BetaBlox relaunching its popular demo day as part of documentary-style reality TV show
January 29, 2021 | Tommy Felts
BetaBlox is adding more reality to its demo day — pushing the entrepreneur incubator’s hotly anticipated event to the summer and retooling the format as documentary-style vignettes that feed into casting for a full-season reality TV show.
“This opportunity is a win-win-win,” said Weston Bergmann, founder and lead investor at BetaBlox, in a message to entrepreneurs hoping to join the project. “We win because we’re creating an asset that promotes our incubator/process/services/products; the viewer wins because it’s pulling back the curtain on what it’s like to start real companies, which will aid them in their entrepreneurial education; and you win because you and your business will be showcased at scale to potential customers/partners/investors.”
BetaBlox is an exclusive school for startups. Every year, its team picks the best-of-the-best and then puts them through a rigorous curriculum of classes, one-on-one consultation, and mentorship designed to give them a higher likelihood of survival.
Season 1 is set to be shot in early summer in Tulsa, Oklahoma — where BetaBlox operates a second campus — over the course of a week at a luxury hotel and casino with an in-house co-working space.
The concept is a more fleshed out version of “Founder’s House,” a pilot for which was shot in the lead-up to BetaBlox’s demo day in January 2020. About 10 BetaBlox companies from across the region were placed in a house in Kansas City, put through a series of activities similar to those experienced in the incubator, and filmed.
That footage — along with the demo day pitches at the Grid Collaborative Workspace in Overland Park — then were turned into a short documentary, which first premiered in May and was posted online in December.
Click here to read more about the 2020 BetaBlox class, which featured Kansas City companies like Mindsport, Flexy, River Watch Beef, and KC Hemp Co.
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This go-round, BetaBlox companies’ documentary-style pitches will be filmed during the early summer as shooting gets under way for the reality TV show’s season. The best pitches are expected to be cast on the show, alongside a nationwide casting call that provides more exposure for BetaBlox and its complementary AlphaBlox programming.
Casting already has begun with more than 2,000 applicants expected, Bergmann told Startland News.
“We’re looking for entrepreneurs of all different types. We want high-tech startups, we want small businesses, we want men and women, we want old and young, etc.,” he said in a message to potential applicants. “Our thesis is that you should surround yourself with different types of entrepreneurs, and find inspiration from what they’re doing for your personal journey.”
“We’ve found that small businesses don’t think enough like a startup, and startups don’t think enough like a small business,” he continued. “This experience will help illuminate that opportunity for you and those who watch.
Click here to apply or learn more about the casting and filming process. The finished product is expected in late summer 2021.
“Interestingly enough, I’ve wanted to pivot the demo days to this for several years, COVID just gave me the excuse to do it,” said Bergmann, who himself was a cast member on MTV’s “The Real World: Austin” and is a frequent competitor on the network’s “The Challenge” series.
Weston Bergmann, BetaBlox 2020 Demo Day
In March 2020, BetaBlox was among the first entrepreneur programs to rapidly move its efforts to virtual formats as the early impact of the pandemic began to set in.
“Timing-wise, we got really lucky,” Bergmann told Startland News at the time, having just wrapped the January demo day and the interview process for a new round of companies. “We got both of those done recently and now it’s just one giant knowledge transfer from our coaches/curriculum/process to our entrepreneurs.”
After what seemed like 100 phone calls with current and alumni startups in BetaBlox, he said, patterns quickly emerged on how to adapt the program.
“We took those patterns and created a class series we’re teaching via remote broadcast and slides that centers exclusively around how to navigate these current waters,” Bergmann said. “The advice changes dependent upon how far along the companies are, and if they’re in a market that is more (or less) in demand during this crisis.”
Like those BetaBlox companies, entrepreneurs cast on the reality show will have free access to the incubator’s digital curriculum — AlphaBlox — which has proven a core asset during the transition to virtual.
“AlphaBlox is about eight hours of videos/classes/panels/infographics that walk our startups through the first several months,” Bergmann said, noting cast members would use the materials as “summer reading” before shooting begins. “It was originally designed for people that aren’t quite ready for BetaBlox. It took two years to produce it, so it’s of a quality we’ve never seen anyone else in our space do.”
Want to get a feel for BetaBlox’s planned reality TV series? Watch the pilot below.
Founder’s House Pilot from Weston Bergmann on Vimeo.
Tommy Felts
Tommy is editor-in-chief for Startland News, a Kansas City-based nonprofit newsroom that uses storytelling to elevate the region’s startup community of entrepreneurs, innovators, hustlers, creatives and risk-takers.
Under Tommy’s leadership, Startland News has expanded its coverage from a primarily high-tech, high-growth focus to a more wide-ranging and inclusive look at the faces of entrepreneurism, innovation and business.
Before joining Startland News in 2017, Tommy worked for 12 years as an award-winning newspaper journalist, designer, editor and publisher. He was named one of Editor & Publisher magazine’s top “25 Under 35” in 2014.
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