Each month, the local collective of young startupers and entrepreneurs known as DartBoston hosts Capitalize, an event where a local startup pitches to VCs in front of a live studio audience. The whole thing is streamed live to Internet viewers. This month’s Capitalize, which happened last night, featured Pintley (pronounced Pint-Lee), an online community where users can discover craft beers they might like based on how they’ve rated other beers they prefer. The company pitched to locally-based Polaris Ventures.

Several things were different about last night’s DartBoston Capitalize show. Tickets were given out on a first-come, first-served basis, DartBoston Co-Founder Cortlandt Johnson was not the host of the show, and the boardroom had been replaced by rows of chairs. It was the 8th episode of the monthly show, and it’s nice to see that it’s still iterating along with everything else in the local ecosystem. RiotVine Founder Kabir Hemrajani, the new host of Capitalize, led his inaugural episode at Polaris’ incubator, Dogpatch Labs, near Kendall Square in Cambridge.

Dave Barrett of Polaris Ventures started out by offering a special gift to anyone in the audience who could come up with a creative name for DogPatch’s iguana, which TechStars founder Sean Broderick left behind. The large lizard, which is currently named “iguana,” was sleeping in a cage at the back of the room, and took little notice of the excitement that pervaded the space for Capitalize.

Pintley was co-founded by Tim Noetzel and Shannon Hicks in 2008. Noetzel fell in love with craft beer while studying abroad in Germany in 2006 but was frustrated by the fragmentation of beer brands in the craft brew market.

Most consumers want to try more craft beer, but don’t know how or where to get it. Pintley is attempting to solve this problem through a combination of personalized beer recommendations, customized advertising, a beer rating system, and food pairings at restaurants. Customers have called them the “Pandora and Netflix of beer” due to their focus on having customers rate beers they’ve already tried and then assigning them recommendations based on their preferences. Perhaps the most exciting part of their product is the forthcoming mobile application, which will soon allow users to type in a beer they see at a store and receive a prediction as to how well they’ll like it.

Craft beer is a growing industry. Last year alone, the market grew 10.4% at the height of the recession. Among the 1,525 breweries in the U.S., 400 are microbreweries and 60 produce craft beer. With craft beers like Sam Adams becoming household names, people are starting to perceive beer the way they perceive wine. The average bar in a metropolitan area serves at least one or two craft beers, so there is definite potential for consumers to use Pintley not only to discover new beers, but also to discover where to buy them locally at bars, restaurants, and liquor stores.

The real question, which was raised by Jon Lim of Polaris Ventures, is how Pintley will address customer acquisition and engagement. Lim believes that it would be difficult to acquire a significant user base beyond those people who are already passionate about craft beer; he sees scaling as Pintley’s biggest challenge. Noetzel argued that their average customer would be using the service a few times a month on an as-needed basis, but that they could still scale effectively with this low touch model due to their targeted advertising, which will be based both on customer preferences and geolocation. While Beer Advocate already has the craft beer niche covered with their magazine (10,000 subscribers), rating system, and well-known brand, Pintley believe they’re targeting a broader array of consumers.

Lim loved the passion behind the idea. “It’s a hard sell because it’s such a fragmented industry that it’s difficult to show value and become a must-have product,” he said. He recommended using social media as part of their marketing strategy for customer acquisition. Pintley plans to give users the ability to tweet their beer ratings.

Paul Lim recommended that Pintley:

• Pitch to smaller venture capital firms and angel investors first since these investors often only require companies to have users in the tens of thousands
• Be able to explain the problem they are trying to solve more concisely
• Make sure the market is big enough to scale by doing more research
• Look at this niche market as an opportunity rather than a problem
• Find people in venture capital who see the value in the idea immediately and share Pintley’s passion for craft brew beer

Currently in private beta, Pintley plans to move into public beta at the end of the month and launch their mobile application in the iPhone App Store by mid-July. Stay tuned to the company so you can discover new summer craft brews and find out where to get them locally.

What do you think of the challenges being faced by startups catering to niche consumer bases? What else can Pintley do to acquire passionate beer connoisseurs as a base user group? How can they appeal to a larger market? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

To learn more about Pintley, follow them on Twitter or like them on Facebook.