The Walt Disney Company has always been a technological innovator. Starting with Walt Disney himself, who pioneered animation techniques, the entire Disney team has been on the cutting edge of creativity and storytelling for almost a century.
Over the years Disney (NYSE: DIS) has continued to innovate, and in 2014 the company launched an accelerator to bring startups to Burbank to collaborate with the various Disney divisions.
The accelerator encourages Disney employees and executives to “be inspired by trends that are just ahead of where we are, where we are hoping to go,” accelerator General Manager Bonnie Rosen told L.A. Inno.
The overarching goal for Disney is to experiment and build relationships with these innovators. The accelerator hosts one cohort per year.
For the first time this year, the accepted startups in 2022 all happened to share a common theme — Web3, the third generation of the infrastructure supporting the internet. And they all focus on advancing the technology and creativity of immersive experiences.
“The companies in this year’s class allowed us to explore opportunities to reach our fans, wherever they may be,” Rosen said.
How it works
The accelerator has a direct connection to executive leaders across the entire spectrum of the Walt Disney Company. This includes the mentorship each startup receives throughout the program, about 3.5 months. Disney also continues working with the companies beyond their time at the accelerator.
This year, six startups participated. Several have headquarters in L.A. All six, along with some 2021 cohort companies, put on demonstrations at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank on November 10.
The accelerator makes separate investment deals with each startup it accepts. Rosen declined to disclose the range of these investments.
Participants with an L.A. connection
One of the L.A.-based startups that participated in the latest accelerator cohort was Flickplay. Its app enables users to unlock digital assets in physical locations, and then create videos with them using augmented reality. AR is an interactive experience that takes the real world and layers computer-generated content onto it.
Flickplay's digital assets include NFTs and Flicks (non-NFTs). An NFT is an acronym for non-fungible token. Software developers working on blockchain databases use them to give serial numbers to images or videos. That helps keep track of the NFTs in Web3. Blockchain enables NFTs to be owned privately, but tracked publicly.
At the demo day, life-sized versions of Disney NFTs, like one of Minnie Mouse, could be found through a scavenger hunt via the Flickplay app.
Outside of Disney venues, there are currently free collectibles that users can unlock in the map section of the app. They will all soon transition into NFTs, “so there is value for all of our early adopters to have unlocked them (first) in the app,” Flickplay founder and CEO Pierina Merino told L.A. Inno.
Another startup that participated is Red 6. It develops AR software that helps train fighter pilots. It has an office and a flight testing simulator in L.A. and a headquarters in Orlando.
“Never before has AR worked outside while pulling over 7 G’s” co-founder and CEO Daniel Robinson said.
It’s challenging to get AR to work and be viewed in bright sunlight in dynamic environments, he added. While the company declined to offer detailed specifics on how its technology works, it did tell L.A. Inno this: "We can fluidly change the brightness in the real world setting," co-founder Glenn Snyder explained. He serves as the company's chief product and technology officer.
Snyder and Robinson's skills complement each other. Snyder has a BFA in visual effects, Robinson is a former Tornado F3 fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force in the U.K. He was invited by the U.S. Air Force to fly the F-22 Raptor, and later worked with the Air Force training fighter pilots. After getting an MBA at Georgetown University, he founded Red 6 in 2018.
One of the benefits of going through Disney’s accelerator was the “opportunity to explore apps for AR that really matter to a broader consumer market,” Robinson said.
Disney divisions Imagineering and Industrial Light & Magic are exploring opportunities to bring Red 6’s tech into their environments for next-gen experiences. Imagineering designs and builds the Disney theme parks, among other things, and oversees the creative features of Disney games, merchandise and publishing. ILM was founded by George Lucas in 1975 to create special effects for the Star Wars movies.
