Funded by a $250,000
Knight Foundation grant administered by
Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Project Liberty is
Philadelphia Media Network's new six-month digital incubator that provides office space, mentoring and the chance to collaborate in the transformation of a Philadelphia media institution. "It's the first newspaper-based tech incubator of its kind," says Ted Mann, one of the founders of SnipSnap, a digital couponing platform.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the incubator is the two way nature of the program. Says Mann, "The 3 startups are working directly to help provide strategy and solutions to core PMN divisions: Cloudmine is powering the backend services for the next generation of Philly Media mobile apps; SnipSnap is working with the sales team to become the digital & mobile solution for the newspaper insert advertisers and publishers and ElectNext will power Philly.com's 2012 election center." Mann, a former Gannett Newspapers employee, hopes to develop a strong relationship with the Inquirer and PMN to both sell and co-promote the SnipSnap app, and to use this as a template for working with other newspapers.
"One of the values of CloudMine is that we take an organization that is historically not mobile and allow them to become mobile." says McCorkle. "Philadelphia Media Network is a legacy news company that's done a fantastic job of reinventing itself."
ElectNext's Keya Dannenbaum says, "We're thrilled to be entrepreneurs-in-residence at Project Liberty and to work closely with Philly.com as a first partner. It's an insider's perspective that gives us the best opportunity to develop a product that will work for this and similar media organizations."
While the Knight Foundation provided the grant, the three companies will not receive direct funding during their stay at PMN. McCorkle terms this a more proper incubator, rather than an accelerator. Project Liberty will take no equity share in any of the three companies.
Source: Ted Mann, SnipSnap; Brendan McCorkle, CloudMine; Keya Dannenbaum, ElectNext
Writer: Sue Spolan