Entrepreneurship

Thank you, Matter.

It’s six o’clock on a Friday morning in June. No, I’m not blissfully catching up on rest ahead of a homework-filled weekend in Chapel Hill. Instead, I find myself coordinating coffee deliveries, finalizing space setup, and extinguishing every small fire in sight before entrepreneurs arrive. Months of

Media

8 Ways Matter Eight is Changing the Future of Media

Our eighth cohort is moving onward and upward. We anticipate great things. Matter kicked off 2018 with a new cohort of intelligent, capable entrepreneurs with big visions for the media companies they had begun to build. The teams came through our garage doors in February at different stages of development,

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S3-E7: Jill Koziol — Co-Founder, Motherly

Jill Koziol, Co-Founder and CEO of Motherly (and Matter Five alum!), joined us in San Francisco for a conversation with Matter Eight entrepreneurs. Pete Mortensen, Director of Program in San Francisco, talked with Jill about the incredible growth that Motherly has seen over the last few years. Initially, Jill says,

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S3-E6: Deepa Subramanian— Co-founder, Wherewithall

The Drunken Walk - Deepa Subramanian - 1:10:11Deepa Subramanian started out as a physics major and switched to computer science when she realized how much she loved…radiopublic.comDeepa Subramanian started out as a physics major and switched to computer science when she realized how much she loved

Startups

Enough is enough. It’s time to support startups that respect our rights.

It’s hard to avoid the headlines. The personal information of tens of millions of people was scraped by a political consultant campaign, using the API of the world’s largest social network. There was no data breach; there were no hackers. The information taken from the API as designed,

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S3-E5: Jennifer Brandel— CEO, Hearken

For this week’s speaker series, we were lucky to welcome a longtime member of our community back to Matter. Jennifer Brandel, CEO of Hearken and Matter Four entrepreneur, joined us in New York City where she and Roxann Stafford, our Director of Program there, sat down to talk about

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S3-E4: Caitlin Kalinowski — Oculus VR (rebroadcast)

Caitlin Kalinowski, Product Design Director at Oculus VR, joined us for the second time at Matter in San Francisco to share tips for better prototyping with our latest cohort. This time it was off-the-record, so we’re re-airing our episode with Caitlin from last season. Caitlin has been a designer

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S3-E3: Kaitlyn Jankowski— theSkimm

The Drunken Walk - Kaitlyn Jankowski - 1:05:03Kaitlyn Jankowski, better known among friends and colleagues as KJ, is Head of Marketing at theSkimm. In her…radiopublic.comKaitlyn Jankowski, better known among friends and colleagues as KJ, is Head of Marketing at theSkimm. In her conversation with Roxann Stafford,

Amazon Echo

Voice and ambient computing — for good

“Alexa, what’s new?” It’s part of my morning routine — and the routine for 39 million Americans and counting. As I drink my morning coffee, my smart speaker gives me short blasts from NPR News, BBC World News, and the Washington Post. It sounds like there’s breaking news,

Media Startup

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S3-E2: Gaby Darbyshire — Principal, Framestore Ventures

In this episode of The Drunken Walk, a series that follows the ups and downs of what it means to be an entrepreneur, we spoke with Gaby Darbyshire, Principal at Framestore Ventures. Gaby sat down with Roxann Stafford, our Director of Program in New York City, to speak in front

Media

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S3-E1: Rebecca Kaden—Partner, Union Square Ventures

We’re back with the first episode of Season Three of The Drunken Walk! Our eighth class of media startups just started their 20–week journey through Matter in San Francisco and New York City. Rebecca Kaden joined us for the first speaker series in San Francisco to talk to

Entrepreneurship

Applying to Matter Nine? Here’s how we evaluate our accelerator investments.

Applications are open for Matter Nine. In conjunction with our launch we wanted to demystify the process we use to evaluate companies. At Matter we look at five critical elements when making the decision about whether to invest in a startup: team, media, stage, mission alignment, and venture basics. All

Media

Build the media platform of tomorrow.

The way we learn about the world is transforming.The next wave of internet platforms is coming into view. Four years from now, over half of us will have an intelligent assistant in our home, and over half of all internet searches will be voice-activated. Blockchain technology has brought decentralization

Entrepreneurship

Maximizing the Matter Experience

Top highlightTwenty weeks go by in a blink. At Matter, our program can seem impossibly long when we begin with our bootcamp, and just as it gets hard to imagine what the end will be like, you lift your head and realize Demo Day is in just two weeks. As

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E16: Andrea Turner Moffitt—Plum Alley

Andrea Turner Moffitt is the Co-Founder of Plum Alley Investments, a membership network that is thinking about funding in a new way. Plum Alley members are looking not only for financial returns, but also for the right teams to solve the most pressing problems. Andrea talked to Matter Seven entrepreneurs

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E14: Hannah Donovan—CEO, Trash TV

Hannah Donovan has been a designer in digital media for over ten years—mostly working for startups. She’s led teams at Drip, The Echo Nest, and Vine, and co-founded This Is My Jam and Trash TV. In addition to startups, she’s also worked for big media names like

Startup

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E13: Chris Wilkes—HearstLab

Chris Wilkes, VP at HearstLab, joined Matter Seven in New York City to talk about his experiences in media innovation and investing. Chris’s career in digital media has spanned over twenty years, and his latest venture, HearstLab, is a community of women-led startups working inside Hearst Tower. Tune in

Media

Matter 2017: The Year of the Rebelpreneur, Realized.

From the very start, Matter has been guided by a mission bigger than any one of us as individuals: Change Media for Good, supporting early stage media entrepreneurs and established media institutions who are helping to create a more informed, empathetic, and inclusive society. This year, we learned what it

Entrepreneurship

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E12: Beth Viner—Kickstarter

Beth Viner is the GM at Kickstarter, where she supports the communities that use their crowdfunding platform. She makes sure that creators and backers have the best possible experience, facilitating the relationships that make crowdfunding work. Beth joined a room full of Matter Seven entrepreneurs in New York City to

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E10: Caitlin Kalinowski — Head of Product Design, Oculus VR

Caitlin Kalinowski has been a designer at the forefront of cutting-edge technology for over a decade. She got her start at Apple as one of the lead designers on the MacBook Air before she left for Facebook. Now, she is the Head of Product Design at Oculus VR. Caitlin shared

Media

Join Matter Eight

Top highlightMedia is the bedrock of democracy.It’s the way we learn about the world. It connects us. It empowers us to make stronger decisions by arming us with information. The stories we hear through the media define how we relate to the people we share our society with

Media

Applying to Matter? Here’s how we think about our accelerator investments.

Applications are open for Matter Eight. In conjunction with our launch we wanted to demystify the process we use to evaluate companies. At Matter we look at five critical elements when making the decision about whether to invest in a startup: media, stage, mission alignment, team, and venture basics. All

Media

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E7: Jane Metcalfe — Co-Founder, WIRED

Jane Metcalfe is the founder of NEO.LIFE, an online publication that makes sense of the neobiological revolution. Previously, she co-founded WIRED. As well as WIRED Magazine, the group owned HotBot, the internet’s fastest search engine at the time, invented the banner ad, won numerous awards, and practically invented

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E6: Max Ventilla — CEO, AltSchool

Max Ventilla is the founder of AltSchool, a collaboration between engineers and educators to help build the future of education. He’s also an accomplished serial entrepreneur whose journey has taken him through Aardvark, Google and beyond. In this talk recorded at Matter in San Francisco, he discusses building a

Entrepreneurship

Matter: Redefining Media Entrepreneurship

I’m grateful for having the opportunity to do my MBA summer internship at Matter, a media accelerator and investment firm that supports media entrepreneurs who are building a more empathetic, inclusive and informed society. I’ve enjoyed having the chance to work with the team and Matter’s entrepreneurs