An epidemic of loneliness

We all need human connection. We used to call our friends. Now we text or post and our phone is full of junk calls. TVs used to be our electronic fireplaces. We’d gather around, talk and watch. Now we watch apart, each on our own screen. 

Our connected devices are disconnecting us. Except games.

CBS News Report: “Epidemic” of loneliness in America

Make watching as social as playing 

Gamers have figured out how to connect. They put on a headset and talk and play games like Call of Duty, League of Legends, and every eSports game. 

But even the 2 billion gamers aren’t always gaming. How do we connect with our friends when we’re not playing together?

Thanks to our team, there’s a solution. Hearo.Live connects us. With just a tap you can talk and watch with your family and friends anywhere, just like gamers talk and play. 

Hearo is live and already going viral: 195% growth in the last 30 days with $0 marketing spend. And we just added our first TV channel, Pluto TV with 2000 free movies and TV shows.

(It's no coincidence that our CEO, Edward Lerner, invented Talk+Play in 1997 and Talk+Watch in 2017.)

Transforming watching from solo to multiplayer

Try Hearo.Live today with your friends. Watch one of the 2000+ free movies and TV shows on Pluto, live gaming and esport streams on Twitch, or your favorite comedians or how-to videos on YouTube.  Here's a quick tutorial:

1. Pick what you want to watch

We're turning your phone and computer into a super smart TV.

Today, we support YouTube, Twitch, Vimeo, Mixer, with plans for TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and IPTV (Europe).  

2. Pick who you want to watch with

Send your party link to your friends or a million fans.

3. In seconds, you're talking and watching together

An awesome venue for eSports

We layer your friend’s avatars and voices over synchronized, broadcast-quality video. You "sit" in a safe VIP box to talk and watch with your friends. Thanks to our patent-pending crowd mixer,  you can also hear the audience buzz, laugh, and cheer — just like in a live venue — adding emotion and real data for human or machine learning. 

To play media behind paywalls, viewers must enter their credentials once, like on a Smart TV.

Drop our Start Party button into your website

In an instant, your website now becomes the place your community can meet, talk and watch together, the eStadium for eSports, or eClassroom for elearning. We call this Venue as a Service, or VaaS.

We electrify media

We’re a live venue. After using Hearo, livestreaming and webinars feel dead. Why? Talking is 1000x more engaging than typing. (‘Social’ media generates about 1 comment per 24 hours of watching. Hearo users comment every minute.)

Q1 2020: We hit pure viral growth. 75% growth in 75 days with $0 marketing spend. 

Our 7 day retention equal to Snapchat. Our users stay >20 minutes. It took us 4 months to hit that milestone. It took Snapchat 4 years, and Instagram 7 years. Twitter's users stay 3 minutes. 

(Revenue Potential = Users x Duration)

We’ve signed 10+ eSports partners for our eVenues

With interest from sports leagues, gaming companies, events and TV

Businesses must connect with their customers. TV or streaming can’t do that, but Hearo's eVenues can. Our sales pipeline includes sports and games with hundreds of millions of fans lining up pilots.

Venue as a Service

Hearo’s VaaS enables anyone to gather, connect, and talk to their users at scale, increasing their properties’ virality, retention, and monetization.

We build communities from scratch (B2C) or tap into existing communities and get paid (B2B2C), starting with eVenues for eSports. 

We're free (with ads) to consumers, but we charge businesses high margin VOIP rates. We will offer large customers brandable (white label) eStadiums for a fraction of the price of physical venues (~$10k/seat). We will add advertising (tappable and targetable) and marketplace revenues (virtual goods, ticket, and subscription sales).

Media & Entertainment is a $2.2 Trillion industry

Hearo brings the best technology from state-of-the-art games ($150 Billion) to the 15x larger media and entertainment market, starting in Q1 2020 with eSports (200 Million+ million fans, $1 Billion+ revenue, 36% YoY growth, without home venues).

See: Goldman Sachs eSports report. PWC global entertainment and media outlook.

In Q2 2020 we plan to add support of TV sports, a far bigger market, starting around March Madness.

A unique front-row experience

Hearo eVenues make talking and watching together easy at any scale, from 2 people to a 20,000 box virtual stadium, without the costs, limits or risks of a physical venue. 

The B2C social media platforms own the end user relationship. We empower our B2B2C partners to own their audiences, in their own venue/website/app.

Users have hacked Talk+Watch with Discord+Twitch, but they fight over the screen, sound, UX. They don’t scale or sync.

The Hearo revolution

We will give 2 billion gamers what we all want

• To talk+watch everything with friends, like we already talk+play, especially e/sports and games
• To look & sound great in 1 tap/click
• On 7 billion devices: Phone, PC, game console, tablet

Because of COVID-19, we've adjusted some of our priorities. If we reach our funding goal in 2020 we will:

1. Q2: Provide initial TV support, starting with Pluto TV
2. Q3: Add Netflix support
3. Q4: Add TikTok support 
4. Improve audio quality
5. Localize into 20+ languages
6. Establish 24x7 operations
7. Grow!

Our vision matches PWC's "reinvention imperative"

$1.8 Million raised to date

We've raised $1.8 Million from VC's and prominent game tech angels. 500 Startups is our largest investor, with a $450,000 investment, triple their usual investment size.

Investor	Bio
500 Startups	Tim Chae, GP 500 Startups
Inspiration VC	Silicon Valley seed stage investment fund
David Kirk	Ex Chief Scientist NVIDIA. Winner 2019 IEEE Cray Prize
Ross Koningstein	First Director of Engineering, Google
Rich Melmon	Co-founder Electronic Arts. Founder of Bullpen Capital
Michael Dornbrook	Founder Harmonix (Rock Band). Game-tech angel
Jez San (OBE)	Game and online poker pioneer
Chris Donner	Owner Berkeley Ventures
Peter Laventhol	Managing Director , Spark Investment

Edward Lerner builds new media platforms. He wrote EA’s first hit 3D game. His startups include Looking Glass, Multitude (makers of Fireteam, the first MOBA and FireTalk, a Skype precursor). He worked on John Madden Football and The Sims as CTO. At Sony he was Director of Engineering on the PS4. 

Dwight Kwok was the GM Greater China at Xsolla, where he was responsible for monetizing huge media and entertainment properties. He built and their managed trans-pacific business portfolio and P&L, including their brand and revenue growth strategies, and key partnerships with game distribution platforms and fintech partners.