Matter, a startup accelerator launched last year by the Knight Foundation, KQED and PRX, announced seven media ventures on Thursday that have been chosen to “change media for good.”
These seven startups will take part in a four-month program that includes a $50,000 investment, mentoring, and design reviews to help them fine-tune their business plans and prototypes.
The program will start off with an intensive boot camp and culminate in a demo day in February for potential investors. Matter held its last demo day in June, which you can read more about here.
“Each team will constantly iterate on its product, its distribution strategy, and its business model by getting out into the world, testing its assumptions, and gaining traction with their customers,” Corey Ford, Matter’s CEO, explained in a blog post.
Meet the startups
Here are the seven startups that Matter has selected:
- Connu – Connu helps emerging writers find, connect with, and monetize audiences through publishing the best new short stories.
- Contextly – Contextly enables publications of all sizes to be both informative and viable in the age of drive-by readers by marrying editorial wisdom to the power of algorithms.
- The Creative Action Network – The Creative Action Network (CAN) is a marketplace for artists, causes, and supporters to harness their talents for good by creating, buying, and sharing original, crowdsourced creative content and merchandise.
- Formidable – Formidable Corp. bursts the filter bubble to help connect you to people outside of your social circle.
- Getcast – Getcast empowers creative professionals to take control of their careers by connecting them through a platform that helps them showcase their work, hone their craft, and collaborate on a global scale.
- Hacklog – Hacklog empowers individual journalists to be more relevant to their audiences, impactful with their stories, and in charge of their careers by providing honest analytics.
- Woop.ie – Woopie (Write Only Once, Publish It Everywhere) empowers writers and publishers to easily reach their audiences on all devices and platforms through a digital content publishing tool focused on responsive design.
We’ll be following the progress of some of these startups here on Idea Lab, so check back in for more details.
Desiree Everts is the associate editor for Idea Lab and PBS MediaShift. She’s dabbled in digital media for the past decade including stints at CNET News and Wired magazine.