Powder, a French company that enables you to follow individuals who match your interests and communicate with them while sharing video snippets from your favorite games. Serena led a $14 million Series A round of funding for the business. Powder intends to develop the social gaming industry’s video infrastructure. Although many gaming communities currently exchange information on Twitch, Discord, and Reddit, there isn’t a widely utilized mobile gaming app.
You might think of it as an Instagram or Snapchat for gamers, but the business has developed unique technologies that set it apart from other popular social media networks while yet giving it some similarities. Any platform’s video material may be captured by Powder. By linking your account with Powder, you may record on your console and see your recorded content. By utilizing the company’s desktop application, you may record movies on your PC. Mobile gaming videos can also be recorded.
The firm works to determine the most important moments in your favorite games, such as when you win a match of Fortnite or Rocket League or when you score a goal. After that, you may post a video with your followers after trimming it and adding filters, music, and stickers. Other users may send messages, post comments, and share opinions.
The firm has raised $18 million in total, and its fundraising history is very open. The startup secured a $400,000 pre-seed investment in August 2018 from Kima Ventures and Antoine Martin and Alexis Bonillo, the co-founders of Zenly. $1.5 million was contributed in March 2019 by General Catalyst, Slow Ventures, SV Angel, Brian Pokorny, Dream Machine, Florian Kahn, and Guillaume Luccisano.
The business needed to raise $1.3 million for a seed extension around May 2020, and its backers included Farmers, Jean-Nicolas Vernin, Seraam Invest, Maxime Demeure, and Alven Capital. Additionally investing in the business were CNC and Bpifrance. Serena is now heading the $14 million Series A round alongside Turner Novak, Kevin Hartz, General Catalyst, Slow Ventures, Alven Capital, and Bpifrance’s Digital Venture Fund.
Powder was conceptualized in December 2019. None of the projects we had already worked on had truly taken off. Our original plan was to build a community before developing a product, co-founder and CEO Stanislas Coppin told me. Prior to that, he co-founded the music video app Mindie.
With tens of thousands of users, Powder began as a Discord server. The group then created the “metaverse camera,” as Coppin refers to it, an app that would appeal to that audience. Since the iOS app’s release, 1.5 million users have downloaded it overall. Barthélémy Kiss, Yannis Mangematin, and Christian Navelot are the other three co-founders. The business has 18 employees and recently introduced Android.
