Beam wins startup battlefield at Disrupt NY

The winner of TechCrunch Disrupt NY’s startup battlefield is an 18-year-old with a software platform that makes watching other people play video games more fun.
His company is called Beam Interactive, and it allows viewers to comment, vote and manipulate the games they’re watching. Viewers can choose which weapons the streamers use, which enemies they fight and even the environment of the game.
Watching other people play video games is big business.
In the summer of 2014 Amazon bought the game-streaming leader Twitch for $970 million. Last year, Twitch said it had an average of 550,000 users on the platform at any given time.
“We launched in beta 90 days ago and today over 100,000 people watch streamed gameplay on Beam every month,” blue flame founder Matt Salsamendi explained in his presentation to the judges. “And what’s even more exciting is an average viewer watches three hours of content each session.”
That’s a lot of watching.
“Most viewers are avid players themselves, and their comments reflect that,” Beam’s Salsamendi said. “They’re trying like crazy to participate in gameplay, making suggestions and practically reaching for the controls themselves, but traditional platforms don’t provide any way for viewers to participate.”

Alan Patricof, the 81-year-old cofounder of venture capital giant Greycroft Partners, asked Salsamendi how the interactive video game watching company would make money.
Salsamendi answered that revenue comes chiefly from advertising before and during the games, as well as a cut of the subscriptions gamers would charge their viewers to watch them game, and potentially in the future from micropayments, which would allow viewers to get to dictate parts of the game rather than just vote on what should happen.
“Keeping viewers engaged is how streamers make their money,” Salsamendi said. “So streamers are leaving big money on the table when they’re unable to engage their audience. More importantly, they lose the interest of their fans, and Beam solves that problem.”
Susan Lyne, founder of BBG Ventures, asked Salsamendi whether he thought people would start developing games for the platform. In fact, Salsamendi said, people have already started doing just that, and he expected in the future it would be normal to have interactive features built into games.
Patricof was impressed by the young Salsamendi, as were the other judges. Beam won the startup battlefield unanimously.

Over 15,000 people joined Beam this week during TechCrunch! Super excited to be moving forward!

— Matt (@MattSalsamendi) May 12, 2016