March 8, 2012
Media Camp announces inaugural six start-ups
Chute, Matcha, Socialize, Showbucks, SocialSamba, Swithcam kick off the 12-week program
Turner Broadcasting, which in March launched its media incubator, called Media Camp, announced Thursday its inaugural six start-ups that it's accepted into its 12-week accelerator program in San Francisco.
We wrote about Media Camp when it launched. At the time, David Austin, one of the directors at Media Camp, and an angel investor himself, explained that media is a "small slice of what the [current] accelerators look at." To that end, Austin and his team felt they needed to educate the investor population by bringing the media expertise into San Francisco.
Like many other accelerator programs, start-ups will receive $20,000. The likely economic model will be that Media Camp will take a 6% to 8% equity stake, but that's still to be determined, said Austin. Unlike other accelerators, however, Media Camp is only focused on media-related companies and providing mentorship from digital, TV and film executives. Additionally, Media Camp has put together a media-focused curriculum and opportunities to commercialize their business to Turner's entertainment, news, sports and animation networks.
Media Camp originally sought to bring in five start-ups. But it decided to take on a sixth.
Here are the fabulous six:
Chute: Chute is a platform for media-rich applications and websites used by brands, publishers and developers. Chute makes it easy to add photo and video functionality to any application or site.
Chute's platform allows developers to build advanced media-rich mobile and web applications without needing to worry about building any back-end infrastructure. Chute enables developers to rapidly build almost any media-centric application imaginable.
SlideChute, built on top of the Chute platform, makes it easy to collect, manage and display photos across the web. SlideChute allows any publisher or app to seamlessly integrate user generated uploads from any source. Chute is privately held and headquartered in San Francisco. Anyone that is interested in learning more should visit www.getchute.com.
Matcha: Matcha is the easiest way to find the best Movies and follow your favorite TV Shows across digital videoservices such as Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, Amazon and more, in one place. Matcha’s guide goes beyondaggregating 200,000 premium titles and adds rich social elements and a proprietary recommendationengine to create a robust, personalized video experience.
Showbucks: Showbucks develops fun and engaging apps that combine social video with social games.
Socialize: Socialize believes people strongly influence each other even when they aren't 'friends.' Anyone who shares a common interest is influenced by others with that same interest. Socialize is creating a social platform that can predict user intent by mapping an interest graph across users and content.
SocialSamba: SocialSamba is the leading social storytelling platform, enabling fans to "friend" their favorite fictional characters, and experience personalized stories with them. SocialSamba has served more than half a million scripted social experiences to fans.
Switchcam: Switchcam creates interactive video experiences that allow the viewers to direct the show. By syncing and combining fan footage with professional footage, fans can experience events, concerts and sporting games like never before.
Bambi Francisco Roizen
Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.
All author postsRelated News