Metafy - 1-on-1 Professional Gaming Coaching

Company & Team Introduction

Metafy is the online platform for gamers to hire top gaming talent, helping you take your gaming skills to the next level. Josh Fabian founded the company in 2020. at the time, he was a passionate gamer, streaming his content on Twitch and uploading videos to his YouTube channel, a passion he began to pursue after an earlier successful exit from a prior venture called Obaz, selling to Groupon in 2016 for ~$250,000. As his audience realized how much they could learn from him, they offered him money to help them improve their gameplay, paying as much as $100 per session. Six months into his coaching career, Josh had already made over $40,000. The income was great, but he had a bigger vision, where anyone in the world could book a coaching session with the top video game players in the world, helping players improve their skills and coaches monetize theirs. Metafy has chosen to build out its team remotely, growing its headcount to over 100 employees and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Product Overview

Metafy is the leading platform for hiring and learning from the best gaming coaches in the world for whatever game you’re into. The company’s main product is its coaching marketplace, where amateur players can hire professional coaches in exchange for a fee, driving most of Metafy’s revenue. The company also allows coaches to upload video content on specific game titles. Metafy also allows coaches to write and post articles walking players through a game, reviewing important map information like spawn points, etc. The last product that Metafy offers is its feeds product. Feeds is a gaming-focused social community where gamers can ask questions, look for new team members, post game clips, etc. Together, these four products give gamers a one-stop shop to improve their skills and network through coaching, self-taught learning (articles, videos), or connecting/sharing with new team members.

Total Addressable Market

The market for online gaming coaches is much bigger than one might initially expect. There are over 3 billion gamers worldwide, and every single one wants to improve their skills. The industry was already worth over a billion dollars annually in 2020, with COVID-19 driving further adoption of gaming coaches for both sides of the marketplace.

Business Model & The Numbers

Metafy utilizes a simple transaction-based business model to align its success with that of the coaches, taking a 5% fee for each session booked through the platform. The company also offers a $10/month subscription product that gives users a $10 voucher for coaching and access to all the Metafy video catalogues and articles on the platform. Metafy has seen its revenues skyrocket from 0 to over 1.6M, with over 36,000 coaching sessions booked through the platform in 2022. The company’s Series A funding round valued the startup at over 105M.

Traction

Metafy has clearly bridged a massive gap within the gaming industry, as the company has grown dramatically since its founding in 2020. The ability to monetize their skills allows gamers to do what they love: play games. This has helped attract the talents of over 1,300 of the top gamers in the world to Metafy. Students want to hire the best coaches available, and Metafy’s robust supply of coaches has brought in over 13,000 students looking to improve their skills.

Competitors

Metafy’s competitive positioning within the online gaming coach industry is strong. Before Metafy, pros would list themselves on platforms like Fiverr which were not fit to serve the gaming industry for a multitude of reasons, including no vetting (no quality checks for coaches), a lack of awareness (customers didn’t know they were selling their services, lost in the 100+ Fiverr categories), and platforms taking a massive cut of coaches revenue, sometimes as much as ~30% vs Metafy adding the 5% on top of what coaches were charging. Metafy’s main direct competitor is GameRabble. Here is a bit of diligence on the company:

GameRabble - GameRabble is an online platform that connects amateur gamers looking to improve their skills with professional gamers. The company was founded in 2021 by the family duo of Christopher and Cecile Matthews. GameRabble serves more of the lower end of the industry, with a lower quality coaching supply but also more affordable coaching options. The company also has an AI tool to analyze a user’s gameplay and tell them their strengths and weaknesses. The company has raised ~250k from investors since its founding and is headquartered in Tampa Bay, Florida.

Another Metafy competitor, Snowball, based out of France, recently shut down its operations in late 2023. The company’s services were popular amongst French-speaking gamers/coaches.

Funding

Metafy has raised two rounds of funding since being founded in 2020. The company first raised a 3.15M seed round led by Forerunner Ventures with funds such as M25 VC, Musha Ventures, as well as angel investors Nick Candito (founder of Progressly acq. by box) and Naval Ravikant (co-founder of AngelList) in 2021 before later extending the round, raising an additional 5.5M to scale its team further, specifically hiring for its product division. This gave Metafy some runway before tapping into the capital markets again in 2022. After a rapid growth period, the company raised a massive 25M Series A round co-led by two of the biggest names in venture, 776 Ventures and Tiger Global. Metafy will use the capital to increase its headcount and make acquisitions as they see fit.