Music manager and tech investor Troy Carter has a new venture: Smashd Labs, a startup accelerator that will mentor 5-7 entertainment-focused tech firms for 10 weeks within his Atom Factory business. Billboard reports that Smashd Labs will invest $50k in each startup in return for a 3% equity stake, with applications already underway in a process that will see the final startups picked by 14 September.
“One of the deficiencies we saw in a lot of the accelerator programs and VCs was the area of branding, customer acquisition, how to build community, communications – all of the things that we specialise in as a company,” said Carter. Smashd Labs will sit alongside AF Square, Carter’s vehicle for investing in bigger startups that has stakes in Spotify, Uber and Dropbox. It also shares branding with Smashd, the business journalism site that Carter launched earlier this year.
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