
It's Not the Game, It's Who You Play It With. Gamelancer Brings the Gig Economy to Gaming
Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
- L.A.-based Gamelancer, a two-sided platform to match top-tier gamers and personalities with users searching for teammates, launches Tuesday.
- The founders, Razvan Romanescu and Darren Lopes, have raised $800,000 to build the platform and hope to begin a new round within 90 days.
- Gamelancer offers gaming talent new ways to make money and users the opportunity to make sure their teammates aren't duds
Nine times out of ten, it seemed, Razvan Romanescu and Darren Lopes got unlucky. The online video game algorithms that matched them up with random teammates kept pairing them with duds: an "eleven-year-old with a broken microphone", for example, or "someone with no social skills." Conversely, the rare gem who played well and had an appealing personality made playing video games a lot more fun. Indeed, such rockstar teammates were the sort Romanescu and Lopes would pay to have on their team.
That's just what their new venture, launched Tuesday, enables.
Gamelancers are freelance gamers who are vetted by the company and who set their own price and availability for users to book them. Users can also set up their own requests – "Looking to pay someone $10 to help me level up my Fortnite skills," for instance – which the 'gamelancers' can claim. This two-sided marketplace is an opportunity, the founders say, to fill "a huge gap in the gaming space."
In addition to taking 30% of the transaction, Gamelancer's business model will also include advertising and ecommerce. The founders expect the average price to be set around $7 per hour.
Prior to making a stealthy beta version available earlier this month, the L.A.-based company had already gained 6 million social media followers. With 16 full-time employees, it has since registered about 6,000 users and approved 250 gamelancers.
Gamelancer raised $800,000 in a seed round led by New York-based Mayfair Global Ventures. The founders now plan to arm themselves with data to demonstrate growth in preparation for a bigger round, which they hope to begin within 90 days.
The company has attracted some notable talent to join its executive ranks. John Monopoly, who formerly managed Missy Elliot and 2020 presidential hopeful Kanye West (maybe?), is Gamelancer's Head of Talent. His job will be to attract notable names to the platform.
One of the founders' early tenets in forming the company was that "it's not the game you're playing; it's who you're playing with."
Users may want to link up with gamelancers for reasons that have nothing to do with the game itself, they noted. People may want to book notable personalities to simply socialize with while collaborating on a butt-kicking rampage, for example.
Gamelancer, which the founders say has 10 patent-pending technologies after having built its platform from scratch, has also brought in a former Uber marketer as its head of growth and a former Netflix product manager as its head of product.
The two founders themselves have track records of building businesses by cultivating big followings on social media, including Guff Media – a content company that claims to reach 500 million people a month – and 10PM Curfew – a fashion and beauty network that says it reaches over 500 million women per month across Instagram and TikTok.
"We know how to keep users engaged and give them a user experience," Romanescu told dot.LA.
Now they turn their efforts to gaming, one of their passions, with a grand vision.
"We coined the term 'gamelancer' to be something as big as 'streaming,'" Romanescu said. "We're confident people will say, 'I'm a gamelancer for a living'."
For the record: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Mayfair Ventures was the lead seed investor. The lead investor was Mayfair Global Ventures.
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Los Angeles is home to thousands of founders working day and often night to create a startup that's the next breakout hit.
Who are the most impressive L.A. founders? To find out, we asked our cohort of dozens of L.A.'s to VCs top weigh in.
Andrew Peterson
<p>Andrew Peterson is the co-founder and former chief executive of Signal Sciences, a web application security platform that he founded in 2014 and <a href="https://dot.la/signal-science-snapped-up-for-775m-in-big-l-a-saas-exit-2647256430.html" target="_self">was acquired in 2020 by Fastly in a $775 million deal</a>. Signal Sciences protects web applications from attacks and data breaches for clients like Duo Security, Under Armor and DoorDash.</p><p>Prior to starting Signal Sciences, Peterson worked at Etsy, helping the online marketplace with international growth as a group project manager. Etsy <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3056900/how-three-ex-etsy-employees-turned-their-old-employer-into-a-consumer" target="_blank">reportedly became </a>one of Signal Sciences's first customers. Peterson has also served stints as health information management officer at the Clinton Foundation and as a senior product specialist at Google.</p>Ara Mahdessian
<p>Ara Mahdessian is the co-founder of ServiceTitan, a SaaS product for managing a home services business.</p><p>The inspiration for ServiceTitan, Mahdessian's first company, came from watching his parents start their own businesses in building and plumbing, only to struggle with the logistics behind keeping them running, he <a href="https://www.inc.com/magazine/201906/emily-canal/servicetitan-immigrant-inclusion-diversity-best-workplaces-2019.html" target="_blank">told Inc in 2019</a>. Mahdessian and his co-founder Vahe Kuzoyan met while in college, and worked on several consulting projects before starting ServiceTitan, in hopes of aiding small business owners like their parents.</p>Evan Spiegel
<p>Evan Spiegel is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Snap Inc., the Venice-based company known for its app Snapchat. He's also one of the youngest billionaires in the world, launching Snapchat while still an undergraduate at Stanford. </p><p>SnapChat, the company's app, has recently been taking on rival TikTok <a href="https://dot.la/snap-spotlight-2649022645.html" data-linked-post="2649022645" target="_blank">with a new feature</a> and a program meant to attract creators to its platform. And it is been at the center of a larger national debate on the power of big tech. </p>Spencer Rascoff
<p>Spencer Rascoff is the founder of several companies, including dot.LA. He started his career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, later leaving to co-found travel website Hotwire. After serving as vice president of lodging at Expedia, he went on to found Zillow, an online real estate marketplace that went public in 2011.</p><p>Rascoff's most recent project is Pacaso, a marketplace for buying, selling and co-owning a second home.</p>Tim Ellis
<p>Tim Ellis is the co-founder and chief executive of Relativity Space, an autonomous rocket factory and launch services leader for satellite constellations. He is the youngest member on the National Space Council Users Advisory Group and serves on the World Economic Forum as a "technology pioneer."</p><p>Before founding Relativity Space, Ellis studied aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California and interned at Masten Space Systems and Blue Origin, where he worked after graduation. He was a propulsion engineer and brought metal 3D printing in-house to the company.</p>Travis Schneider
<p>Travis Schneider is the co-founder and co-chief executive of PatientPop, a practice growth platform for healthcare providers. He founded the company with Luke Kervin in 2014. <br><br>The two have founded three companies together, including ShopNation, a fashion shopping engine that was later acquired by the Meredith Commerce Network.</p>Luke Kervin
<p>Luke Kervin is the other co-founder and co-chief of PatientPop. He is a serial entrepreneur — his first venture was Starbrand Media, which was acquired by Popsugar in May 2008. <br><br>Kervin and Schneider then founded ShopNation, and when it was acquired in 2012, Kervin served as the general manager and vice president at the Meredith Commerce Network for a few years before leaving to found PatientPop.</p><p>Kervin had the idea for PatientPop when he and his wife were expecting their first child, he told <a href="http://voyagela.com/interview/meet-luke-kervin-patientpop-santa-monica/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">VoyageLA</a>. They were frustrated with how the healthcare system wasn't focused on the consumers it was meant to serve. So in 2014, he and Schneider created PatientPop.</p>- The Angelenos in Pharrell Williams and Jay-Z's 'Entrepreneur' - dot.LA ›
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