Watch Club raises seed funding to build a social microdrama app

Watch Club has secured seed funding led by GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet, to develop a platform that combines short-form video dramas with an integrated social network. The startup aims to move beyond the formulaic content currently dominating the microdrama space. This market is currently led by apps like ReelShort, which generated $1.2 billion in in-app purchases last year, and DramaBox, which brought in $276 million. However, Watch Club founder Henry Soong argues that the quality of these competing apps is so low that their content could feasibly be made using AI-generated scripts.

To differentiate itself, Watch Club plans to hire Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) actors to create an initial slate of 10 shows. The company is also building social features directly into the app to foster community discussion. Soong points to how audiences historically discussed television on platforms like Reddit or Tumblr, or on Twitter before it became the cesspool that is X. By housing both the shows and the fan forums in one place, the startup hopes to capture this engagement. “I think you can actually build such a more interesting business if you take what makes TV truly the most fun,” Soong said, emphasizing the social aspect of shared viewing.

Soong, a former Meta product manager, is applying his experience with international ad monetization to the microdrama business model. From 2016 to 2019, his mission at Meta was to generate ad sales from companies within China that wanted to advertise to audiences outside the country, eventually reaching $5 billion per year by 2019. He noted that around 2019, Chinese microdrama apps began spending heavily on ads to target users like Americans and Germans. By leveraging social features, Soong aims to reduce Watch Club’s reliance on these highly capital-intensive paid user acquisition strategies. The company, which also received backing from investors including Patreon founder Jack Conte and U.K.-based Upside Ventures, shared the first trailer for its debut show, Return Offer, on Tuesday.

Why it matters

Watch Club is attempting to differentiate itself in the microdrama market by integrating a social network and using union talent, aiming to move beyond the formulaic content typical of competitors like ReelShort and DramaBox.