Snap Expands Its Startup Accelerator Program

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Snap Expands Its Startup Accelerator Program

Snap Inc. is expanding its Yellow Accelerator program, opening it up twice a year — for eight companies per cohort.

Launched in 2018, the Santa Monica-based company’s accelerator has invested in 38 companies so far.


Snap looks for startups that are at the intersection of tech and creativity and offers a $150,000 investment. Their 14-week curriculum helps startups develop their businesses with mentorship from Snap’s executive team as well as industry experts including Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Grammy award winning producer Jonathan Yip and NBA star Baron Davis.

Alexandra Levitt and Mike Su Snap Yellow accelerator program heads Alexandra Levitt (left) and Mike Su.

Director Mike Su said Snap is looking for companies that are mission driven and align with business objectives such as “helping people express themselves,” “live in the moment,” “learn about the world” and “have fun together.”

Applications for Spring 2022 are open until January 21st and the cohort kicks off in April 2022. Participants in the past have included the digital greeting card and gifting startup Givingli; Shappi, the travel startup to help Ecuadorians shop in the U.S. and subscription-based audio road-trip app, HearHere.

The previous class was all remote (due to the pandemic). Moving forward, Snap will continue the virtual format but add two in-person engagements. The first will be at orientation.

“[A] huge part of the value of joining an accelerator program is getting to know the founders that you will be in the program with,” said Alexandra Levitt, a senior manager for the program. “An in-person orientation would allow for all the different founders to meet, to engage and get to know one another.”

The second in-person engagement will be on Demo Day, where founders will showcase their businesses and teams, as well as the progress they've made during the course of the program.

Snap boasts that 75% of the startups that have participated in its accelerator program have a female and/or BIPOC founder. Startups come from around the globe, with 40% of Snap’s accelerator participants hailing from abroad. That’s in part because so much of the program has been run online, Su said.

“Moving into a virtual environment has obviously given us a tremendous opportunity to serve founders across the globe in different circumstances that we might not have been able to in the past,” Su said.

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Starships Were Meant To Fly: Astrolab's New Jeep-Sized Rover Gets a Lift from SpaceX

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Starships Were Meant To Fly: Astrolab's New Jeep-Sized Rover Gets a Lift from SpaceX
Photo by Samson Amore

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

Local Los Angeles-area startup Astrolab Inc. has designed a new lunar vehicle called FLEX, short for Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover. About the size of a Jeep Wrangler, FLEX is designed to move cargo around the surface of the moon on assignment. It’s a bit larger than NASA’s Mars rovers, like Perseverance, but as it’s designed for transport and mobility rather than precision measurement, it can travel much faster, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour across the lunar surface.

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Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn
Creatorland

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

LinkedIn hasn’t caught on with Gen Z—in fact, 96% rarely use their existing account.

Considering 25% of young people want to be full-time content creators and most influencers aren’t active on LinkedIn, traditional networking sites aren’t likely to meet these needs.

Enter CreatorLand.

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This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M
This Week in ‘Raises’:

It has been a slow week in funding, but a local decentralized computing network managed to land $9 million to accelerate deployment of its new product called Universal Communication Identifier (UCID™). Another local company that secured capital included Kevin Costner’s location-based audio storytelling platform and the funding will go toward expanding the app’s content library and expanding into additional regions in the United States.

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