It’s that time of year again – a time for trying and reviewing, for testing and reporting, the best start-ups I’ve personally used in the past quarter. For my part, I’m trying at least one new platform, app, or SaaS application each week.  I find most new technologies to be not only wildly unfaithful to their public relations claims, but unsatisfying even on their own terms.

But occasionally I come across start-ups and young companies that have shown us real, tangible value. Companies that have undergone a series of tests which pass our filters. We then like to reflect on the results, and report them here – to you.

Here are 5 that you’ll want to know about:

Ripples: Personalized Coffee

At first glance, Ripples is a clever way to quickly personalize any foam based coffee drink with a message, design or both. The Ripple Maker is a counter sized device that connects to WiFi and can take designs and using a 3D technology, print them right onto the surface of the milk foam. If that were all Ripples was designed to do, it would be a must have product – but of course there’s more.

Currently, Ripple is only releasing a $999 commercial version of the product. That means you’ll only see it in coffee shops, airline clubs or other high occupancy venues. Baristas can choose their Ripples from the extensive catalogue of designs and messages, or have their customers send a photo, personal image or message and send it to their Ripple Maker through the Ripple app. The image is printed on the coffee in less than 10 seconds, using nothing but 100% natural coffee extract.

For me, Ripple is a marketer’s dream. Imagine having the ability to personalize messages each morning on a beverage that people are addicted (well me anyway).  These drip coffee marketing campaigns could be run to great effect with the right creative team. I imagine Starbucks SBUX +0.65% creating a variety of images and messages to share on their customers’ lattes that cause them to snap a photo of it and share on social media or calls to action that get people to act.

YouStake: Fund a Sporting Event

For me, YouStake is Kickstarter meets Fanduel for Poker players. An ingenious business model where poker fans can help Poker players compete in more tournaments by helping to fund their buy-in fee. So what’s in it for the fan? If the Poker player wins, the fan get a percentage of the take based on their initial investment.

Right now, YouStake is focused on the World Series of Poker and Poker Circuit events, but YouStake founder Frank DeGeorge Jr. hinted that they are about to open up the site to any individual sporting event that requires an up-front fee. I can see NASCAR fans lining up to help their favorite drivers.

YouStake just launched on June 1, and has already garnered 2.8 million page views from 22,000 unique visitors. They’ve also signed up 1402 unique Poker players from 108 different countries, that generated $2.6 million in potential pledges, with $860,000 in actual pledges initiated. Not bad for a 45 day old company.

Stumbleupon Social Advertising

According to Director of Marketing Anne Gherini, Stumbleupon is a 10 year old start-up. And their current advertising model is a content marketers’ dream. While Facebook (FB), Google (GOOGL) and Twitter (TWTR) all require an ad to drive traffic to a piece of content, Stumbleupon eliminates the MiddleAd and directs the user straight to the content.

For me, Stumbleupon should be a marketer’s first choice when direct exposure to a piece of content (video, infographic, micro-site, etc.) from a targeted audience is required. I don’t like relying on banner ads or pithy ads that require tricking the audience into clicking through to the content.

With Stumbleupon, for around $0.10 a guaranteed page view, companies can drive highly targeted, quality traffic directly to their content. When we used Stumbleupon advertising, we earned 12,363 highly targeted page views of an infographic, and 382 new site signups.  That’s real value. But don’t just take it from me, check out what they’ve done for HBO, National Geographic and BuzzFeed.

Klear: Social Influencer and Campaign Measurement

Clearly Klear (formerly hard to spell Twtrland), is making a new name for themselves. Once a simplistic, but effective tool for social media influencer research, Klear is now providing more transparency around social media campaigns as well. For example, if a professional football team wanted to find their most engaged fans to participate in a marketing campaign, the team could identify them and track their participation using Klear’s hashtag tracker.

I’ve used Klear to measure engagement rates of influencers so that we could identify influencers that really move the needle with their fans. I’ve also used their solution to track my client’s competitors to determine how effective their marketing strategies have been (or not).

For me, Klear’s value resides in its simplicity, price (subscriptions range form $99 – $599 a month) and the unique insights it provides to companies that don’t have the resources or capital to use a Radian6 type enterprise solution.

Due.com Invoicing made easy

As any small business owner will tell you, collecting accounts receivables are one of the most frustrating and time consuming activities companies must endure. If there are tools that make it easier, then that’s something to pay attention to.

Due.com’s simplicity is its strongest feature, but their invoicing dashboard, AR reports, time tracking and calendar summaries are also strong points. For beginners, Due’s created an invoicing guide that some small business owners will find helpful.

Due.com offers affordable, full featured versions and a free version: $3 per month for one user, $25 per year for two users and $250 annually for unlimited users.