Last Summer, Turner announced that it was creating a startup incubator focused just on young companies that were developing products for media businesses. The incubator, called Turner Media Camp, would leverage the conglomerate’s vast expertise in video and publishing to find companies with innovative ideas and help them find customers.
With networks like TBS, TNT, CNN, and Adult Swim in its portfolio of businesses, the idea was that Turner would be able to provide startups that pass through Media Camp with introductions to key decision makers within its organization and others. In addition to connecting those startups with potential customers, the incubator would also help them refine their products to make them more useful for those media companies based on their feedback.
Well it’s a year later, and Turner Media Camp is just starting its second attempt at the program in San Francisco. It’s picked five companies with different products and business ideas to take part in the incubator, which starts today. The five companies are as follows:
- ChannelMeter – A professional video analytics platform for publishers and brands focused on maximizing and engaging their audiences, i.e. Nielsen for online video
- Cinemacraft – An interactive media monetization platform that enables content holders, brands, and publishers to deliver context-driven engagement on videos
- Meograph – The easiest way to participate in four-dimensional, multimedia storytelling.
- Plumzi – A platform for animation studios to adapt television series into a new form of entertainment for touch devices called Active Episodes.
- Tomorrowish – A social media DVR, allowing users to participate in a live-like social media experience, regardless of when a person begins watching an episode.
Media Camp director Sandy Khaund believes that the program will continue to get better as time goes on, and the incubator improves both the quality and diversity of the companies selected, as well as the programming of the 12-week accelerator. After last year’s class, the team has a better idea of what kinds of companies it was looking to have participate. And, of course, it had a larger number of applicants, thanks to publicity around the inaugural group.
While the first Media Camp class had a number of companies focused on social discovery and distribution of content, the new group is a bit more diverse. The addition of new types of creation tools, as well as analytics and presentation startups should provide a wider range of partners for Time Warner networks looking at the class.
Also interesting is the fact that for more than half the current group, this is actually not the first accelerator program that they’ve participated in. Cinemacraft is a 500 Startups alum, while Channelmeter just completed the Matter.VC accelerator and Tomorrowish had participated in the Mass Challenge program.
Khaund said that’s partly due to Media Camp’s positioning as a sort of “grad school” for media-focused startups. While other incubators are about getting a minimum viable product out the door, “We’re more about where hockey stick makes the turn,” Khaund told me. “As a corporate accelerator, we can bring [companies] to scale pretty quickly, but they have to be ready with their A game.”
The new batch of Media Camp companies will spend the next 12 weeks refining their products and talking to media companies, with a San Francisco demo day scheduled for September 12.