants who are ready to help.

Local merchants who match the request get a phone call from Search-To-Phone. Those who are available pay a small fee - starting at 99 cents - and get connected to the consumer immediately.

Early on Search-To-Phone signed a strategic partnership with Boulder-based Gold Systems, a developer of voice-powered software applications.

"Terry (Gold) is a fantastic resource and great adviser," Turco said. "The relationship will include a lot of technical integration issues and getting face time with his human-factors specialist and technical specialists. They are the experts in the field, so getting the opportunity to talk to them is just great."

The three-month TechStars program gave the teams office space, $5,000 per founder in seed money and access to about 40 mentors in exchange for 5 percent equity in their company. The concept earned TechStars a Boulder County Business Report 2007 IQ Award in the business category.

Cohen is already planning next summer's TechStars program and will begin taking applications in January.

Contact Caron Schwartz Ellis at 303-440-4950 or csellis@bcbr.com.