Metaco joined Accelerating Asia’s program Amplify in 2021 to work on pitching, storytelling and fundraising. After the pitch session with Craig, the Metaco Co-Founders went back, refined their pitch and incorporated the techniques learned in the program.
Doors are now open to join Amplify, our 6 module online program for startups that covers the A to Z of what you need to know to fundraise, pitch and scale your startup plus connects you to a network of founders and the Accelerating Asia team.
Metaco is a gaming platform that is a one stop gaming experience, our digital marketplace facilitates and aggregates for gaming services between content creators and customers.
HOW DOES THE PLATFORM WORK?
Our current product is a website and we act like a marketplace where we aggregate all these different services. For example webinars, tournaments, game companions with content creators and we match them up with paying customers who are willing to pay for their services.
WHEN DID YOU FIRST START AND WHAT IS SOME OF YOUR CURRENT TRACTION?
We started as a media company in 2017, back then we were a media website company that focused on e-sports related content.
In 2019, we pivoted into becoming a marketplace and since then Metaco has open platform beta in October 2020. In that month we had one content partner who was an event organiser and Metaco hosted four tournaments.
In July 2021 we scaled to 15 content creator partners and we have hosted 150 tournaments within a single month.
This makes Metaco the biggest tournament platform currently in Indonesia.
On average, our tournament also has an average participation rate of 80%. In terms of customer growth, we have grown 15X since October 2020 from 4000 to 75,000 customers with a monthly retention rate of 30%.
We have also started the next iteration of our market based products, which focus more on direct-to-consumer content. And we now have five content partners for this next iteration and in the month of July, 2021, we have posted seven services.
WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO START METACO? AND WHO IS THE TEAM BEHIND IT?
I grew up with gaming and so did my Co-Founder, we actually met in high school through gaming and we stayed friends. Gaming has always been an integral part of my life, so back in high school, there was no career path at all, as a gamer. You played the game, you enjoyed the moment and that was it, you went home.
Now things are so different there are actually career opportunities in the gaming industry. There are professional e-sports players, there’s live streamers and so on.
In Indonesia we have seen a massive potential of gaming in this country but yet we also see that the market is still very much immature with a very high barrier of entry.
Market infrastructure is lacking, payment options are limited, platform options are also limited. As for the barriers, Indonesian gamers are very different from the gamers in mature markets such as China and America. Indonesians are very much mobile focused, they prefer different payment options and they are very much unserved by existing options. So, we started Metaco to be the biggest gaming company in Southeast Asia.
WHAT ARE YOUR FUTURE PLANS?
Metaco’s future plan is to become a fully integrated, one stop giving ecosystem A to Z.
This includes not just our marketplace platform, but also game development and game publishing. Our platform is able to cater and observe for the continuous growth of the industry, while our partner program will ensure that those we partner with will also be able to grow alongside Metaco financially and operationally.
ARE YOU CURRENTLY RAISING CAPITAL?
Metaco is currently fundraising, we have started a fundraising roadmap, which we hope to close by the end of Q4 for 2021.
We are looking for an investment of US$1M. The investment spending will be focused on two key areas. One is to further develop our marketplace product and current product verticals and two is also to grow our number of content creators and to scale the customer acquisition growth.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR TEAM
Metaco team members include industry veterans with combined experience in the gaming market of over 85 years.
All our team members come from all sectors of the gaming industry, which includes not only game development, but also event organisers, talent management and gaming media.
As for the Founders As for the Founders it's just Iskandar and I (Jaime), prior to Metaco, we have been in multiple companies and we hold different corporate positions. This equips us to the necessary acumen to run and manage this fast-growing company.
For example, before I started Metaco, I ran a game development studio in Jakarta. And as f
or Iskandar, he's co-founded a logistic company in Kalimantan, scaling up from 0 to 1 million revenue within a year of operation.
WHY DID YOU JOIN ACCELERATING ASIA’S PROGRAM AMPLIFY?
Well, at that point in time, I was actually looking around to join an accelerator program and I was just typing and Accelerating Asia came up first on Google.
So, that's why I decided to check you out. So, I looked at the Amplify program and what made me decide to join was that Amplify had the whole full course – A to Z.
I did not study entrepreneurship at all, I did not have a teacher, I did not have a role model. So even though it was my second time running a start-up, there was still a lot for me to learn in terms of vocabulary, running a pitch and fundraising.
Ultimately, I decided to join Amplify because there were no other programs in Indonesia of such calibre, one that is able to teach me the full course A to Z of running a startup.
WHAT WAS THE MOST USEFUL LESSON FROM AMPLIFY?
The most important lessons for me was the session by Craig on how to perfect your pitch deck, especially the storytelling perspective, as well as to learning the ins and outs of fundraising.
WHAT WAS ONE THING YOU IMPLEMENTED INTO YOUR STARTUP THAT YOU LEARNT DURING AMPLIFY?
Definitely the storytelling part, it was a pitch that I made to Craig during the live Q&A. He told me, you need to make your storytelling more impactful and then he was telling me your storytelling has to be more impactful there needs to be a story behind it.
After that my Co-Founder and I, we went back to the drawing board and we redid our whole storytelling aspect including adding more passion into it, to be less technical and also add a bit of individual reason as to why you are doing this. I think there was a very powerful addition to our storytelling.
WHAT WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE AMPLIFY PROGRAM?
I think the highlight for the Amplify program for me was the Q&A sessions and there was the one thing that I really enjoyed the most. You know running a start-up is definitely very lonely, it's just the two of us versus the world and having to share your journey with other strangers can be a very cathartic experience.
We learn about their problems, we learn about how they overcome those problems, we learn about how they handle those problems, all the ins and outs, all the hardship, all that loneliness, and, and seeing the results that some of these companies achieve through those growth has been definitely very inspirational for me.
If I tell my friends about why they should join Amplify. It's always better to be a part of a group rather than going through this journey alone, and you should never do it alone.
Metaco was part of Amplify, our 6 module program that delivers a how-to guide to raising outside capital and 10x’ing your startup growth. Doors are now open to join Amplify.
If you are interested in connecting with Metaco please reach out to us and we can help facilitate an introduction.
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