Partnerships and influencers key to Brunswick esports startup’s growth

person sitting at desk with computer monitor

Courtesy / Omnic Data Inc. Omnic Data Inc. co-founder Shaun Meredith said the esports platform grew from a handful of monthly active users to nearly 6,000 in the past 20 months.

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By Laurie Schreiber

Esports, short for electronic sports, is a fast-growing market, mainly driven by digital trends, increased smartphone use and rising awareness of gaming.
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Omnic Data Inc. was founded in 2021 as a startup building an artificial intelligence platform for the esports industry.

By February 2022, co-founders Shaun Meredith and Chuck Goldman raised $750,000 in venture capital, signed two professional esports teams and partnered with Boston-based Uptime Esports, which operates esports gaming lounges and sponsors competitive club esports teams.

Based at 16 Station Ave. in Brunswick, Omnic Data was part of the inaugural cohort in the 12-week Roux Techstars Accelerator program that finished in December 2021.

Omnic Data's AI platform, Omnic Forge, is designed to enhance gaming and coaching strategies, using proprietary algorithms to analyze gameplay video and extract performance metrics.

Esports refers to organized video gaming events or tournaments. The global market is projected to reach $3.8 billion in revenue this year, according to statista.com.

We asked Meredith about the company’s progress. Here’s an edited transcript.

Mainebiz: Why are esports popular?

Shaun Meredith: For one, they’re accessible. There are different types of esports, as with physical sports. And they’re easy to consume. Esports are prominent on YouTube and Twitch. In recent years, esports have been on broadcast television.

At the high school and collegiate level, we’re now seeing collegiate scholarships for people who want to play esports, just as there are physical sports scholarships. And if a college is looking to start a new sport, often it’s an esport. With hockey, say, you need a rink and protective gear. Whereas if you have a computer lab, you can pretty much run esports.

MB: Could you give an example of how you help gamers?

SM: A user can either upload a video or connect through their Twitch or YouTube gaming account. Our AI watches their gameplay and pulls out statistics and insights. It could be something as simple as, ‘You’re more likely to win if you go down the left side of the map.’ Or it could be more advanced, like, ‘Hey, you need to coordinate with your team better to move the ball down the field faster.’

Currently, a lot of gamers watch hundreds of hours of YouTube or Twitch or they’ll read Reddit or Twitter to get tips or tricks on how to play better. What we do is, instead of going to those other tools, the gamer can just play more and our tool can then send them information and insights on what they can do better.

MB: A year ago, you were looking to use part of your pre-seed round to hire. What’s the status of that?

SM: We had four employees and now we have 10. Nine of the 10 are based in Maine and one is in New Jersey. They’re in marketing, business development, social media, software development and sales.

esports dashboard showing embedded portrait

Courtesy / Omnic Data Inc.

Omnic Data Inc. is a Brunswick-based startup that aims to revolutionize esports player performance data using an artificial intelligence and machine learning platform; Shaun Meredith, co-founder and CEO, is on the left side of the dashboard image wearing a headset.

MB: What are your customer trends?

SM: Last year, we were just coming out of the prototyping phase; in February 2022, we had three users. Right now we are just under 6,000 monthly active users. The churn is well under half a percent.

The other thing we’re really proud of is that we’ve now delivered a little over 165,000 coaching insights to our users.

MB: How are you growing?

SM: We’ve been focused on partnerships. We have a partnership with Maryville University in Missouri; they are four-time collegiate national champions in esports.

MB: What does that partnership do?

SM: We are a brand sponsor for their team and they get the use of our software to improve their players’ game play.

MB: Other partnerships?

SM: We have a partnership with Belong Gaming Arenas in the UK. They have 27 UK locations and four in Spain right now. They’re a re-seller for us and it opens us to the UK and EU market. And they have a large customer base of 220,000 users.

MB: What’s in the pipeline for your continued growth?

SM: We’re currently raising a $2 million seed round for continued growth and marketing and sales efforts. We know what it takes to acquire new customers. We just have to get the word out about what our platform can do.

We have a lot of exciting news coming up — some I can’t disclose now. But we’re working on partnerships with other organizations. We’re setting up distribution agreements and we have quite a few collegiate and high school programs starting to use our software. People will be able to find us on platforms like Twitch, as larger social influencers help us get word out about our product.

MB: Who are some of your famous influencers in this world?

SM: Tdawgg, ScrewFace and flowshizzle.

MB: What does ‘Omnic’ refer to?

SM: In the game of Overwatch there’s a race of robots, called Omnic, that grew to become sentient and started battling the humans. There was an outreach of one of the robots to the humans and now they live together peacefully. ‘Omnic’ seemed apropos in that we have artificial intelligence helping you with your game play.

More information

Esports, short for electronic sports, is a fast-growing market, mainly driven by digital trends, increased smartphone use and rising awareness of gaming.