The stated mission of San Francisco subscription service byliner.com is as clear and direct as a literary opening sentence like “Call me Ishmael” or “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins:”

We publish award-winning original non-fiction and fiction, written to be read in two hours or less.

Now heading up those efforts as president is Deanna Brown, the former CEO of Federated Media Publishing. Before that, she was president of Scripps Networks Interactive and a VP-GM level influencer for both Yahoo and AOL. Early on in her illustrious career, Brown also founded Conde Nast’s digital division CondeNet.

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Remember on Mission Impossible when messages would self-destruct after an agent listened to them? In this episode of Elevator Pitch, Alan Meckler speaks with Jacob Robbins about his startup Burn Note.

Burn Note allows you to send a secure email and set a timer to destroy the message after it’s read… forever… without all the smoke and drama.

For more videos, check out mediabistroTV, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd likes to remind listeners that at Stanford, faculty are known to tell students that if they have a great idea, the best option is to drop out and fully pursue the opportunity. Less profitable studies can be completed later.

Well, here’s an idea that if it belonged to a 2012-13 Stanford undergrad, would fully merit that approach. The Hunt is a community-driven site designed to make photos shared through social media “shoppable.” For example, if you click on the nav-bar tab Hunt Types, your choices are: This Exactly; Similar To This; What Goes With This?; and This Look For Less. We clicked into the third category and soon were reading the user feedback under SHOES FOR THIS PROM DRESS.

This week, The Hunt announced it has closed its second round of funding, raising the seed total to $2.7 million. Among the latest investors are Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s AGR-ade Investments, Grammy Award winning songwriter-producer RedOne and ABC Entertainment Group executive vp of casting Keli Lee.

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They came on the mediabistroTV series Elevator Pitch hoping someone would take a chance on their ideas. In our new show, Elevator Pitch Fast Forward, host Alan Meckler checks up on the new business owners to see how they’re doing.

In our first episode, we dropped in on I-Ella CEO and founder, Ella Gorgla to see where the fashion insider’s marketplace is today. Gorgla showed us how giving clients a red carpet experience put new life into her business. She also gave Elevator Pitch hopefuls some solid advice to make sure their startups never go out of style.

For more videos, check out mediabistroTV, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

Twenty cities and over 600 participating top chefs. Those are the main ingredients for San Francisco startup Chefs Feed.

On Wednesday, the company added San Diego, Las Vegas, Boulder and Denver to the group of cities being served by its free recommendation App. There appears to be no limit to the appeal of Chefs Feed as the curated info comes straight from the mouths of individuals who know exactly what separates a great restaurant meal from just a great one.

Los Angeles is already on the Chefs Feed list, as is London, the App’s first international city. It’s probably only a matter of time before Canadian culinary hubs such as Vancouver and Toronto are added as well.

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Turner Broadcasting inaugurated its Media Camp accelerator program in San Francisco last year with six startups making the cut.

This spring, they’re expanding the program to LA and have now opened up the application process. Members of the four to six companies selected will spend 12 weeks mentoring with Warner Bros. staff and receive $20,000 per firm to help develop a studio-friendly idea.

The Business Insider wins the prize for best day-of-announcement (February 13) coverage. Reporter Kirsten Acuna spoke to a couple of different studio folks:

“It gives a pretty transparent view of the media and entertainment business for a lot of these startups,” says Darcy Antonellis, president and chief technology officer for Warner Bros. Technical Operations. “They can benefit from a deeper understanding of the commercial aspect of portions of our business that can help to inform what they’re building.”

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Way back in 1995, Ryan Schreiber was a high school graduate working as a record store clerk. Finding little on the Internet about indie music, he decided to start his own Web page and launched Pitchfork. With no publishing experience, the site eventually became the online authority on indie music, and nowadays a review there can make or break a career.

In the latest installment of Mediabistro’s So What Do You Do? series, Schreiber says that aspiring entrepreneurs should “be willing to put in the work for a long period of time for just the love of it.”

“Today, more so than any other time, it seems really difficult to make a living in the media, especially in the music media,” he explained. “It’s just so crowded, and at this point the publications that are really able to establish themselves are the ones that are the most passionate and the most relatable. I find that the publications I tend to connect with most are ones that are, in many cases, written by a single voice, somebody who has a really interesting viewpoint or perspective.”

Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, Ryan Schreiber, Founder and CEO of Pitchfork?

In this episode of Elevator Pitch, host Alan Meckler talks with Warren Liao and Derek Tian, founders of Black Lapel, a website specializing in making custom luxury menswear at an affordable price. Find out if they make the cut.

For more videos, check out mediabistroTV, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

In the latest episode of “Elevator Pitch,” host Alan Meckler talks with Marissa Evans founder and CEO of “Go Try It On.” It’s an iPhone app that acts like a virtual stylist. Users upload a photo of an outfit they plan on wearing and let their friends and the community respond.

For more videos, check out mediabistroTV, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

A key date has just been circled on the calendar for media startups: January 6, 2013. That’s the application deadline for the inaugural February-May class offered by Matter Ventures, a super-cool new venture seeded by public TV broadcaster KQED and the Knight Foundation.

Each of the four selected applicants will receive $50,000 and take part in an intensive four-month acceleration track. The media companies can be from anywhere in the U.S., but all co-founders must be willing and able to relocate to work full-time for that time at the Matter Ventures SoMa district space. From this week’s announcement:

Matter Ventures will be led by CEO and partner Corey Ford, who most recently built and ran Runway, an accelerator for Innovation Endeavors, Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s early stage venture capital firm. Ford has also taught design thinking at Stanford’s d.school and helped produce 17 films for Frontline.

Partner Jake Shapiro is the founding CEO of PRX, an Ashoka Fellow and a former associate director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Jigar Mehta, the co-founder of GroupStream and 18 Days in Egypt, a Knight Fellow, and former New York Times video journalist, will serve as director of operations.

The first on-site information session for potential applicants is December 13, from 6 to 7 p.m. Tons more info at the Matter Ventures website.