36Kr Exclusive: Overseas short-form drama platform StoReel completes a strategic financing of several million US dollars.

36Kr has learned that the overseas short drama platform StoReel has recently completed a strategic financing of several million US dollars. The investor is a well-known overseas game company. This round of financing will mainly be used for platform content development, and the investor will also provide continuous strategic support and capital injection in the future.

StoReel targets the overseas short drama market mainly in North America. The founding team comes from universities such as Peking University and Columbia University. CEO Eric once led the short drama business construction of Lemon Pictures, was responsible for the construction of the domestic short drama framework and the overseas short drama content system, and successfully promoted Lemon Pictures to go public; the COO & CFO has rich Internet operation and strategic experience as well as deep investment, financing and capital operation capabilities; the CCO, the Chief Content Officer, is a Chinese American, responsible for the localization and cross-cultural adaptation of StoReel's content; the CTO is the former technical leader of an AI company, with a deep technical background in ByteDance and Momo Technology; the person in charge of distribution once led the short drama product to enter the top 20 of the global revenue list.

"We started to lay out the short drama track from the beginning of 2024 and launched in the overseas market in the second half of 2024," said CEO Eric. Part of the content on the StoReel platform comes from the production of the company's own studio, and part comes from the procurement of external copyright content.

Considering the significant gap in the production capacity of short dramas between China and foreign countries at this stage, currently, 70 - 80% of the short drama copyrights on the StoReel platform are from procurement. The company is enhancing the creative production capacity of local content overseas to allow the audience to see more "local stories performed by local actors".

Currently, StoReel has two overseas short drama production studios, and the third one is also in the process of preparation. Currently, the platform can ensure the production capacity of 3 - 5 dramas per month. At the same time, the company has applied AI capabilities to the creation of short drama content, and will also have continuous exploration and implementation in the direction of AI + short drama in the future.

Is it difficult for a Chinese team to understand the preferences of North American audiences for short dramas?

"The consumption of short drama content overseas has similarities with that in China, and the core is to 'grasp emotions'. "The most important thing for short dramas is to provide visual impact and strong emotions. At this point, whether in North America, in the Middle East, in China, or in Japan and South Korea, there are essentially similarities."

Of course, there are also differences. "For example, there are differences in the emotional points of our Chinese audience. During the Spring Festival, everyone wants to watch themes such as celebrating the New Year and going back to their parents' home. The points of concern of North American audiences are not the same," Eric said. In addition, after several years of rapid development in China, there are already many types of short dramas, including various themes such as strong female leads, strong male leads, suspense, and fantasy, which have diverted audiences with different preferences. However, the most mainstream in overseas markets is still the "dominant CEO theme".

"We will not completely abandon the creative logic of Chinese short dramas to talk about North American localization," Eric said. StoReel will first focus on traditional and verified "content themes", and at the same time, it is also trying new themes, moving from singularity to diversity.

The domestic short drama market has basically entered the free stage, but there are still certain opportunities and space in the overseas market.

Public data shows that in 2023, the scale of the short drama market has approached that of the film market. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, more than 40 Chinese micro short drama applications achieved "going overseas", creating nearly 55 million downloads and $170 million in purchase revenue. In the same period, the total number of downloads of popular overseas short drama apps exceeded 37.66 million, with a growth of more than 92.3% compared to the fourth quarter of last year.