GawkBox
GawkBox is enabling content creators to make a better living GawkBox is enabling content creators on YouTube, Mixer & Twitch to m.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| investor investor investor | €0.0 | round | |
$3.7m | Series A | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
GawkBox operated as a monetization platform specifically designed for content creators in the live-streaming market, launching in 2016. The company was founded in Seattle, Washington, by Chris Brownridge (CEO), Andrew Allison (CRO), and Tony Chong (CTO). The founding team brought significant experience from the mobile video advertising company Vungle, where they had worked together and developed insights into the mobile advertising and influencer marketing spaces. This background directly informed GawkBox's initial concept, which evolved from an automated platform for influencer marketing campaigns to its core sponsored tipping model.
The platform's business model centered on connecting three key groups: content creators (streamers on platforms like Twitch and YouTube), their fans, and mobile game publishers. Fans could support their favorite streamers without spending their own money through a system called "sponsored tipping". They would download and play mobile games from partner developers; as they reached certain milestones within the games, the game publisher would fund a monetary tip to the streamer on the fan's behalf. GawkBox generated revenue by taking a percentage of these sponsored transactions. This created a three-way value exchange: streamers received a new monetization channel, fans could offer support for free, and game developers gained a performance-based user acquisition channel.
GawkBox gained considerable traction, raising a total of $4.4 million in funding, including a notable $3.7 million Series A round in August 2017 led by Madrona Venture Group. At its peak, the platform attracted nearly 500,000 users and processed over $1 million in donations to more than 17,000 content creators. Despite these achievements, the company struggled to find a sustainable long-term business model. A key challenge was that many users would play the sponsored games just long enough to trigger a donation and then stop, which diminished the return on investment for the paying game publishers. After attempting several product iterations to address this, the company was unable to establish a viable path forward and officially shut down its operations, including its website and app, on July 3rd, 2019.
Keywords: GawkBox, content creator monetization, live streaming, streamer tipping, sponsored tipping, influencer marketing, mobile game advertising, user acquisition, Twitch monetization, YouTube monetization, creator economy, fan engagement, in-game rewards, Andrew Allison, Chris Brownridge, Tony Chong, Madrona Venture Group, adtech, creator platform, digital donations, gaming influencers