Hi from Montreal where we’re building Night Picker – media and marketing tech for the culinary world and urban tourism with the potential to organically pull an ethical, commercial canopy over the fragmented sectors of restaurants, city food scenes and media companies – creating a ‘Trivago’ of food-tainment and dining options – at home and on the go.
Fueled by video ‘shorts’ we’re giving purpose to short-format media by airing a mix of UGC and produced content in our ‘watch & shop’ style culinary app, and creating new and recycling pre-seen content via Night Picker Production.
Soft launched in Canada last year we tested and tweaked our tech, and aired content created in-house across 3 major channels – Food Network (Top Chef), Global (CORUS), and CTV; populated the app with a mix of self-filmed and produced content; and partnered with 2 major city tourism boards.
Our fire is laid and we’re now looking for seed funds to light it and service the partners we have lined up and waiting to go prior to our US launch this Spring, but we’re getting push back on the media angle – fear of the space, lack of smarts in the space, already burnt by the space… so my question is who’s media friendly today in the early stage VC?
I’d really appreciate your thoughts and any warm intros you could send our way! Thanks in advance, Julie
ps. discover a little bit(e) more about us here: https://linktr.ee/NightPicker
If I’m not mistaken, technically more the Trivago of food and dining options, and you’ve found success with UGC and traditional media channels, as both a form of content and promotions. Yes? I’m curious why you’re getting pushback on the media piece; that tends to be where more venture capital flows since it serves the multiple purpose of: engagement, monetization, promotion, etc. Strikes me as such that something is missing from holding investors back… is media their excuse? Are they ignoran of the media side?
A few thoughts
- Admiral Capital Group
- Bloomberg Beta
- Comcast Ventures
- Founders Fund
- GV
- Horizons Ventures
- LOUD Capital
- MMF
- Qualcomm Ventures
- Samsung Ventures
That being more the VC and Corporate side, which might be premature for you. We’ve got a piece here exploring the VC landscape and getting into some of the Angels in media.
- Ron Conway; Silicon Valley’s “super angel” known for his early support of media companies such as Facebook, Buzzfeed, and Napster
- David Rosenblatt; Who probably wrote the book on online adverstising following his role as CEO of DoubleClick and then President of Google Display. He sits on the board of Twitter and IAC, better known for brands such as Vimeo and CollegeHumor
- Bono; Yep, Bono. He co-founded Elevation Partners in 2004, a venture firm that focuses on media, entertainment and technology companies
- Nas; Having invested in dozens of startups, it’s not just his work as the second musician on our list that makes him notable but hist investment in text annotation service Genius and DeviantArt that strikes the media chord
- Justin Bieber; Beliebit. Beiber is tremendous patron of media ventures with a stake in Tinychat, Stamped, Spotify, and Shots
- Stanley Kirk Burrell; Also known as MC Hammer, you’ll catch him at Raiders games when he’s not advising media companies such as Pandora and Flipboard
- Jeff Clavier; Involved in Kongregate (acquired by GameStop) as well as Seesmic, Wildire, and Ustream
- Brad Svrluga; Who has had his hand in the music and ticketing industries
- Dave McClure; 500 Startups’ McClure has helped Slideshare, Visually, MoviePigs, Creative Market, and more get off the ground
- Kevin Colleran; In some familiar media names such as Meerkat, Rockbot, Say Media, LookMark, Media Spike, Pinterest, and SmartThings
- Naval Ravikant; Whom might be familiar by way of AngelList is in PickaFlick, Sosh, Udemy, Twitter, and 9GAG
- David Cohen; Of Techstars I wanted to mention as they might be the incubator for media. David is in Next Big Sound, Circa, EventVue, Graphicly, KiteReaders, LaunchTrack, SlideBean, Post Rocket, and many more
Seed money is typically local or very targeted. If you want to message me, we can connect, and I’ll put you in touch with some of our friends in Montreal. Otherwise, I’d look to the greater depth of “People” interested in mobile, food, and streaming media or UGC.
