Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Disney Accelerator Shows Off First Class Of Startups

The Disney Accelerator, the startup accelerator sponsored by Walt Disney and being run by TechStars, had its demo day Tuesday, showing off the nine companies to emerge out of the accelerator. Among the announcements at the demo day were the funding of smartphone toy company SnowShoe, and an acquisition of Smart Toy, a developer of an interactive toy. The other companies in the class included ChoreMonster, which develops a system for managing kids in their family chores; Codarica, which develops games which also teach kids to code; Jogg, focused on mobile video; Naritiv, a developer of marketing and analytics software for Snapchat; Sidelines, a sports focused content marketing platform; Sphero, which develops smartphone controlled robots; Twigtale, a storytelling app; and TYFFON, a developer of entertainment apps. The Disney Accelerator said that Smart Toy was acquired by Los Angeles-based children's product firm Cartwheel Kids, and that SnowShoe raised $2.2M in its seed funding round. Disney offered up up to $120K in investment capital, access to entrepreneurs and executives at Disney, and other resources to its startups.

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