Publisher’s Note: Startup Summer is the next step in Venture Lab Aiken (VLA). It is a collaboration among the Aiken Chamber of Commerce, Make Startups in theClubhou.se in the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center (GCITC) and South Carolina.
$500,000 in seed money is available.
Music is a big part of Skyler Bates’ life. For him, part of the pleasure comes from enjoying music with friends. He is developing 432Bleu to recreate that experience by bringing in the human element.
“432Bleu is a virtual concert space that prioritizes the guests’ ability to interact with one another,” he explained for ABD. “Watching live streams, you don’t get to meet people, you’re not there with everybody, it doesn’t feel like you’re there with anybody. But this space, you could be there, you could see the other people’s characters, and you can actually go up and have a conversation with somebody and meet somebody like you would in real life.”
Entrepreneurs like Skyler are committed to attending weekly, roundtable meetings and will have access to mentorship, training, and real-world tools to make ideas become successful businesses.
But Bates said there is another advantage to the sessions.
Although each member’s project is different from each other, the shared face-to-face time keeps them grounded and prevents them from feeling isolated.
“We’re all kind of really ambitious, like a ‘fire in our belly type’ people, and it’s kind of a lonely life when you live that way, because people don’t understand you,” he said. But here you don’t even have to explain why. Here, everyone can talk, and this is the first place I feel like a lot of us can talk to each other about that.”
There is more to the virtual incubator than training, mentorship, and shared experiences. There is also a financial component.
At the end of the 12-week project, they will also have access to seed money from a $500,000 pot of money provided by the Magnate Angel Group. That is a group of investors looking for startups that can be scaled into companies, possibly worth millions of dollars.
Eric Parker, co-founder of Make Startups, said traditionally, the venture capital world slows down over the summer months. This gives the cohort the chance to prepare for peak fundraising season in the fall.
“So, getting them ready for our No Boundaries pitch contest, getting them ready for Venture Atlanta, there’s a whole host of things going on,” he said. “Also, we are going to be actively working to build their venture capital networks through the other things that we do through the course of the summer.”
Bates realizes that when the fund is distributed among the cohort members, it will be an amount just to move them a step forward.
“It’s essential. This enables you to focus on what we’re trying to build and doing the best thing for our customers and our partners. This buys you the luxury of concentration,” he explained.
Bates said his ultimate goal is to bring together artists and music lovers to attend concerts and share the experience in as close to a real-life setting as possible.
“It’s hard to go to a concert these days,” he said. “They’re so expensive, or they’re a three-hour drive. I just want to bring everyone back together.”
Bates has created a website to share his vision at https://boxoffice.432bleu.com/
