Storyflow Backed With $500,000 in Seed Funding led by Ripple Ventures
Storyflow‘s platform helps users create, distribute and monetize interactive voice entertainment without the use of code. The company’s user interface features drag-and-drop visual builders, allowing anyone to create interactive stories, role-playing games, or educational content for classrooms. Today Storyflow announced the close of $500,000 in seed funding led by Ripple Ventures. Co-founder and CEO of Storyflow, Braden Ream commented,
Think of us like the Youtube for voice entertainment, where the best content is recommended to you, and anyone can create and share content, without coding.
Choose Your Own Adventure
The funding announcement states that the seed funding will be used to acquire new talent and scale the platform’s enterprise capabilities. ‘Choose-your-own-adventure’ style interactive children’s games are the company’s first genre of entertainment, allowing families to play together by speaking back and forth with characters to make choices that affect a story’s outcome. All 47 of Storyflow’s Interactive Story Alexa Skill customer reviews are five stars. The skill is free and can be launched by saying “Alexa, open story flow.”
Competition Drives Potential of Voice’s Future Impact
Storyflow does have stiff competition, however. In April, Amazon released the Alexa Skill Blueprints, which also features a drag-and-drop interface for building Alexa Skills. Storyflow’s development also comes after Storyline’s July $770,000 funding announcement led by Boost VC. And since its launch in 2017, Storyline has accrued over 12,000 users who have launched more that 2,500 Alexa skills using a similar drag-and-drop visual builder as Storyflow.
Back in April, CEO of Storyline Vasili Shynkarenka said he was not concerned with the Alexa Skill Blueprint launch, and instead saw it as a good thing because it promoted awareness of Alexa and voice app development in general. The growing accessibility of tools like Storyflow, Storyline and Alexa Blueprints, which provide non-technical users the ability to develop voice apps on their own, can only increase user activity, spur creativity and help popularize voice assistant use. If the past few months are any indication, investors also see the benefits and the potential monetization of these platforms as well.
