How Gamelancer is helping gamers earn revenue as freelancers for hire

Razvan Romanescu, Gamelancer co-founder and CEO, joined The Final Round to discuss the newly launched platform and how it is empowering gamers to earn revenue as freelancers for hire.

Video Transcript

- Welcome back to "The Final Round." The gaming sector has seen a huge spike because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, data from Sensor Tower showing that mobile gaming revenue alone jumping 27% from a year ago in the second quarter. So here to talk a little bit more about this, we have Razvan Romanescu. He's the CEO of Gamelancer, and Razvan, it's great to have you on the show. We have a lot to talk to you about today, but let's first dive into your platform and exactly how it works. Because from my understanding, it sounds like it's an opportunity for gamers to earn money as freelancers for hire. Do I have that right?

RAZVAN ROMANESCU: Yeah, thanks for having me, excited to be here, and you're correct. So we noticed that there's three billion gamers worldwide now, the market is growing rapidly, and there's no centralized place to choose who you want to play with when you want to play. You always get matched with random people in lobbies. You have zero control over who the gaming algorithms actually connect you with, and a lot of players are playing four to six hours a day and trying to be Twitch streamers or trying to be esports professionals without having much success. But since they're putting a lot of time into playing anyways, I believe they should still be compensated for their skill sets and their personalities.

- So when you talk about how much people are getting paid, I mean, how much is it per game? Does it vary, and is this something that people could do as a full time job, potentially?

RAZVAN ROMANESCU: Yeah, that's the goal. There is a future that will exist where individuals can say they're a full time Gamelancer for a living. The pricing is set by the Gamelancer themselves based on the demand and the supply that they can see on their end. There's some individuals on the platform now that we're ready making a few hundred dollars a day.

- And I know it's pretty new, but what kind of demand have you been seeing since you launched this product?

RAZVAN ROMANESCU: So we just launched our beta on August 3, and we already have 8,000 users signed up with almost 1,000 Gamelancers that are actively offering their services.

- I mean, talk about your expansion plans. I mean, it's interesting, because you obviously have to reach some sort of agreements with the different games out there and get your name out there as well, so how are you doing that so quickly?

RAZVAN ROMANESCU: So before we launched our actual platform, over the year, we've grown our TikTok following to seven million fans, so we're actually the biggest gaming network on TikTok platform currently. And we've built a very loyal fan base and community around the gaming space, so we will tap into that as well as various partnerships and paid media opportunities. We have John Monopoly, who is Kanye West's manager, joined us as the head of talent. So he will be bringing in a lot of celebrities, athletes, entertainers to join the platform also and also source microcreators and influencers from our actual network itself.

RICK NEWMAN: Hey, Raz. Rick Newman here. So I'm going to ask a question on behalf of parents. I happen to be one. A lot of parents see their kids doing nothing but playing games in the basement and not showing much interest in getting a job or studying or doing these other things.

RAZVAN ROMANESCU: Right.

RICK NEWMAN: I mean, is there a risk that this worsens those kind of concerns, and are you getting any sort of a backlash to this?

RAZVAN ROMANESCU: So we actually created a tool that we feel empowers parents, so it gives parents the control to choose who their kids play with instead of letting them randomly pair with individuals in the gaming sector. I do believe the future is gaming, and the more social expands and gaming expands, I think it's inevitable that the younger generation is going to want to have a career or at least some kind of some kind of positioning in the gaming space where they can make some extra income, or I mean, if they can become a full time Gamelancer.

MYLES UDLAND: And speaking of that, Raz, there's been so much buzz, in my view, I think probably too much buzz, in the investment community about esports, like it has to be a professional competition. It sounds to me like you think just being able to monetize essentially social time, because that means if you are a professional gamer, all you're doing is playing games mostly. Being able to monetize that might be a more reasonable opportunity than saying everyone has to be competing in the league or other things like that.

RAZVAN ROMANESCU: Yeah, I agree completely. It's very hard to make money as an esports professional, and it's even harder to make money as an investor in an esports organization. You have to pay your esports players slash employees a monthly, and you're hoping that they will win a tournament for you and split the earnings. And if that doesn't pan out, you have a few brand deals you can bring in the door, but it's not the most scalable business model. And I do believe that I don't want to change the user behavior of individuals. So if you're gaming four to six hours a day on a regular basis anyways, and you're not an esports pro, and you don't have thousands of viewers on Twitch, there will be individuals out there in the world that will have a funner time playing with you over somebody they were randomly matched with.

- All right, Razvan Romanescu, CEO of Gamelancer, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.

RAZVAN ROMANESCU: Perfect. Appreciate you. Take care.