In recent days, web3 and the metaverse are inevitably gaining pace, giving rise to a plethora of new companies engaged in a variety of areas, starting from fashion and retail up to spacecraft. Thus, to aid startups to claim themselves in a highly-competitive blockchain ecosystem, the cosmetic giant L’Oréal has joined efforts with the technological conglomerate Meta and the French business school HEC Paris to launch a metaverse startup accelerator.
The program was launched earlier this month and would be open till November 20th, selecting at least five startups for the accelerator. To apply for participation, it’s not necessary for a startup to be engaged in the beauty industry. Those chosen startups specializing in metaverse, augmented reality, mixed reality, tokens, user portability, and other web3-related spheres will be granted comprehensive mentorship and access to investors and experts.
The accelerator will be based at Station F of Paris’s 13th arrondissement, which used to be a train depot, and was turned into the world's largest startup campus. After the jury composed of Meta, L’Oréal, and HEC profs, as well as entrepreneurs and investors, sort out the cohort of startups, a six-months accelerator program will start. The initiative will be running from January up to June 2023. The insights gained from the most successful applicants during the accelerator will be used by Meta and L’Oréal in their campaigns.
“It brings a lot of young talents together. They’re the future. Imagine the massive creative energy that it generates. The benefit for us is that we can use that creativity for our DMI [international marketing direction] and brands. So, of course, we will leverage that,” L’Oréal chief digital and marketing officer Asmita Dubey commented on the program.
The startup accelerator is not the first L’Oréal and Meta joint web3 project. Thus, both companies had earlier collaborated to bring L’Oréal’s AR make-up program Modiface to Meta's Instagram. The beauty products maker consumed Modiface in 2018, while the results of the uptake became seen only in 2022. Thus, L’Oréal came up with the NFT make-up collection earlier this year, as well as created an activation in The Sandbox through its NYX brand.
As for Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, the company has been recently quite busy with numerous metaverse and web3 projects so far. Therefore, the startup accelerator comes as part of Meta's Horizon Platform European expansion, as well as may concern the company's plans to open a metaverse school in France.
If you are part of one of the web3-related startup teams and are seeking mentorship and financial support, you'd better take time to apply for the accelerator program right away. Once you are one of those lucky ones, you can boast about your success on our socials.
