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Introducing Botcamp

We are excited to announce botcamp, a new program at betaworks to help you build your bot and bot business. At betaworks we are seeing conversational interfaces becoming the new mobile design paradigm. We have been building, investing, and researching this area for some time, all reinforced and highlighted in the notifications work we did last fall. From Poncho, a messaging based weather service, to Giphy bot in Slack, to the Digg news search bot, chat bots are establishing the most convenient way to interact with the services and media you love. Together with our partners, we aim to accelerate the bot ecosystem.

We’re partnering with leading players in the ecosystem to accelerate the development of your company. Partners include platforms, venture capitalists, related startups, and media companies. Betaworks has partnered with The Chernin Group to invest in each of the companies. KPCB, General Catalyst, Atomico and RRE are sponsoring botcamp. Twitter, Slack, Facebook, Amazon Alexa, Line, Kik, Discord, Greylock, SV Angel, Eniac, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Lightspeed, Greycroft, Bloomberg Beta, BoxGroup, Homebrew, Public Studio, Slow Ventures and The New York Times R&D Lab will be mentors throughout the program.

“The explosion of messaging-based interfaces, combined with advancements in machine intelligence, means we’re at a point where these bots are no longer just clever parlor tricks, they can be incredibly useful tools for improving productivity and helping people work together more effectively.”

— Peter Rojas, betaworks

What is botcamp?

Botcamp is a ten-week program for a select group of bot builders that begins in July and concludes in September. During that time you’ll have access to some of the smartest thinkers about chatbots, conversational interfaces, and AI. The betaworks team, along with industry partners, will work with you on product, platform integration, data science, branding and fundraising. You’ll also have access to bot building tools such as Howdy and Dexter. Betaworks will help integrate into messaging platforms by having mentors from Twitter, Slack, Facebook, Amazon Alexa, Line, and Kik.

If selected, we’ll also make an investment in your bot startup.

Who is botcamp for?

Are you working on a bot? Building a bot related company? Botcamp is designed for anyone building within the ecosystem of conversational interfaces — whether that’s a Twitterbot, Alexa skill, or an enabling layer of NLP or the machine learning that many of these require. This is for builders who are either in the early stages of product development, have a beta, or have a prototype product.

“Botcamp is a way for us to open up the betaworks studio on-demand for very early stage companies to provide help in areas from user acquisition and fundraising to data science and access to our early adopter network, openbeta. It will create network effects amongst the companies and various platforms.” — Matt Hartman, betaworks

To learn more about botcamp, visit betaworks.com/botcamp. To apply, strike up a conversation with betabot (347.960.2382 or on telegram). It will ask you a few questions about what you’re working on. The deadline to apply is May 1st.