Some weeks ago, I attended an interesting information event in London. The famous film studio company Disney partnered with the also famous accelerator TechStars to launch a dedicated Disneyaccelerator program . Goal of the initiative is to gather 10 startups during 15 weeks and let them access to the whole creative expertise and resources (you can use legally all the wide amount of content under copyright) of The Walt Disney Company. And an impressive number of mentors from the company. Alongside the “normal” (but not less amazing) mentors from Techstars, like Brad Feld or Mark Suster, just to name a few… Only that!
The deal is the following, if you’re among the 10 lucky winners:
- you get $120k investments (standard Techstars’ deal: $20k for 6% equity, $100k as a convertible loan);
- you get access to a wide range of mentors and resources to foster the development of your startup;
- you have 15 weeks to accelerate your business and then be able to present it at the demo day of October 14th.
If you are an amazing team with a promising idea in the media & entertainment industry, which can be both social and engaging, which is fostering connections between people, think you can benefit from the Disney brand and resources, and have brought at least a basic concept to the market (but you can also have a funded business), you should consider applying to the program!
The program starts on June 30th. There are on average 1’000 applications per program, but don’t be discouraged by this. If you don’t seize your chance, you’ll never know if you could have been selected!
Deadline to apply is on April 16th, 2014. The 2 most important things to invest time in for the application are:
- the founding team video;
- the product video.
The rest is less relevant. Yes, really. So consider shooting an amazing and original video, that is what can get you accepted, or at least interviewed!
Good luck!