Taiwanese Live Streaming Video Site LIVEhouse.in Raises $350,000 Seed Round, Eyes Asian Expansion

LIVEhouse.in, a real-time video platform based in Taipei, Taiwan, has raised $350,000 in seed funding from Cherubic Ventures. The company will use the capital to expand its team.

Users can set up channels on LIVEhouse.in, which include chatrooms in addition to a live video feed. LIVEhouse.in claims it is currently Taiwan’s leading live streaming video platform with one million users (to put that number in context, Taiwan’s current population is about 23 million).

CEO and co-founder Sega Cheng says that the startup is targeting a “pan Asia” expansion, but has not decided which countries it will enter first. In order to differentiate from formidable rivals, including Twitch, YouTube’s Live Events, Brightcove, and Chinese real-time video platforms Tiange and YY.com, LIVEhouse.in will target different verticals in each market. In Taiwan, it currently focuses on gaming, music concerts, and e-commerce.

LIVEhouse.in also played a small but notable role in Taipei’s recent mayoral election when independent candidate Ko Wen-Je–whose victory was a blow to the Kuomintang, Taiwan’s governing party–opened a channel to connect with supporters. Cheng says Ko’s channel attracted 400,000 users in the last two days of the election. On average, each user watched for more than 11 minutes and its bounce rate was under 4 percent.

(LIVEhouse.in wasn’t the only online tool that Ko used to reach younger voters. He also used GitBook to publish his campaign’s platform).

Cheng says that LIVEhouse.in plans to monetize through ads as well as partnerships with e-commerce vendors.