1.The startup needs to revolutionize a market that is already ripe for it. And there’s an unexpectedly ready market for revolution: the storytelling market. After all, every social media post is essentially a story 😉
2. Only in some “basic” format like “text plus image.” Or immediately in the “complex” format of a video clip because it’s not easy to come up with and shoot quality content.
3. This means that the market is already prepared to embrace a new format of simple yet captivating stories. For example, ones created by this startup. But its idea can be taken further to revolutionize a market that is already prepared for it:
Project Essence
Storiaverse has created a platform for publishing stories in a “watchable reading” format (read-watching).
They even filed a patent application for this format – which combines text, images, and short animated videos. Typically, you can watch-read a story in 5-10 minutes.
Like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple, the startup also creates “Originals” – stories in their own format that are exclusively published on their platform.
Currently, the website features 25 such original stories. The startup says that about 100 new stories are in development.
Original stories for publication on the site are created by external authors and artist-animators. The startup seeks them out separately. It offers authors to submit their stories, from which the startup’s experts will select the most interesting ones, and artists to illustrate the stories already selected by them.
On the platform’s “backyard,” there is a special section where authors and artists can collaborate on creating a story in the Storiaverse format.
The startup promises to pay authors and artists, although stories can currently be read for free. The founders are currently exploring various monetization options – story subscriptions, advertising, merchandise sales, and even placing indirect product advertisements within animated videos (product placement).
The startup relies not only on independent author search. They have already entered into an agreement with the well-known book publisher HarperCollins, allowing them to release adaptations of some books on their platform, the rights to publish which belong to the publishing house.
Another source of new stories and a new audience is bloggers, who can also create their own stories and publish them on the Storiaverse platform. For bloggers, this is an additional source of monetizing their audience and accessing new audiences available on the platform.
The startup has already signed an agreement with the blogger King Science, who has 13.4 million followers on TikTok and around 800 thousand subscribers on YouTube.
Storiaverse was created last year, and now they have raised their first $2.5 million in pre-seed investments.
What’s Interesting
It’s not very clear exactly what Storiaverse plans to patent. Essentially, it’s an old good format of comics or graphic stories, just adapted for digital format, which allowed replacing static images with animations.
However, the similarity to comics isn’t necessarily a bad thing 😉
Sales of comics in electronic and print form have been around $1 billion in North America in recent years. However, following the pandemic and quarantine tailwinds in 2021, comic sales doubled and exceeded $2 billion. Interestingly, in 2022, sales did not decline but continued to grow from this new level.
In other words, people continue to love stories told with words and pictures. Or words and videos – like with Storiaverse. But it’s not surprising, as a very similar format of short stories is consumed by people in social media by tons and every day.
However, there it’s amateur content. And Storiaverse wants to ride the wave of interest in this format by creating a “publisher” that publishes exclusively professional content – professionally crafted and professionally designed short stories.
However, transitioning stories into a digital format offers much more opportunities than just replacing static images with animated videos. After all, the story itself can also be “animated” – offering the reader the ability to choose different story developments based on their reactions. This turns a static story into a game that its reader plays.
This is exactly what the startup Dorian, which I wrote about back in 2020, offers to authors.
The catch is that the Dorian platform allows authors to create a game based on their story in just 1-5 days! Granted, the game turns out to be quite primitive, but comics are also quite primitive in reality, just like stories published by bloggers on social networks 😉
Against the backdrop of a sharp increase in interest in comics and graphic stories, Dorian raised another $14 million in new investments in 2022, after my review, increasing the total investment in the project to $19.3 million.
In parallel, the popularity of platforms publishing traditional comics by independent authors in digital format is growing. One example is the startup Zestworld, which I wrote about in 2022. Back then, it raised $9.8 million in its first round of investments.
The text-visual format is suitable not only for fictional stories. The startup RocaNews, which I wrote about in 2022, decided to publish news in the form of such stories. At first, they only did it on Instagram, and then they released their own news app. In the same 2022, they raised $4.4 million in investments for this – also in the first round.
Where to Go
The key point is that all the stories published by the startups mentioned today are more or less “primitive” 😉
And this means that such stories can easily be illustrated by AI, at the level of technological development where it is right now. Just as it can create coherent stories and/or gameplay with branches and different options for their development based on the plot provided by the author.
The startup Yeti Confident Kids, which I literally wrote about yesterday, has already taken advantage of this fact – and created an app that can dynamically generate simple educational games for children aged 3-8, for whom a “primitive” level of gameplay and animation is quite sufficient. In their very first round, they raised $5.3 million for this.
Accordingly, the overall direction of movement is towards the market of “new comics,” short digital stories in a text-visual format, which can be both “linear” and “interactively gaming.”
The dumbest approach to entering this market is to start creating your own stories in this format because self-employment hasn’t brought anyone to good yet 😉 Although you could set a goal to become a millionaire blogger through such stories.
A much more scalable option is the creation of AI platforms that would allow other authors to quickly and easily create stories in such a format.
The first important point is the simplicity of inputting the initial plot. It should be possible to input it in the form of a simple plot summary that the AI can develop and turn into an engaging story.
Second, in my opinion, is not to get stuck on the idea that stories created in this way can only be published on their own platform. It’s much more important to have smart export capabilities for the created stories to existing social media formats with different screen formats and specific features. Otherwise, you’ll have to spend too much money, time, and effort driving traffic to your own platform with published stories.
If someone comes up with a prototype of such a platform, through which you can turn posts from the Dark Side or FastFounder reviews into similar stories, I’ll be ready to test it 😉
And I’m probably not the only one interested 😉 Which means that the market for platforms to create such stories could be quite large.
About the Company
Storiaverse
Website: storiaverse.com
Last Round: $2.5M, 03.04.2024
Total Investments: $2.5M, Rounds: 1