The Peek Show: Techstars & Comcast NBC Universal 🎥💰 #005
Plot twist 👀
The story continues...
You know the drill, here’s the TL;DR:
🌴 We've moved to LA!!!!
💸 Comcast NBC Universal X Techstars X Peek!
🗞 We've got some Press
🎮 More ways to interact with books
🎙 Peek X IPG
Soooo let’s get right to it…
We've been gone for a while, we put our heads down to ensure that everything runs smoothly when we launch. A LOT and I mean A LOT has been happening behind the scenes. What I'm about to say sounds extremely unbelievable but trust me, it's very real and it's happening. Since the beginning of August, we’ve been living in Paris Hilton's $35M mansion in Beverly Hills! That's right, for the whole of August we're working on Peek from here:
Launch House takes startup founders and creators to the next level in their ventures and creates lasting bonds between them through IRL Residency and Digital Fellowship programs. Members get access to exclusive events, fireside chats with industry leaders, access to in-house experts (design, viral marketing, community, etc), a growing list of discounts and perks, and serendipitous hallway conversations that pour the rocket fuel on any startup or creator. Previous LH companies include Showtime, Lolly & others.
We’ll document the whole experience on our socials so make sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram + LinkedIn (if you’re that way inclined 🧓👴). Here’s a wholesome pic to show how we’re feeling about the whole thing:
💸 Comcast NBC Universal X Techstars X Peek!
It's the moment we've all been waiting for, the sleepless nights, early mornings, all the times we forgot to eat because we were in the flow! We're so grateful that you've been able to join us on this journey. We’re delighted to announce that we’ve received funding from Comcast NBC Universal, home to CNBC, NBC Sports, BuzzFeed, Rotten Tomatoes & more! They’re the kings of entertainment, and so we’re excited to work with them as we pioneer social reading as an engaging form of entertainment. It’s awesome to also have received funding from Techstars, the elite global accelerator who are home to umpteen billion dollar companies like Owlet, SendGrid, Remitly + more!
Now it’s head down and back to work so we can finally get to the ultimate moment we’ve been waiting for which is showing Peek to YOU!
👇 More ways to interact with your favourite books:
Being members of the digital age, we noticed we like to use all the tools at our disposal to interact with content and express how we're feeling. As much as we like to type or speak (scream) we love to use GIFs, images, memes and videos (especially the TikTok lovers out there 👀) to communicate with others. So we'll also be building this into the Peek app and should be ready just after launch (or at launch if you're lucky).
📚 Peek spoke at the IPG Conference:
We've spent the past few months ramping up the library of books we'll have on offer for you guys, and as well as speaking to some of the big dogs of the publishing world, this journey has connected Peek with a wide range of independent publishers. We're really excited about including texts from these types of publishers since they're known to be more willing to take risks with experimental writing, and ideas outside of the mainstream (sounds just like us!).
After making all these connections, we were asked to speak at the Independent Publishers Guild's Annual Conference! The IPG are an association of 650 publishers who produce much of the country’s most valuable, creative and diverse content. They contribute a huge amount to UK literature, publishing seven of the Man Booker Prize-winning books. We're excited to be welcoming many of their publishers onto the Peek platform.
Authors get in touch!
As well as reaching out to indie publishers, so many independent authors reached out to us to have their books hosted and discussed by you on the Peek platform! So we’ve only gone and built a website where Authors can easily create an account, upload an epub file to Peek, and have their book hosted directly on the Peek app. If you’re an author, or know any authors whose books would be loved on Peek, please do tell them to get in touch at agency@joinpeek.io.
Book of the Month: The Big Score: The Billion-Dollar Story of Silicon Valley
Over the past five decades, the tech industry has grown into one of the most important sectors of the global economy, and Silicon Valley--replete with sprawling office parks, sky-high rents, and countless self-made millionaires--is home to many of its key players. But the origins of Silicon Valley and the tech sector are much humbler. At a time when tech companies' influence continues to grow, The Big Score chronicles how they began.
We've just passed 645 followers on Instagram and 450 on Twitter! It's heartwarming to know that so many of you are eager to join us on this journey. We can't wait to show it to you, it's coming sooner than you think! ⌛️
Push for Publishers: We've already got so many of your favourite books but we’re working hard to get as many books on Peek as possible when we launch. Who would you like to see? If you're a publisher yourself, let's make it happen!
Incredible scenes👏🏽👏🏽