Maestro Raises $3M Series A to Expand in Esports and Pioneer Engagement and Analytics Platform for Enterprise Live Streamers
September 07 2017 - 12:31PM
Business Wire
The company plans to continue growth in the esports and gaming
landscape while expanding into new verticals as enterprises
worldwide seek to create engaging, authentic experiences driven by
data.
Maestro (http://maestro.io), the engagement and analytics
platform for enterprise live streamers, announced the close
of a $3 million Series A financing. The round is led by Hersh
Interactive Group with additional investors Rubicon Venture Capital
(investor in Unikrn) and the Stanford-StartX Fund. This brings the
total capital raised by the company to $5.8M when added to the
previous $2.8M Seed funding which included 500 Startups (led by
former Hulu exec, Andrei Marinescu), Scrum Ventures, Three Six Zero
Group, and Larry and Drew Marcus, partners at Walden Venture
Capital.
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Maestro: Enabling Enterprise Live
Streamers to Own, Engage, and Monetize their Audiences
(www.maestro.io) (Graphic: Business Wire)
Video consumption is expected to continue its staggering growth
and live streaming is one of the fastest growing sub categories,
but the traditional tools on which the industry relies, such as
Nielsen, are no longer keeping up with today’s demands. For
enterprises, viewership is no longer solely about eyeballs;
instead, it is much more about engagement and identifying the
levers that drive KPIs.
The Maestro platform enables a new category of live experiences
that facilitates two-way interactions between streamers and their
audiences. The days where a stream experience is simply a video
with a chat on the side are coming to an end. In this new live
stream era, “maestros” engage audiences to take action during key
moments. Polls, commerce, contests, share prompts, and giveaways
are triggered in real-time, which significantly increase
watch time while capturing a robust set of user data to understand
audiences and data-drive decisions. Maestro’s audience database
system represents Nielsen for the cord cutter generation, trading
estimates for actual user-level data augmented by engagement to
provide a deep understanding of audiences. This first-of-its-kind
solution creates experiences fans love while solving one of live
streaming’s main challenges and in effect transforms the medium
into a meaningful tool for business growth.
The company has focused on the rapidly growing esports and
gaming market of 2.6B gamers worldwide. “Especially as the audience
for watching eSports grows, live streaming will take a bigger share
of the media marketplace … and that means more money for whoever
can best engage with the new audience,” according to TechCrunch on
Maestro’s funding announcement. Many industry titans have already
leveraged Maestro on their own custom-branded destinations: Sony
PlayStation, Microsoft, Pokemon, Warner Bros. Games, Electronic
Arts, Capcom, Wargaming, ESL, Dreamhack, ELEAGUE, and more.
“Maestro’s rapid penetration within esports supports our thesis
that publishers, leagues, and teams will increasingly seek 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,” said Randy Chappel, Managing Director of
HIG.
Esports and gaming aren’t the only verticals embracing the cord
cutting trend; enterprises across industries are actively seeking
opportunities to create unique, authentic experiences for their
audiences. The content analytics market is expected to grow to
$4.37B by 2021, demonstrating the shift to data-driven content
strategies. Maestro works with any video player, making it easy to
layer into existing video distribution with major platforms. The
company plans to use proceeds to continue expansion into additional
categories of content, with customers such as Adobe, The GRAMMY
Awards, and Coachella proving demand for Maestro’s solution.
“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,” said Ari Evans, founder
and Chief Executive Officer.
About Maestro
Maestro provides a white-label platform for enterprise live
streamers to own, engage, and monetize their audiences. The
software focuses on engagement tools that drive actions at key
moments while capturing user data to be used in analytics and
marketing campaigns. Customers include Microsoft, PlayStation, E3,
ESL, Capcom, WB Games, ELEAGUE, Dreamhack, Blizzard Entertainment,
Coachella, The GRAMMY Awards and more.
Maestro has participated in startup accelerators 500 Startups’
Dojo and Stanford University’s StartX. The company won the 2017
Manatt Digital eSports Startup Launchpad and was recognized as a
finalist in a variety of competitions including 2017 Digital
Entertainment World, 2017 Midemlab, 2016 SXSW Accelerator, and 2016
NFL 1st & Future (hosted by TechCrunch and Stanford). To learn
more, visit www.maestro.io.
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Maestro InteractiveTiffany Au, Director of
Communications808-392-3451tiffany@maestro.io