The Swedish gaming influencer marketing platform Lurkit has raised $2.7 million in a seed round from industry investors as the company is launching Quests, a new software suite that enables paid sponsorships between live streamers and gaming companies at scale.
Lurkit’s platform is empowering gaming companies to get real-time and actionable insights on the social performance of their games. Lurkit’s tech platform algorithmically analyzes and presents data of more than 150,000 games and millions of live streaming and video views on Twitch and YouTube continuously. Now the company is launching paid sponsorship functionality under the Quests brand that also empowers content creators to earn more.
Lurkit was founded as a project by brothers Sam and Tom Niskanen in 2015. The pair has been avid gamers since childhood and transformed Lurkit into a company in 2019. Sam has an extensive background within marketing technology and sales and Tom is an engineer at heart. It has since the platform launch in early 2021 connected over 800 gaming companies with tens of thousands content creators in over 1,000 campaigns.
“All around the world, millions of content creators are working hard day and night to make their passion for games a source of income. Few make it big, and most creators deserve much more. With Quests we have a vision to equalize the balance between content creators and gaming companies to empower creators to earn money on their own terms at the same time they promote games that they love. Gaming companies can now deploy influencer marketing campaigns at scale globally,” says co-founder and CEO Sam Niskanen.
To further scale the platform commercially, the company has raised $2.7 million from gaming industry investors VOID Interactive and Behold Ventures.
“Our greater vision is to democratize the industry and empower content creators and gaming companies alike. With this investment we will be able to take a giant step towards our north star and we are humbled by the faith our shareholders have in Lurkit,” says Sam.
Behold Ventures founding partner Karl Magnus Troedsson is a games industry veteran who previously served as an executive producer of the Battlefield franchise, general manager and vice president at DICE and Electronic Arts. He says: “Lurkit’s unique ability to give their customers full control to identify and build their communities of content creators is unlocking new, direct-to-creator strategies. Brand- and IP owners which want to increase visibility and awareness can now efficiently create direct relationships with their ambassadors at scale.”
VOID Interactive CEO Julio Rodriquez says, “From the moment we were presented with the Lurkit’s vision, what they have achieved and will continue to achieve, we knew it was a platform worth investing in. The latest Quests launch is one great example of the crystallization of that vision and delivery of tools to enable both studios and content creators to achieve equitable outcomes.”