After five exciting weeks of matchmaking, the match phase of the STADIEM acceleration programme has come to an end. The STADIEM hubs VRT Sandbox, MCB, NMA and Storytek have submerged the 40 selected startups of the first Open Call in a series of pitching events, project plan meetings and training. The end goal? Helping them find the ideal corporate match to co-create media solutions in the next phases of the programme. Here is what some of the startups take away from their experience.
Content creation & distribution
Playpilot AB offers a social media streaming guide that helps you find and explore content across a series of services in one place. As a social streaming aggregator, Playpilot has met their match with a leading European Mediahouse by delivering a technical solution for their users.
“STADIEM has allowed us to make this project happen by supporting us with their network, experience and funds. Also, we now have a bigger pipeline of potential partners.”
Playpilot AB
Archiving
Using flexible and pre-trained AI models, The Chainless GmbH offers visual recognition capabilities to extract any kind of information from images, videos and live streams. Together with the German media and digital company ProSiebenSat.1, their aim is to develop knowledge graphs to browse archives for content and context while acquiring additional background insights.
“We greatly benefited from the STADIEM programme through their networking activities, helpful workshops and great support!”
The Chainless GmbH
Content verification and against disinformation
Textgain develops natural language processing technology to detect harmful societal trends such as disinformation and hate speech. In collaboration with VRT, Textgain aims to develop an audience engagement monitoring application that facilitates content moderation and provides insights into the online discussion.
“We gained valuable insights into the current needs of the VRT interaction team, which helped us shape the idea and improve our product-market fit.”
Textgain
Data/AI/ML/Synthetic Media
FanSifter is a collaborative customer data platform for fan-based industries that leverages machine learning to help rights-holders in music, entertainment, and sports increase sales. By teaming up with leading independent music management, label and publishing group Marathon Music, they aim to integrate their platform into the corporation’s business units. This includes a technical and process integration into their digital/marketing/data team workflows and technology stacks, and running pilots with chosen global artist brands.
“Participating in the programme has been very excting to us! STADIEM has brought us new business connections and leads, upskilling workshops about invaluable topics on the startup journey, and coverage for training costs.”
FanSifter
Monetization
FilmChain collects, allocates and analyses revenues in film, tv and digital, in a transparent and efficient way. It modernises participation and royalties management, with modular enterprise solutions. FilmChain found a match with Alamode Filmdistribution OHG and will co-create a modular, scalable solution for the automated generation and dissemination of royalty reports, to replace spreadsheet-based manual processes.
“By providing a specific timeframe within the match phase, the STADIEM programme has really pushed us to focus on securing a partner. The training budget allowed us to access coaching which, together with the SIA events, enabled us to refine our methods and messaging when addressing potential partners.”
FilmChain
Moonshots
Saulx BV built a high-performance platform to handle real time two-way updates to millions of connected clients. It includes features to build highly performant, scalable platforms and applications, without needing any third-party cloud services from big tech. Together with RTL Deutschland, they want to develop a fully functional real time audience interaction platform, enhancing advertising possibilities in the process.
“We received a lot of valuable feedback that helped us refine our customer outreach, pitches, and demos to be significantly more effective than before we enrolled in the programme. Through the programme we’ve been introduced to many important leads, and executives who took the time to give us feedback on our pitches and sales tactics. Not to mention the connections we made through our hub and our startups group.”
Saulx BV
STADIEM’s piloting and acceleration programme will now continue with the Develop Phase for the coming 6 months. At least 16 of the Match Phase startups will be selected to work on ensuring validated commitment from their corporate partners to carry out pilots within the timeframe and allocated planning. Furthermore, a second Open Call for media innovators will be launched at the beginning of 2022.
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