Comcast Interactive Capital, the venture capital arm of the media giant, has partnered with Philadelphia based venture fund and startup accelerator Dreamit Ventures to provide seed funding, training, mentoring and other benefits to minority-led startups through DreamIt’s accelerator program.
The new $350,000 fund will give five minority-led startups for its Fall Philadelphia 2011 program a extra infusion of capital on top of the funding DreamIt provides for its class of startups. For Comcast Interactive Capital, this is the first investment initiative from the $20 million fund that was created as part of the acquisition of NBC Universal. The $20 million fund will be used to invest in other minority led startups and initiatives (outside of DreamIt), mainly in the technology sector.
Similar to DreamIt’s other startups that are incubated in its accelerator, the chosen minority-led startups will be mentored by experts in marketing, brand building, business development, financial modeling, business plans, distribution and customer acquisitions. The companies will also be provided with office space and the end of the three-month period, the startups will have the opportunity to pitch to venture capital and angel investors at a demo day in Philadelphia.
For DreamIt, this is the first specialized program within the accelerator that will provide extra funding and resources for a subset of startups. DreamIt recently expanded expanded its incubator to New York City.
Entrepreneurs interested in applying to the program can access more details here.