We’re getting in trouble for our un-SEO optimized rumor roundup headlines, but perhaps we can get away with just one more. It’s important because reality TV is truly descending upon start-up land! Behold:
MINI-SERIES. We heard the Makery-based start-up PR shoppe Small Girls are getting a reality show! They’re at least going to have camera people following them around! We pinged to ask. “It’s still pretty hush-hush,” petite publicist Bianca Caampued told Betabeat by email. “We’re still in the very early stages of filming our sizzle reel and our producer shopping it to networks, so we can’t talk about it on internet land yet.” Happily, Ms. Caampued and petite pal Mallory Blair were pretty cool about our rumormongering. “We’re also actually shooting a segment for another show on Bravo next week, in my closet,” Ms. Caampued said. Wee! What should they should call the show? The Mini-est Marketers? The Littlest Flacks? Prometheus?
SERIES BRAVO! A source passed this email along to Betabeat: “One of our partners just sold a TV show to Bravo, and is currently casting for a group of five women investors who are looking for cool stuff to support while running hard through NYC culture. If you’re 30-40+ , in the financial industry, and interested, email [redacted].” We scrounged and scrounged and didn’t turn up any clues; at the least, the show does not appear to be a product of powerhouse Ish Entertainment.
INSULT, MEET INJURY–ALSO, IT’LL COST YOU. TechCrunch Disrupt has started to send out rejection letters to start-ups that applied to pitch. “They offered us the privilege of paying them $2,000 to have a booth,” one frustrated founder told Betabeat. “We are going to blow up in everyone’s face and they keep dissing us. It’s retarded they are capitalizing on startup fever.”
YEAH! WHAT! OKAY! Betabeat got a sneak peak at the Hype Machine iPhone app, due out soon. It is not fancy–basically a bunch of variously-curated music streams. Uh, it’s green. The start-up has been planning this since October 2009.
STEALTHY. There is a secret, funded start-up building a “specialized industry-specific web application” in two to three months, but oh–they need a contractor who might transition to CTO. “We are venture-funded and advised by successful and well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and angels,” the anonymous company writes in a job ad. The founder has non-profit and business experience. Good luck with that!
ACTUAL STEALTHY. The new DreamIt Ventures incubator quietly announced it had chose 15 start-ups out of more than 500 applications for its summer program which starts May 15. We hear the list of companies will be out next week, as candidates are still scrambling to get their websites ready for semi-prime time. Try as we might, Betabeat could not sniff out a single one–most sources had no idea what we were talking about. “I have no idea. I’ve barely heard anything about DreamIt. Did they make final selections?” one well-connected investor/founder said when Betabeat asked. “I didn’t hear of anyone applying. No one told me at least. I know of SeedStart applicants, ER applicants, TechStars applicants. But no DreamIt.” It’s a mystery!
UNINTELLIGIBLE PRESS RELEASES. You can use this pitch from BitTorrent, which wanted us to take a conference call under embargo, as a template for your next webby product launch: “Due to your coverage of technology news for BETABEAT, we wanted to give you a heads-up on key digital media Internet technology news coming down the pike from BitTorrent, Inc. that will be of great advantage to consumer tech users! It will be the Beta launch of an amazing new tool from this leading peer to peer Internet file sharing company, BitTorrent, Inc. and their more than 100mm users,” is literally what this actual email said. We asked for more information and got nothing back, so whatever. The embargo lifts May 12 when we assume we’ll read all about it on Twttr along with everybody else.
