A localized, vertical-focused builder program putting San Antonio talent in front of capital. Underwriting a cohort makes your company the named industry partner — the source of the painpoints, the first audience for the solutions, and the first hand raised when something is worth a deeper conversation.
What you get
Cohort runs as a single industry vertical, branded for your company for the cohort window (e.g., 'Cybersecurity Cohort, powered by [you]').
Your team frames the keynote and the problem set every builder responds to. Every prototype is a response to your real-world pain.
See every builder and prototype before demo day. Talent pipeline, M&A signal, partnership candidates — direct line, no intermediaries.
Branded recap content, builder profiles, and demo footage produced by 434 Media. Assets you can use across owned and paid channels.
Sponsor recognition in front of an accredited investor audience. The room sees who powered the work.
Your domain experts host one session with the cohort. The highest-bandwidth touchpoint between your team and the builders — direct Q&A, expertise transfer, the kind of access where partnerships often start. ~60 minutes mid-bridge, format flexible.
What success looks like
Builders working through painpoints you authored — vetted by the prototype they shipped, not a résumé. A warmer top of funnel than cold outbound for AI-native hires in your domain.
Investor-grade recap content, builder profiles, and demo day footage produced by 434 Media — assets you redeploy across owned, paid, and earned channels. Your company shows up where the SA capital network is paying attention.
A direct line to every builder before demo day. Whether the result is partnership, acquisition, technology licensing, advisor pickup, or warm pass — you're in the conversation first.
Made by 434 Media
San Antonio's premier AI conference at the Pearl
Methodist Healthcare's bilingual social-determinants program recap
Prompt engineering and AI strategy programs across SA businesses
Recap production for one of Texas' largest investor networks
Cohort recaps, builder profiles, and demo footage produced to the same standard.
How a cohort runs
DevSA hosts the free, industry-themed build weekend. Your keynote opens with the pain points. Builders use AI tools — Cursor, Claude, Codex, Gemini — to ship working prototypes in a prompt-to-production format.
Committed builders work out of the DevSA downtown coworking space. Touchpoints include your office hour, pitch coaching from our investor partners, peer review, and an investor mixer.
Curated pitches to an accredited investor audience. Warm conversations continue organically with the builders solving problems in your space.
Why now
Workshop-week prototypes are demo-day credible. The bottleneck moved from build velocity to problem-market fit — which is exactly what your painpoint authorship solves.
Cyber, military, health and science, regulated industries — national accelerators default to consumer/SaaS and skip the verticals where San Antonio leads.
A robust accredited investor network and DevSA (20+ tech communities, downtown coworking) already run the capital and community sides of San Antonio's ecosystem. Digital Canvas is the program layer — not net-new infrastructure to stand up.
FAQ
Pricing is sized to a corporate marketing or innovation budget, not a venture allocation. Specifics depend on cohort scope and underwriter timing. Full term sheet shared on a 30-minute qualifying call.
Your company is the only corporate underwriter for that vertical cohort window. Other underwriters can co-sponsor adjacent verticals but won't share the cohort.
A single cohort runs roughly 10–12 weeks end-to-end: workshop weekend, six-week bridge, demo day, plus media production. Multi-cohort arrangements available on request.
Builders self-select into the workshop weekend (open). Cohort commitment happens at the end of the weekend with a three-question application. Your team sees every cohort member before demo day.
Builders retain 100% IP. Your first-look access is conversational — a direct line to talk before anyone else. Whether that leads to a partnership, acquisition, hire, or referral is up to you both. Structured first-look windows are available for underwriters that want a more formal arrangement — discussed on the call.
Default is single underwriter per cohort — your vertical, your brand. Co-underwriting requests are reviewed case-by-case where the second sponsor is non-competitive (e.g., a tooling partner alongside an industry anchor). Brought up on a call.
Branded recap content, builder profiles, demo day footage, talent pipeline summary, and a post-cohort report. Produced by 434 Media. Detailed deliverables list lives in the term sheet.
Light. Two hours for the keynote (Friday evening of the workshop weekend), one hour for a cohort office hour mid-bridge, and demo day attendance (2–3 hours). Optional informal touchpoints with builders during the bridge.
Next step
Marcos Resendez — Founder & CEO, 434 Media. Angel investor with deep relationships across the San Antonio capital network.
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