Startup accelerators have hit their stride. In brief, for the unaware, an accelerator program’s managing partners read through a pool of applications to ultimately select promising founders with game-changing ideas to invest in, mentor, and showcase to their network of angels and venture capitalists. The first wave of these programs encouraged the gamut of software technology founders to apply and take a sum of money in return for equity and a variety of startup resources. Among the most well-known are Y Combinator, Techstars, and 500 Startups.

Markets that have their own specialty paid attention to the opportunity these programs presented and began executing these seed funding experiments with a more targeted approach. The startup community now has programs tailored to hardware, cloud computing, healthcare, urban development and the list goes on. It seemed like legacy media was safe until Matter open its garage door and introduced themselves by asking a simple question.

What if you could build the next great meaningful media venture from scratch? — Corey Ford, Matter CEO & Managing Partner

Music to my ears

I mentioned The Knoble in the introductory post, but forced readers to click on a link or video to learn more about it. I wanted the focus to remain on the story itself, rather than the product. Now that I have your attention, The Knoble will be a news and opinion site geared towards digital natives that features nonprofits and socially-conscious companies.

In the process of doing research for my idea, I discovered Matter. What excites me about them is that they are closely aligned with my approach to The Knoble. They focus on for-profit, scalable media ventures, with an affinity for public good. At first mention, it seems like a fairly narrow focus, which would be beneficial to The Knoble. Yet Matter’s first two classes consisted of a wide range of startups that catalyzed the program’s early growth last year and has created broad appeal among content creators.

Going meta on Matter

In the excitement that ensued with learning Matter existed, I clicked on each link to see what the media had written about them and then clicked on each of their portfolio company’s websites to see if I could detect a pattern. With the latter process, I found that many of the founders were “scratching their own itch.” They were leveraging software that was solving their substantial gripe with what existed and decided to do something about it.

SpokenLayer Founder and CEO Will Mayo dealt with dyslexia in his childhood, and as a graduate student, harnessed his frustration to build software that turns written content into audio. Contextly Co-Founder and CEO Ryan Singel previously worked at Wired and set out to increase reader engagement with meaningful content recommendations that were both human and algorithmically powered. The founders at Creative Action Network wanted to unlock all the incredible work they were seeing as design consultants and turn it into a platform for public good.

The extra mile

Giving into my healthy obsession, I took this search one step further and sent each of those founders an unsolicited email. In it, I explained who I am, why I emailed them, and how my project is relevant to their startup. Minutes and hours go by and I started to second-guess myself.

I should have written more, or a little less, or maybe not at all!

Then one, two, and all three responded within 24 hours of me hitting the send button. I let them know I wanted to learn from their experiences as founders and participants of Matter. They were all receptive to the idea and thankfully them liking The Knoble’s concept I shared via Kickstarter helped.

Their insights have already given me an advantage in how I’ll approach building a community, generating revenue, and forging marquee partnerships. As it relates to the Matter application, I have my work cut out for me. The next few weeks will be dedicated to showing my startup is worth betting on.

Founders often subject themselves to going through this application process alone. In an effort to keep my sanity, as well as give back to the startup world I’ll soon be entering, I’ve decided to share the success or failure I face when the decisions are made for Matter’s 3rd class. In the meantime, my team and I are coding, relationship building, and crafting stories. Here’s our short-term road map:

• Integrate the revenue software into our Wordpress site
• Prepare for SF trip to visit with CODE2040, HandUp, and be a sponge at the Launch Conference
• Publish interviews of Matter participants
• Make a pitch deck

Message Received!