StreamAlivean audience engagement app for live streams, virtual meetings and in-person events, has secured $1.58 million in pre-seed funding, the company announced today.
From webinars, live-streamed town halls, and virtual work meetings to Twitch streams, online courses, and face-to-face conferences, there are many situations where audience engagement tools come in handy. Not only do they allow presenters to track engagement and manage comments, but they also help audience members feel included and heard.
StreamAlive integrates with popular video conferencing and live streaming platforms through the chat feature, so presenters simply insert a link that users can click on. (No code or embeds required.) For face-to-face events, users can scan a QR code and join a browser-based conversation on their phones. StreamAlive works with popular platforms Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, YouTube Live, LinkedIn Live and Twitch. The company plans to add support for more platforms in the future.
Audience members participate in interactive games — or “chat” features as StreamAlive calls them — where their responses are displayed on the main screen. There are 10 features available right now, including AI-powered questions and answers, polls, giveaways, and more. For example, “Winning Wheel” selects winners via a rotating randomizer wheel, “Magic Maps” depicts where participants from around the world are streaming, and “Wonder Words” features a presenter who asks a question and the answers appear as word collage. The platform can automatically detect when a question is asked in the chat. Additionally, an engagement level meter can be found in the lower left corner of the screen.
At the end of each session, presenters receive a list of active participants that tells them how often they participated, as well as a chart to track the highs and lows of an entire session to see where people were most or least engaged.
Image Credits: StreamAlive
Anyone can create an account for free, however, users can also pay for a subscription to unlock upgrades such as unlimited chat-supported interactions and a live workout with the StreamAlive team, along with more AI-powered tools , including using ChatGPT to share ideas on how to engage with the public. There are three plans to choose from: Basic ($19/month), Pro ($39/month) and Pro+ ($99/month).
The company is also working to bring “fully AI-powered presentations,” a chat-supported interaction that “groups similar questions together,” and a new way to “automatically visualize data,” among other upcoming features, the co-founder tells TechCrunch Lux Narayan. .
“[For example] if a presenter asks the audience how comfortable they are on a scale of 1-5 with public speaking, once everyone enters their answer into the chat, it will automatically average the data and display it visually for all to see the average comfort level of the audience. public speaking,” he adds.
Image Credits: StreamAlive
The idea of going to an office five days a week is pretty much dead, and many people agree that hybrid work (in-person and remote) is here to stay. StreamAlive believes it is more important than ever for employers to prevent employees from feeling disconnected when working from home, and the company believes its platform is part of the solution.
“Most companies are not going to fully return in person. However, during meetings or trainings or presentations, companies must ensure that there is equality between people participating in person and others participating remotely. This means that everyone has the ability to be heard and recognized, and that enthusiasm and morale do not drop when someone is working remotely,” says Narayan.
Likewise, when streamers and game instructors include interactions in their live streams, it could help convert more passive observers into active participants, and then strengthen their fan bases or make a long online lesson more fun.
Image Credits: StreamAlive
The idea for StreamAlive came when Narayan was taking online classes to learn how to write, edit and market his book, Name, Place, Animal, Thing. He noticed how many of the audience responses were being ignored in the conversation, and event hosts struggled to boost, convert and track engagement. StreamAlive became widely available in December 2022 and currently has over 2,000 users, including teams at Nike, Symphony AI and Persistent Systems. Specifically, YouTuber Airrack was implemented StreamAlive in its viral three-hour run live ping pong competitionusing it to track over 365,000 comments.
Narayan and his co-founders, Joe Varghese and Tina Lyngdoh, were also part of the founding team at Unmetric, the social media insights platform acquired by Cision in 2019.
StreamAlive raised $1.53 million in pre-funding in January 2022.
