Entrepreneurship What does it really mean to be an entrepreneur? The entrepreneurs of Matter Six explain (creatively!) what entrepreneurship is all about“I want to be an entrepreneur.” I hear these words constantly on my college campus. And I can’t help but cringe each time. Over the past decade, entrepreneurship has become the “new hot thing.” As a social
Podcast “Our product is to surprise you.” Top highlight For our first time hosting a guest speaker in our New York City [https://news.matter.vc/matter-has-launched-in-nyc] location, we had a clear vision: to bring in inspiring entrepreneurs from a mission-driven, venture-backed NYC media startup. Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber, co-founders of Gimlet Media [https://gimletmedia.com/
Wedding Planning Redefining Wedding Planning with Menagerie Today’s couples are planning their own weddings. But in a world without the wedding planner and the success of their wedding contingent upon hiring the right vendors, they are spending more than 150 hours searching and emailing vendors for quotes, organizing their research in spreadsheets, and managing their wedding
Media From Steve Grove of Google News Lab From the moment I started talking with the team at Matter [http://matter.vc], I was impressed by their vision to build an independent accelerator focused only on early-stage media startups. There didn’t seem to be anything else quite like it out there. As I joined the group of
Startup No Plan, Best Plan Four years ago I found myself about to jump out of an airplane (with a parachute) in the middle of the Namibian desert, after I thought I was just going to spend my day at the beach. During a year at sea with an experiential education school called Class Afloat
Entrepreneurship The “Drunken Walk” of the Summer Intern “So what are your summer plans?” …The dreaded question for any college student, second only to inquiries about post-college career aspirations. Most students must either fabricate an impressive-sounding façade for bumming around at the beach or be prepared to explain precisely how their internship will translate to real-life skills and
Startup The Ripple Effect We are proud to announce that Matter Ventures has made a fifth non-accelerator investment, in Ripple [http://ripple.co].co! The city-focused news platform powered by local journalists and storytellers has raised $4M in funding to tackle hyperlocal news discovery through a combination of location technology and a contributor community.
Media What IS media, anyway? What is media? At Matter [http://matter.vc] we ask ourselves this question a lot. Entrepreneurs ask us this question a lot. It’s led to fascinating discussions with our partners and mentors. It’s the question that comes up time and time again at the talks we give about
Startup 300 Pitches Top highlight You have been working tirelessly for weeks, months, maybe over a year, and after submitting your application to Matter’s accelerator program, you’ve been asked to come in and pitch. You walk into a conference room and there are 2 people sitting at a table. There’s
Startup How to know you’re ready to leave ‘traditional’ journalism for the media startup world Top highlight Motherly’s Liz Tenety and Jill Koziol listen to feedback from panelists at a Matter Design ReviewThe upcoming deadline for the sixth class of Matter, a design thinking accelerator for early stage media companies in SF and NYC [http://matter.vc], has me thinking about all the reasons
Startup The next chapter in The History Project’s story The History Project [https://www.thehistoryproject.com/], the Matter Four startup that creates rich digital narratives through interactive timelines, has just added another prestigious investor to its list: The Associated Press. AP joins The New York Times and Matter Ventures [http://matter.vc] in backing the Oakland-based company’s $2M
Entrepreneurship Defining Change Media for Good Across three years and 49 startups, Matter, its teams, mentors, and partners have worked to “change media for good”. Like the rest of the team, it’s why I joined. It’s what we’re passionate about. It’s what gets us out of bed. It makes us feel like
Leadership Feedback is a gift. Top highlight I come from a world where there’s almost no time for reflection. In the hurly-burly of the TV news cycle [http://rebeccabowring.org/portfolio], barreling from one breaking news event to the next, there’s rarely the opportunity to really dissect “how it went.” Sometimes we’d
Startup The Real Value of Acceleration Top highlight The signals are everywhere — press, macroeconomic indicators, and investment activity itself — that a new crunch is coming: raising a Series A round is already difficult [http://firstround.com/review/what-the-seed-funding-boom-means-for-raising-a-series-a/] and is about to be even more difficult for the vast majority of early-stage startups. Even those with
Entrepreneurship Meet Nikita! Top highlight Matter is the kind of special community and place that compels someone to quit their first job out of college in 6 months. Of course, by someone I mean me. Three years ago, I was a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill with strong opinions about what I wanted to
Media When 2 become 6. Top highlight It’s a well-kept secret that, until very recently, Matter has been the work of just two full-time individuals, punching well above their weight. For most of last year, Corey and Lara were running so fast and relentlessly that they didn’t even have time to interview candidates
Startup Looking Back At Matter Lots of memories and post-its in this place.When we began our journey with Matter, either 19 weeks or a lifetime ago depending on how you measure time, we knew nothing — especially not how little we knew. That only became apparent over time, as each passing day brought crucial lessons
Startup 7 minutes on 2 coasts. Matter’s Managing Partner, Corey Ford, kicks off Demo Day SF.Even if we do say so ourselves, Matter Five’s Demo Day in San Francisco was a roaring success. After a week of intense rehearsals, our teams delivered confident and compelling pitches. Live demo after live demo went off
Startup Sprinting for the finish line. Top highlight Much like life, entrepreneurship has often been described as “a marathon, not a sprint [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylewong/2014/11/12/startups-are-a-marathon-not-a-sprint-run-at-your-own-pace/] .” But no one said a marathon can’t be made up of sprints — those short, sharp bursts of energy that bring you closer to
Design Thinking Meet Liz! Matter is an immersive community. From the moment I walked in the door two weeks ago, I quickly learned this is a space that enables its culture to thrive. Entrepreneurs really do eat the jelly beans in our kitchen to fuel “flaring” brainstorm sessions. The post-its on the whiteboards are
Startup What We’ve Learned In a Month (and a Year) Plus, an Announcement about Beta Testing! One year ago today, we were just embarking on this adventure, laying the groundwork for what would become Verbatm. The concept was murky and the company was months away from being established, but a general semblance of goals and structure was emerging. We worked
Startup Why We Moved our Company from SF to NYC Stringr [http://www.stringr.com] was founded in San Francisco. The founding team met while gazing at a gleaming view of the Bay Bridge at Wharton|SF [http://sf.wharton.upenn.edu/] on the Embarcadero. I own a condo in Russian Hill. One of my co-founders, Lindsay Stewart, was raised
Music Thank You For the Music Our fight to help the independent musician make money from their music. > It all started with a simple idea: “What if I could send money directly to any musician in the world with the tap of a button?” I was listening to an incredible Tiny Anthem [https://soundcloud.com/
China Finding the Chinese Millennial How are we — an energy attorney and an editor-in-chief of a number of Chinese publications — supposed to bridge the gap between the two greatest superpowers in the world? Jenny Bai (left); Rebecca Eydeland (right)By leveraging the convergence of several major events. And taking advantage of very good timing. At
