the best parts of a video and increase engagement. The startup also offers a related product called Qixshr that makes stained-glass-style mosaics out of a collection of still photos.
Meograph: With Meograph’s online tools let users can create narrated multimedia stories combining text, video, audio, maps, links, and timelines. It’s being used by media organizations, schools, and companies as an alternative to more complex editing tools.
Plumzi: Working with data from the big animation studios, Plumzi automatically creates interactive cartoons that can be delivered as tablet apps for kids. The startup has already worked with a couple of major studios and has big partnership agreements to announce soon. “It’s great potential add-on revenue for content that already exists,” says Austin.
Tomorrowish: This startup makes what it calls a “social media DVR.” Its software collects past tweets and other social media posts related to archived TV shows and plays back the most interesting ones in sync with the original episode on Hulu. That way, viewers who missed a show when it was broadcast live can follow the social media conversation as if it were live, without fear of seeing spoilers.
Austin says participants in Media Camp’s second group will benefit from a growing list of mentors and advisors form inside and outside Time Warner, and from the staff’s own growing familiarity with the Time Warner empire. “We were all relatively new to Turner when we started this a year and a half ago, but we understand the business much more than we did then,” Austin says. “Our relationships are just expanding dramatically.”
Another nice feature: Media Camp doesn’t insist on taking a specific percentage of each startup’s equity, the way most other accelerators do. In effect, the $20,000 it puts into each participating company comes in the form of a convertible note.
“If they have an open note, we sign the note; if they have an open round, we sign the round,” Austin says. “We don’t mess up the startups’ cap table in any way. We are not focused on finding financial gain, we are working on the strategic value. So it’s all upside for them.”
