A Chicago startup making an interactive streaming platform landed some new capital as it works to bring its software to the market.
StreamLayer announced Thursday that it raised $4 million in a round led by KB Partners, a Highland Park-based firm that raised a $40 million fund last year to invest in sports tech startups.
Other investors in StreamLayer’s round include a host of angel investors, including Cameo CEO Steven Galanis. The new financing brings StreamLayer’s total funding to $5.5 million, said the startup’s founder and CEO John Ganschow. The new funding will be used to add more employees to its team of 20.
StreamLayer recently hired Andrew Fleming, who formerly oversaw the sale of EZLinks Golf to NBC Sports Group in his role as chief administrative office, as its chief operating officer.
Founded in 2018, StreamLayer makes and sells a B2B streaming platform to help television networks and other media companies stream live content with interactive capabilities, like instant messaging and social media. Users can view tweets on the content they’re watching, and voice chat with friends and family, among other things.
“We got a really good understanding of how people interact when they’re watching live content online,” Ganschow said. “StreamLayer is providing that Fortnite-like experience on the apps of our clients.”
So far, StreamLayer has focused on streaming sporting events, such as college football and English soccer matches, but could expand outside of sports into streaming live news and political events in the future, Ganschow said.
“The problem we’re solving for all of them—the media companies and the sports leagues themselves—is that they’re all losing the interest of these younger demographics, who are off playing Fortnite or watching videos on TikTok, mainly because they are things they can do together with their friends and there’s a lot more interactivity,” Ganschow said. “Our product allows the media companies to put this interactivity directly on their own apps.”
Ganschow said StreamLayer will be launching pilots with clients later this year but declined to disclose any specific customers.
StreamLayer could hit obstacles if the Covid-19 crisis cancels sporting events. Major League Baseball games returned this month, but some were postponed due to a Covid-19 outbreak among the Miami Marlins. The National Football League is expected to start its season in September, but that could change depending on status of the Covid crisis.
Nevertheless, when sports do come back, fans likely won’t be in the stands for a while, meaning many fans will be looking for ways to watch their favorite sports teams at home. And this creates opportunity for a company like StreamLayer, Ganschow said.
“Almost 100% of the audience is going to be watching the events from outside the venue so it’s actually put a much higher degree of value on the services we can offer,” Ganschow said. “A lot of these media companies have known the importance of attracting a younger demographic by wanting to put interactivity into their apps, but Covid really accelerated those plans significantly because they now realize if they don’t offer them, people are going to be off doing other things.”
StreamLayer was one of five finalists in the Chicago Bulls Venture Competition, a startup competition in partnership with Columbus-based VC firm LOUD Capital, earlier this year.
“That was a great experience,” Ganschow said. “It gave us a lot of good exposure here in the city.”
StreamLayer isn’t the only streaming startup in town to raise capital recently. Phenix, which builds live-stream infrastructure to provide a better and more real-time viewing experience, raised a $7.55 million round in April, also led by KB Partners.
