- Scener — a co-watching platform where creators engage audiences of up to a million in a virtual movie theater — announced $2.1 million in seed funding led by Seattle-based SeaChange.
Scener — a co-watching platform where creators engage audiences of up to a million in a virtual movie theater — announced $2.1 million in seed funding led by Seattle-based SeaChange with participation from Glaser Investments, the Syndicate of Jason Calacanis, LAUNCH, RiffTrax and angel investors like RiffTrax CEO David Martin and technology executive Sriram Krishnan. Scener plans to use the funding to accelerate product development for its social platform and supercharge its events and community of watch party hosts, creating a nightly destination for collective entertainment viewing.
Creators are able to set up a profile at Scener.com to host public or private watch parties. And a virtual destination for friends and fans to follow each other and join watch parties, Scener’s virtual theaters can hold up to one million viewers with live video chat and interactive messaging features over synchronized playback of the streaming content.
In October, Scener is debuting its watch party series Stream & Scream — which will bring a genre-obsessed community together to celebrate the best of horror. And the programming will feature a slate of watch parties including the premiere of “The Haunting of Bly Manor” with a surprise cast member; “Anna and the Apocalypse” with actress Sarah Swire; “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” with actor Gabriel Rush, and a LIVE lockdown horror movie as part of this year’s Raindance Festival, “In The Shadows It Waits” by writer-director Michael Beets.
Scener was one of the earliest innovators in co-watching and the first to introduce live video chat over synchronized streaming content and playback. And Scener debuted with Netflix and now supports over 10 major streaming services, including Disney Plus, Prime Video, Alamo On Demand, Hulu and YouTube. The company also experienced massive growth since the onset of the pandemic with almost half a million active Chrome installs and over 13.5 million viewer minutes per week.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’re incredibly excited about this funding milestone, as it enables us to double down on our vision to become the ultimate watch party destination for anyone craving a social entertainment experience. The funding not only helps to further our commitment to bring people together over the shows and movies they love, but it helps speed up our plans to bring Scener to new services and devices, as well as build up our community of incredible party hosts — from RiffTrax to Fantastic Fest. The Virtual Movie Theater is open and we’d love to see you join us there tonight!”
— Joe Braidwood, co-founder and COO of Scener
“Scener is the premier way to host and enjoy watch parties and fills a void for so many of us as the movie theater experience, a beloved pastime, remains in limbo and more people turn to streaming. Scener’s ability to coalesce storytelling and social experiences into a single platform, agnostic across major streaming platforms, is incredibly impressive and drove our confidence in this small and scrappy Seattle-based team. Their product creates a genuine feeling of togetherness and has grown tremendously as a result. We are very bullish on what the future holds for Scener.”
— Susan Preston, Managing Partner at SeaChange
“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Scener to feature our comedic live riff commentary synchronized with blockbuster movies across major streaming services. We’ve been waiting our entire 14 years for this ‘perfect sync’ technology to exist in a watch party environment and Scener is the first we’ve seen to achieve it. Our investment in Scener further solidifies this synergy and we look forward to future RiffTrax Live events with over 100,000 people simultaneously watching and laughing along with a movie together on Scener.”
— David G. Martin, CEO of RiffTrax and investor in Scener
