Accelerated Ventures, a business accelerator founded last year by Hartford law firm Cohn, Birnbaum & Shea, has announced its first portfolio company.
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Accelerated Ventures, a business accelerator founded last year by Hartford law firm Cohn, Birnbaum & Shea, has announced its first portfolio company.
Salivation LLC is developing a software that will beam detailed culinary lessons from high-end chefs to users' computer tablets. The company is headed by CEO Joseph Charles Epstein, a specialist in video-game learning who also worked for a year in the kitchen at Max Downtown in Hartford. Epstein, along with company Chairman Joel Hartstone, who also leads Accelerated Ventures (Acc-Ven), is launching a $125,000 Kickstarter campaign to raise money to develop the software.
Salivation hopes 2,500 people will pay $49 to pre-order the product, which aims to provide detailed instructions on how restaurant chefs make their signature meals.
Salivation aims to provide an alternative, superior option to YouTube cooking videos or written recipes.
The service would include instruction on selecting ingredients, dicing and blanching techniques, and even plating. Five chefs have already signed on, including Jonathan Wu, chef-owner of Fung Tu in New York City. [Update: On Monday, after this story was published, Salivation announced that Chris Sheehan, executive chef of Max Downtown, had joined the Salivation lineup.]
The market is potentially ripe for the product, Hartstone said, adding there are approximately 80 million cooking hobbyists in the country.
Acc-Ven, which aims to turn market-worthy ideas into successful businesses, will not invest in its portfolio companies, Hartstone said. Instead, the accelerator receives equity in exchange for the coaching it provides on legal issues, investors, marketing and other matters.
Hartstone said he believes Salivation will be Epstein's first big success, following a near miss several years ago with a promising software company.
Epstein previously patented “activity embedded learning” software that allowed users to plug a guitar into a computer or video game console to learn to play. The technology, similar to “Guitar Hero” in some ways, but with real guitars, was advanced, Hartstone said. But disputes among investors, fueled in part by what Hartstone viewed as mistakes in how the company issued shares, led to a bankruptcy and sale of the technology to Ubisoft.
Epstein said he's learned from those mistakes and is working hard on his new venture.
“I've moved beyond that,” Epstein said. “I've been on the road a lot meeting with chefs around the country.”
— Matt Pilon
