CREATIVE TECH INCUBATOR

MEDIATECH VENTURES STARTUP PROGRAM

Learn how to take your startup from ideation to launch!

 12 Week Incubator

What You’ll Learn

Startups graduate with the necessary skills, knowledge, and relationships to be successful in the media technology industry and beyond. In our program, you will learn how to:

  • Identify and validate your idea and opportunities in the media tech space
  • Position your company as a viable and competitive solution provider in the market
  • Fully develop your business model and road map to product delivery
  • Understand how to find, and what additional partners you’ll need to bring your idea to life
  • Build relationships with multiple capital sources including angel investors, venture capital, and corporate venture firms
  • Structure a Data Room to organize all documents for due diligence
  • Refine offerings based on constructive critique from one on one meetings with mentors and teachers, and direct pitch feedback
  • Evaluate different regional legal and tax considerations for the incorporation of companies and identify what suits you best

Directors

MediaTech Ventures offers support and guidance throughout the program to aid you in refining your pitch, making vital connections, and transitioning your business into the media technology market through our partner network.

Is this right for you?

Are you a tech or tech-enabled startup? You can be anywhere in your funding journey! If you are building out or growing your startup, our program may be a good fit! Download our information guide below to learn more and see some FAQs.

Alumni

What are the admission requirements to Mediatech Ventures’ Incubator?

You can be anywhere in your funding journey. If you are considering growing your early stage startup, our program might be right for you if you are:

  1. In early stage development or ideation?
  2. Still actively searching for a business model? 
  3. Tech or tech-enabled? We define tech or tech-enabled businesses as any business that leverages and can scale media through technology. We are media industry-specific, and accept companies working in advertising & marketing, film, video, VR/AR, PR & news media, publishing, video games, sound, music, podcasts, and radio. 
  4. A for-profit company? 
What are the requirements of participating on one of the programs?

The founder needs to be available to join each class. If your application is approved, we will conduct an interview to discuss the specific requirements of each course. Overall, you will be required to: 

  1. Attend 75% of classes
  2. Book 5 office hours with an eligible mentor or advisor
  3. Complete each week’s homework assignment
  4. Pitch your startup every week
How long is MediaTech Ventures’ program for startups?

For the most part, our program is 12 weeks long with one 3 hour class a week. We break this up into 3 sections and you should account for any holidays or major events that might warrant our taking a break for a week and drawing the program out a little bit longer.

How much does MediaTech Ventures’ program cost founders?

Designed with your success at the top of our minds, we reduce the cost of curriculum and teachers’ time and materials by instead seeking warrants, an option to acquire and immediately sell equity, in your startup, roughly halfway through the program.

With warrants in place, the total out of pocket cost is only $750 for 2 seats for your startup (you and a founder or other team member).  Warrants are a way we’re paid upon your success and what it means is that if you raise later stage funding or get acquired, we get paid out a little more for that accomplishment.  Founders have the option to forego warrants, instead making a second payment for the second half of the programing.

What do the programs cover?

As you might expect, this is a big question, and generally we make sure you’re clear that our programs are designed to TEACH and WORK alongside you, rather than being a community of office hours or featured talks from other founders.  If you’re not interested in listening, learning, and putting in the work to start a company, you’re in the wrong place.

Over the course of 12 weeks, we’re going to cover in quite a bit of detail, everything from how to validate an idea to how to incorporate your venture.

  1. Identify and prioritize the opportunities in your industry
  2. Position yourself as a viable and competitive solution provider
  3. Understand the differences in business culture and practices in the U.S.; especially in communication, information presentation, and distribution channels.
  4. Define its own export cost structure to the U.S., taking into account regional variations and channels.
  5. Build relationships with venture capital and corporate venture firms.
  6. Rebuild its offerings based on constructive critique from one-on-one meetings with mentors and teachers.
  7. Evaluate different regional legal and tax considerations for the incorporation of companies.
Does MediaTech Ventures invest in startups?

MediaTech Ventures is not a fund.  The incubators help startups understand how to properly connect with investors and how to connect media with capital. The programs bridge the gap between founders and funders because more likely than not, the work you’re doing is incomplete or insufficient to warrant funding, and it’s in working together on your marketing, the team, and the opportunity and potential in what you’re doing, that you’ll attract investors. 

While you should not treat MediaTech Ventures as a direct source of investment, we’re here to help you understand funding, why you’re struggling to raise capital, to fix that so that you might, and to keep investors apprised of your progress and opportunities.

Learn more or connect with the team for questions here

Will MediaTech Ventures help me find an investor?

Technically speaking, MediaTech Ventures is not what is referred to in the United States as a “broker” – an individual or entity registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States to directly facilitate funding for your company.

If we feel that you are ready for funding, having completed the program and the work expected of you along the way, you will present your startup at a showcase upon graduation and we will have your presentation produced so that you have material with which to raise capital.

Learn more and connect with the team about this because we help in many other ways

Will MediaTech Ventures help me find customers?

MediaTech Ventures will help you understand exactly who your customers are and how to communicate with them.

We are not a lead generation service. We help you meaningfully connect with those whose problem you are solving and we teach you what marketing actually means and how it works so that you can effectively do that, so that customers seek and find you.

More questions about this or curious if we can help you do so in other ways? Comments here

Is the incubator a remote or virtual program?

We have in-person and fully remote options.

Our in-person cohorts tend to operate in cities where someone from the team is formally located: Houston, Chicago, and Austin, for example.  When you apply to a program (or if you have done so), we’ll be in touch to discuss your options, what’s best for you, and to coordinate an opportunity that results in an ideal cohort considering everyone’s needs in a program culminating.

Our online program is fully remote with remote networking and showcase options.

More questions? Comment here

What’s the MediaTech Ventures Community?

Most Startup Development Organizations (entities that help startups, founders, or cities seeking to serve founders), offer events, mentors, and perhaps even office space, whereas in appreciating that everyone involved in Media Innovation will likely always be so, MediaTech Ventures’ incubators leverage a social network and search engine enabling you to immediately participate in and benefit from the much larger, global community of investors, mentors, other founders, and professionals in media.

Showcase your startup and connect with media professionals around the world. Fill us in on what you’re building, how we can help, or with questions that others can answer. Participate in daily discussions, events, and groups alongside Fortune 500 companies, and potential collaborators.   At the very least, fill out your profile as you might on LinkedIn or IMDB – make sure everyone else in media innovation knows what you do, how you can help, and why everyone should connect and get to know you.

Frankly, promote yourself.  Throughout our networks and newsletters, we have hundreds of thousands of other people working in media – take advantage of it as we’re here to help you.

Still curious? Chat here

Program Supporters

Want to support a program?  Become a mentor or sponsor.