Betaworks’ Voicecamp is looking to give voice-powered startups $125K each

Betaworks startup studio is today announcing the second in its line of accelerator camps in the form of voicecamp. And no, this won’t make you a better chorus member.

Earlier this year, betaworks launched botcamp as a way to better understand and fuel growth of the chatbot space. With today’s announcement, betaworks wants to apply the same model to a new vertical with voicecamp.

As voice-powered technologies like Amazon Echo, Google Home and even Siri get a better foothold in the market, betaworks is looking to capitalize on businesses that have yet to spring forth.

“Voice is so core to the way we communicate as humans, as the earliest way we learned and tell stories and shared information,” said Pat Montague, VP at betaworks. “Some of these underlying technologies with voice are helping us to get computers out of our way, so we can interact the way that humans interact together.”

Between eight and ten companies will be selected to participate in the voicecamp program, each of which will receive $125,000 in pre-seed funding in the form of an un-capped note. The program will last 11 weeks based on betaworks headquarters in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan.

And just like botcamp, voicecamp will also feature mentorship for its selected companies from leaders within the space.

“The thing that is so exciting to us and one of the things we’re looking for are user experiences that wouldn’t have made sense had you not been able to originally ask that question via voice,” said Hartman, citing that around half of the Amazon Echos out there are placed in people’s kitchens.

Applications for voicecamp begin now, and you can start the application process here.