Disney Accelerator, powered by Techstars introduced its first class of 10 startups this week at its end-of-program Demo Day. Despite being the first class ever to graduate from the accelerator, several of the startups had big news to share. Smart Toy, a company that makes smart stuffed animals that can teach and interacts with children, announced during the Demo Day that it had been acquired by Cartwheel Kids, a Culver-City maker of children’s products. Additionally, SnowShoe, a startup that make a digital stamp, announced that it had secured $2.2 million in seed financing. And Sphero, a company that makes smart phone controlled toys, said it will be partnering with Disney's Star Wars franchise to make a new toy.
“This group of start-ups has made tremendous progress evolving and growing their businesses in the past fifteen weeks,” said Kevin Mayer, Disney’s executive VP of corporate strategy and business development, in a statement. “It has been a fantastic learning experience for them and an opportunity for Disney to get in on the ground floor with a new generation of innovators.”
Companies participating in the 15-week accelerator program received mentorship from Disney executives, had access to Disney resources and received a $120,000 seed investment. The Disney Accelerator is a partnership between Disney and Techstars, which facilitates the program. Below are the 10 early-stage companies in consumer media or entertainment product spaces that now are Disney Accelerator’s 2014 alumni.
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Chores are often an argument starting activity between parents and children. By transforming the tired paper chore-chart into a digital app and website, this startup wants to make the chore process more engaging for kids. ChoreMonster gamifies household chores by scheduling and giving children points for completing tasks. Those points can be used to buy rewards that are chosen by parents.
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Launching this October, this app uses games to teach coding to children. Following game characters Cody Coder and Holly Hacker on a magical adventure through the World Wide Web, kids can use the app to learn HTML and CSS for building their first website.
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This startup has built a mobile video platform for celebrities and social influencers to engage their fans. When Jogg launches, Disney Movies Anywhere, an on-demand video platform, plans to pilot it.
This is a marketing and analytics platform for Snapchat. It is also another sign that the disappearing image, video and messaging app is maturing into a serious marketing tool. Audi and Tacobell already use Snapchat for marketing; Naritiv tries to make it easier for more companies to reach Snapchat’s millennial heavy audience.
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The discussions sports fans are having online are becoming more sophisticated every day. Sidelines gathers up the most expert fans and sells their written knowledge through an embeddable website widget. Sports websites Bleacher Report and Next Pulse Sports have partnerships with Sidelines. The company hopes to make money by selling advertising alongside fan posts.
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This stuffed animal is a digital learning toy that talks and listens to kids. The Smart Toy can be customized via downloadable content and is capable of knowing a child's name and teaching lessons. Culver City-based Cartwheel Kids recently bought this startup and Smart Toy expects to ship their first product during the summer of 2015.
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SnowShoe objects are plastic square ‘stamps’ that send signals to touch screen devices. The startup believes these plastic squares can be used for unlocking information in games, discovering hidden content on websites or even as a card stamp for coffee shop loyalty programs.
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Sphero and Ollie are connected toys that can be remotely controlled by a smart phone or tablet. Parent company Orbotix is already a success in its own right, selling $20 million in devices since 2012 and raising $32 million in capital. The Sphero-Disney Techstars relationship precedes a Star Wars connected toy partnership.
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Since the beginning of time storytelling has been the preferred method of explaining the world around us. To help parents talk to their children, Twigtale has built a website that digitally constructs and then prints stories around life’s big events like moving, new siblings, and the death of loved ones.
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This startup comes from the creators of the ZombieBooth series, an app the turns a picture of you into a zombie, which boosts over 30 million downloads. Keeping with the face changing theme of ZombieBooth, TYFFON has several other apps that transform photos, including GenderMorph, an app that morphs users into the opposite sex, ScreamFace, an app that makes everyone in a picture look like they are screaming, and After Image Cam, an app that records after images of your movements, then overlays them.
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