Kamcord gets funding to create live streaming stars

Two months after Kamcord rolled out a way for game streamers to make money from their viewers, the startup today revealed it has secured US$10 million in series C funding. This values the game streaming company at over US$100 million.

The US-based startup has become a hub for mobile gaming fans who want to watch gamers play titles like Clash of Clans or Minecraft. Some of the top live streamers have over 100,000 followers. Some viewers give virtual gifts to the video stars – so much so that a handful of them have quit their day jobs to become pro game streamers. About 20 percent of the site’s viewers are in Korea, 20 percent in Japan, and the remaining are scattered around the US, Mexico, Spain, and the rest of the world.

The newest investment coincides with another new feature from Kamcord – appcasting. That allows gamers – or anyone else who wants to stream – to broadcast not just their face and voice but also what’s going on on their phone’s screen.

Kamcord’s co-founders. From left: Kevin Wang, Matt Zitzmann and Aditya Rathnam. Photo credit: Kamcord.

“There are actually three cameras on your phone,” says Aditya Rathnam, Kamcord’s co-founder. There’s the rear camera, the selfie camera, and… “your screen is a third camera.”

This opens Kamcord to creators and performers across any genre – not just gaming, which is the area the startup first launched into back in 2012.

Aditya and his team got the idea for opening up from how gamers were using their broadcasts to share more personal snippets of their lives.

“They started saying, ‘Hey, I went to Hokkaido for a holiday over the weekend. Why don’t I show you photos of what I did.’ And viewers went crazy for this,” says Aditya. “And this got us thinking, well, we built this piece of technology that lets you broadcast your screen but we’re only taking advantage of it for mobile gaming. But there’s so much other stuff on your phone’s screen that would be really cool to share,” he says to Tech in Asia.

The result is like what you see above from Kamcord user BossFister. He browses through Snapchat photos sent in by viewers during his live recording last week. His phone’s screen, which is open on Snapchat, is displayed alongside his own webcam.

Ready for my close-up

Aditya sees lots more ways this could be used on Kamcord. “We have Australian-Chinese makeup celebrity Wengie, who’s going to be coming on to give people advice on their makeup and fashion. So people will be like, hey Wengie, can you pull up my Instagram profile and give me some advice? So she’ll have Instagram on her phone and come to that person’s profile” – and everyone watching the stream can see as well – “and say ‘Here’s what I recommend you do with your eyelashes, your hair.’ That will be so cool.”

Or the new appcasting could be used for the kind of thing that’s so popular in South Korea – meokbang. That’s when people tune in online to watch someone eat. It’s been going on for years on Korean sites like AfreecaTV.

Om nom nom! A woman uses a Korean site to broadcast her dinner. Image credit: Kotaku.