Maestro, the engagement and analytics platform for enterprise live streamers, has just announced the close of a $3 million (£2.2m) Series A financing.
The round was led by Hersh Interactive Group with additional investors Rubicon Venture Capital (an investor in Unikrn) and the Stanford-StartX Fund. This brings the total capital raised by the company to $5.8m (£4.4m).
Ari Evans, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Maestro, said: “As sophistication around streaming becomes the norm, the new metrics revolve around quality of interaction, retention, and attribution to the bottom line. We’re excited to enable businesses around the world to create robust, long-term live streaming strategies through their own destinations.”
Discussing their plans for esports specifically, Evans told Esports Insider: “As we spend more time with enterprise live streamers, we increasingly discover how underserved they are in the market. We have had the privilege of watching our customers adopt new live streaming strategies with our platform, fueling our spirit of continued innovation to drive new value to our growing ecosystem.
“Esports has been an ideal vertical to grow in because of the natural alignment around engagement and data-driven decisions, but beyond that, as gamers ourselves, it’s gratifying to help shape a new and rapidly growing area of the industry. We’ll use our Series A funding to solve more problems for our admired customers who need to quickly develop core competencies in an area in which they have had relatively limited experience.”
With video consumption expected to continue its current rate of growth, live streaming is of course a sub-section of that and, moreover, it’s one of the fastest growing. Viewership though is not only about amount of eyeballs, it’s about engagement levels.
The Maestro platform ‘enables a new category of live experiences that facilitates two-way interactions between streamers and their audiences’.
The methods of engagement vary, from polls, to contests, share prompts, giveaways and commerce. The Maestro platform aims to better understand these audiences.
The VC of Rubicon Ventures, one of the investment groups, Matt Kalisiki wrote a detailed piece on his thoughts on ‘why esports is at an inflection point’, and about why they opted to invest in Maestro. You can read this here.
Maestro has already worked with some heavy hitters in and around the esports and gaming space; these include Sony PlayStation, Microsoft, Blizzard Entertainment, Pokemon, Warner Bros. Games, EA, Capcom, Wargaming, ESL, Dreamhack, ELEAGUE, and more.
Randy Chappel, Managing Director of HIG noted: “Maestro’s rapid penetration within esports supports our thesis that publishers, leagues, and teams will increasingly look for ways to connect with their audiences through branded experiences they control. The product’s strategic design provides a framework for continued innovation and value creation to propel the industry forward as it evolves.”
Of course, esports and gaming aren’t the only industries Maestro’s platform can and are being embraced by. It has also worked with clients such as Coachella and Adobe.
Esports Insider says: This is a company which has already worked with some major entities in the space. This serious capital injection will allow the Maestro team to grow and to expand faster. It’s undoubtedly one to keep a close eye on.
