From February 4th through the 9th of 2018, the VentureOut team powered its first New Media Program, a hyper-acceleration program designed for New Media startups that are planning on accelerating their growth by leveraging all the opportunities available to them in NYC.
In this one-week program, the startups had the opportunity to venture around New York City to learn how to scale and raise capital and got connected with some of the top tech influencers and investors in NYC.
Clicktivated is an IP-protected interactive video platform that enables viewers the ability to interact with individual products/items in a video format. Their clean UX creates new monetization opportunities for marketers and a first of its kind set of data points for content distributors to better understand their audience. See it. Click it. Get it. It's that simple. Clicktivated works with brands and agencies of all sizes to help create sales opportunities and a more effective way to engage their consumers.
Fiskkit is a news discussion platform designed to favor facts, logic and civility. Fiskkit provides a better place for people to discuss important news topics and to find what information is good and bad in every article on the Internet.
By putting public discourse into structured data they can use analytics to enable new insights and tools for readers. Fiskkit has the potential to factcheck all online news in real time, and filter trolling to make online discussion not only productive but enjoyable. Fiskkit is currently testing product-market fit with: paid account for organizations (non-profit, political, brands) to crowdsource content and fundraising, an education app for students to practice critical thinking which can quantify/measure improvement, and an integrated comments system for publishers (Troll Filter included).
Mish Guru is a full-service storytelling suite for Snapchat and Instagram Stories that scales a brand’s content team, quickly. Over one billion Stories are created on Snapchat and Instagram every single day. Mish Guru has been helping brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Spotify for the past four years tap into real Stories, on the channels where their audience are paying attention.
Newstag is an award-winning and innovative model for news. Their mission is to reinvent the media eco-system. The brands they work with help us to pay for the journalism and the value created is shared by all Newstag users: People, Brands, News providers, Causes & research. This makes the service free for the people, which is something we believe is democratically important.
Only In VR has reinvented the way people enjoy music, allowing users to experience live concerts in fresh, innovative ways through the power of virtual reality (VR).
Inside the OVR platform, users will enjoy browsing through concerts and live performances from festivals and venues from all over North America (and we’ll be adding dozens of new videos every week as time goes on). You’ll be so close to your favorite artist, you’ll be tempted to reach out and grab them.
Their immersive video and audio technology will provide a transcending, multi-sensory viewing and listening experience that will keep you coming back for more. Users will experience a variety of environments from large-scale concerts, to intimate club shows, to behind-the-scenes access.
Poltio is a social polling platform, using which you can create and share questions on any format with the Poltio society or answer questions shared by other people. With the Poltio question engine you can create polls, tests and quizzes in any format in a fast and fun way and in addition to sharing on Poltio, can also share through your Facebook and Twitter accounts with your friends or embed on any 3rd party platform.
Viewst eliminates three core challenges plaguing mobile ads: low engagement rates, metrics fraud, and low viewability. The Viewst button overlay provides a gamified and respectful way for consumers to play with and control ads, rather than be interrupted by them. Their user-friendly, efficient ad creation and campaign management platform enables media teams to generate beautiful floating ads rapidly and without creative support using simple drag and drop. Viewst’s floating ads are always visible and can be swiped around the screen by users, driving curiosity that inspires up to 10X engagement. These non-standard units work with programmatic platforms as well as directly with Viewst’s invite-only, premium publisher network for launching, management and analysis.
ReelWurld is a social-filmmaking web platform. They make movies with the world by crowdsourcing and gamifying the filmmaking process.
Via their proprietary Story Module system, users add their own original scenes to a given movie or TV show by recording themselves and friends on their phone to share with the world. This process expands the narrative of a given movie or TV franchise in a way that is controllable by stakeholders, while giving creative license to fans to play in their favorite story worlds.
ReelWurld is building a social network for fictional characters where fans join scenes or create new ones. Their moonshot is to be the next-generation Marvel.
Texel makes it possible for you to offer your viewers virtual seats for live events. They will experience events as never before – as if they were physically at the venue, in the arena or at the pool, significantly increasing their engagement and your revenue.
Texel scales the venue experience by enabling virtual presence in 8K resolution with over 80% bandwidth reduction. Texel streamlines the entire VR experience and empowers you with very short time to market.
Texel’s customer base includes already leading content platforms, telcos, and OEMs.
Worm is an interactive video sports app working with the worlds biggest athletes, events and brands to give fans an adrenaline filled platform to satisfy the constant yearning for high quality social content. Their goal is to create a platform where brands, events and athletes can showcase the best moments in sports through replays, behind the scenes videos and original content. With patented 'Touch to Slow' and 'Drag to Slow' technology they allow users the opportunity to engage with video like never before and this has been at the core of their philosophy to "slow it down and see it differently."
Our dense one week program was able to provide the New Media startups with not only core business knowledge, such as how to communicate your brand and product as well as fundamentals in fundraising, but also with meaningful connections they can count on to help them grow and scale their startups.
Pictured below: some of the highlights of the program.
Workshops & mentoring
Digital Marketing & Growth Hacking Workshop with Ivy Lei from Ladder.io
Fundamentals of Expansion & Scaling: Legal & Accounting workshop with BMK, Dentons and Withum
Mentoring and Pitch Prep session with Nora Peterson from Dow Jones
investor office visits & Company insights
Investor Introduction session with Mary Liu from BDMI
Discussion on Entertainment, Media & VR with Andrw Asnes from RoundHill Entertainment
Corporate Innovation Discussion with Kristy Leong from Comcast Ventures
The Pitch Night
The pitch night is by far the highlight of the week. It is a night filled with great presentations from the startups, networking, and refreshments. The startups have two minutes to pitch their company which then follows insights from an all-star panel of investors. It is a night that cannot be missed and one to remember for both the audience and participants.
Barst Mukamal & Kleiner LLP is an international immigration law firm based in New York City. Founded in 1930, BMK LLP is one of the oldest and most established immigration firms in the country, and one of very few firms of its boutique size offering a stand-alone immigration law practice.
Dentons is the world's first polycentric global law firm. Dentons' newly acquired Venture Technology team is a top-ranked practice focused on technology, with a core emphasis in digital media, mobile, adtech, data privacy and fintech and exclusively represents startups and venture capital funds. In this strategy session, the Venture Tech team will speak one-to-one with each company regarding international expansion plans, strategic legal issues, IP concerns, term sheet strategy and more.
TriNet provides small and midsize businesses with a full-service HR solution so they can free themselves from the complexities of HR and focus on their goals. As their trusted HR business partner, TriNet assumes many of the responsibilities of being an employer and helps these companies contain HR costs, minimize employer-related risks and relieve the administrative burden of HR. TriNet offers bundled HR products tailored by industry and strategic HR services, resulting in a comprehensive and empowering solution.
WithumSmith+Brown, PC (“Withum”) is a nationally ranked Top 30 Firm that empowers clients with innovative tools and solutions to address their accounting, tax and advisory needs. Our highly responsive team of professionals offers deep industry expertise and service experience to help our clients grow and thrive— to Be in a Position of Strength.
When it comes to language, localized content is an important factor that ensures your message will be understood when you are entering a new market. Your translated communications should effectively address complex localization issues such as dialect, phrasing and terminology so that they accurately reflect your original intent.
Alpha Translations Canada Inc. was established in June of 1994 by Michèle Hecken, herself an accredited translator and interpreter, and has since grown into a thriving international business. We offer language services tailored specifically to your needs, inmany languages combinations. Your translation team is assigned to your project according to their familiarity with and expertise in your particular industry, as well as with the nature of the material being translated.
Clarity PR is an international public relations agency specializing in strategic communications for fast-growth technology companies. The company is known for its strategic approach to PR and its impactful, editorially-driven media relations campaigns. Headquartered in London with offices in New York and Berlin, the Clarity team works with companies ranging from promising new startups to multinational organizations. In 2016, Clarity was ranked among PR Week's Top 150 technology PR firms in the UK.
David Antokal’s mission is to be a perfect equity partner to small business owners and entrepreneurs through respectful and valuable engagement, building bonds that extend beyond business. His company leads and co-invests in equity investments in growth-ready companies between $5-$50 million of revenue and up to $5 million of EBITDA. They bring to bear a focused group of operating advisors and supportive network to help make the best decisions for long-term success.
Collectively is a digital agency that believes technology can radically change the status quo.
Through strategy, design, and development, we work with entrepreneurs, changemakers, and institutions to create technology that empowers people to overcome their biggest challenges.
Escalon exists to unburden entrepreneurs. We want to give you back your most important asset: time to focus on growth. Since 2006, we’ve leveraged our team’s extensive hands-on experience to help CEOs handle their business’ operational and tactical needs at all stages.
Our proactive approach means we’re more than a service provider: we’ve become a trusted ally. We deliver customized and comprehensive solutions for handling non-core yet essentials functions, like finance & accounting, HR, payroll, tax, and benefits. Based in the Silicon Valley, Escalon serves startups and growing companies from over 16 different countries.
