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As the participants in 2014’s Disney Accelerator learned, The Walt Disney Company and Techstars have the power to revolutionize your company. All of last year’s startups have either raised capital, been acquired, or become profitable since their demo day.
This year’s batch hopes for the same success.
The startups have spent the past three months meeting with executives from Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, ABC, ESPN, and Disney CEO and Chairman Robert A. Iger. The accelerator culminates at today’s Demo Day at Walt Disney Studios in which each team will present their company to industry leaders, Disney executives, and select members of the entrepreneurial community.
Today’s demo day will feature speeches from Robert A. Iger; Kevin Mayer (Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of The Walt Disney Company), a Techstars executive, and Paul Berberian (CEO of Sphero, one of 2014’s accelerator participants.)
Sphero is now best known for their work with the BB-8 droid in the new Star Wars movie. The company has also been wildly successful selling small versions of the droid, complete with BlueTooth-enabled controls.
Here are the participants of the 2015 Disney Accelerator, all of whom will speak at today's events and a few of whom will announce new partnerships with The Walt Disney Company:
Originally from: New York
Founders: David Dundas and Ryan Witt
What they do: A Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that uses real time data to enable advertisers to optimize mobile ad creative and targeting based on user engagement.
"We're really excited about Disney Accelerator Demo Day," said Dundas. "We’ll be taking the wraps off a completely new product that we built during the Disney Accelerator program. As a startup, it's rare to have the opportunity to get in front of one of the largest media companies in the world, from day one."
"It was great to get feedback from teams all across the Disney company on our new product, and to have the potential for our product to have an immediate and significant impact. Disney Accelerator is like a supercharger for our startup."
Originally from: San Francisco
Founders: Geoffrey Mackellar and Tan Le
What they do: A bioinformatics company that uses electroencephalography (EEG) to track mental performance, monitor emotions, and control virtual and physical objects with thoughts.
Originally from: Los Angeles
Founders: Rachel Payne, Natasha Mohanty, and Meghana Bhatt
What they do: FEM Inc. has developed a personalized video engagement platform based on neuroscience and psychology that maps the emotional dimensions of how and why content resonates.
"The Disney Accelerator has been an amazing experience for our company," said Payne. "The quality of the other companies in the program is impressive and working alongside them has been a pleasure and an honor. We have been able to collaborate across different business units at Disney, which has offered unprecedented access and velocity to business development opportunities. We are thrilled to have participated in this program and appreciate the hard work of the Techstars team."
Originally from: New York
Founders: Juan Carlos Hernandez, Jorge Suarez, Omar Ramos, Carlos Garcia
What they do: HYP3R enables businesses and brands to identify influential customers at their locations and engage them in real time, when it matters most.
Originally from: Israel
Founders: Erez Baum, Seth Greenfield, Eyal Pfeifel
What they do: imperson provides an artificial intelligence platform enabling fans to have conversations with their favorite movie and TV characters.
Originally from: New York
Founders: Tony Mugavero, Ben Nunez, Matthew Collado
What they do: Littlstar aggregates industry leading virtual reality content with its device agnostic discovery and distribution platform.
Originally from: London
Founders: Alice Taylor and Matthew Wiggins
What they do: MakieLab lets kids bring toys to life by building their own customizable 3D-printed toys through creative games and apps.
Originally from: Bristol, UK
Founders: Joel Gibbard and Samantha Payne
What they do: Open Bionics is a robotics company creating affordable 3D-printed bionic hands for amputees, researchers and makers.
Originally from: New York
Founders: Billy Shaw Susanto, Chris Aston Chen, Jason Ji
What they do: Pundit is talk for mobile & social - an easy way to create, share, and respond to stories with your voice.
Chris Aston on what the past three months have meant for Pundit:
"Since the day we founded this company, my Co-Founder Billy and I have always had one vision: to empower the next generation to create meaningful, powerful content on social media. And the Disney Accelerator has embraced it every second of the way.
"We just graduated from NYU this spring, and drove straight to Los Angeles to join the Accelerator program. Since we joined, Billy and I have received unwavering support and mentorship from senior leadership at The Walt Disney Company, while seeing widespread interest and early adoption among Disney business units, from talk shows to music labels.
"In turn, Pundit has become the talk experience we see today — giving everyone the power to easily create, share, and respond to stories with their voice. And this is just the beginning."
Originally from: San Francisco
Founders: Eli Dawson and Adam Elmore
What they do: StatMuse is developing an artificial intelligence platform to help sports fans explore data using simple, natural language.
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