Venture Capital

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,

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

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

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

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

Startup

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S1-E6: Matt Hartman— Partner, Betaworks

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that, as an early stage entrepreneur, the better you know how investors think, the better you’ll know how to pitch to them when you’re fundraising. That’s why we have Matt Hartman, Partner at Betaworks, on this final episode of our first

Venture Capital

Rules for Rebelpreneurs

Top highlightJournalists are under threat in our country — people don’t trust the news, fake publications and “alternative facts” make it an increasingly burdensome task to identify the truth, and multiple figures in the White House, including the president, have declared the media to be the “Enemy of the People.

Entrepreneurship

It’s time for media to step up.

Top highlightMatter has always set out to create a more informed, connected, and empowered society. We hope to invest in diverse teams, and teams supporting under-represented communities. When more of our communities are involved in building media platforms, and served by our media institutions, we create a stronger democracy. Media

Diversity

Be Better!

Top highlightLast year I had the honor of participating in the United State of Women Summit, a gathering focused on gender equality and empowerment that kicked-off the #StateofWomen movement. Oprah Winfrey, in one of the plenary sessions, asked, “what can men leaving here [Summit] do?” Then First Lady Michelle Obama

Misinformation

Why Misinfocon gives me hope

Let’s start with this: if you don’t know what Misinfocon is or what it’s all about, you should. The summit, which took place the last weekend of February at the MIT Media Lab, brought together 200 thought leaders tackling misinformation who care about trust, verification, fact checking,

Media

Want to be a part of Matter Seven? Here’s what we look for.

Top highlightMedia is under siege, which means so is our democracy — but there is a silver lining. Now more than ever, founders have the opportunity to effect a positive change on society and we are looking for the teams that are up to the challenge. We believe the seeds of

Startup

“You’re borrowing time now to get more time later.”

Top highlightDanielle Morrill practices radical candor. “I got into Y-Combinator as a solo female founder, probably with the only launched product that had revenue. So I was like feeling like a bada** motherf*****. But then it turned out that [referrals] is a terrible business.” She closed down her YC-backed startup,

Startup

“We don’t do a lot with atoms. We’re much more interested in electrons.”

Betaworks is a hybrid beast. Part VC firm, part incubator, part workshop, its core business is the “studio” where new consumer internet companies are built from scratch. Every line of code is written by a Betaworks employee. After a product is released into the world, if it gets positive traction,

Startup

The Real Value of Acceleration

Top highlightThe signals are everywhere — press, macroeconomic indicators, and investment activity itself — that a new crunch is coming: raising a Series A round is already difficult and is about to be even more difficult for the vast majority of early-stage startups. Even those with good funding and reasonable traction. The

Fundraising

Seed Stage Fundraising

Two years ago Corey Ford, the Managing Director at Matter, and I were introduced through Designer Fund and the d-school at Stanford. We ended up sharing a workspace at Hattery, and formed a friendship while working on the day to day challenges of our startups. As Corey formed the Matter