Earlier this year, we participated in Rilla's Angel Round. Rilla is building a peer-to-peer (P2P) video streaming network that aims to reduce the cost of content delivery by up to 90%. Since our investment, Rilla has successfully raised a larger pre-seed round from notable investors.

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The Problem

Large internet companies have long acted as gatekeepers, charging excessive fees for infrastructure that many users don’t actually need. Streaming infrastructure, in particular, carries exorbitant costs. To illustrate, in just the last 30 days, over 1 billion hours of content were streamed across the top 40 games, equating to approximately US$48 million in network costs using AWS’s real-time streaming services. These costs disproportionately affect platforms and creators, leaving little room for innovation or value distribution.

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The Solution

Rilla Network is a peer-to-peer live-streaming platform that leverages viewers' internet connections to significantly cut down streaming costs, potentially saving up to 90% compared to traditional methods. This approach allows platforms to share those savings with creators and fans, benefiting everyone involved.

Typically, live-streaming requires video data to be transmitted from a central hub, such as a data center, to each viewer's device via a standard CDN, which charges the platform for every gigabyte delivered. Rilla, however, disrupts this model by distributing the workload across viewers' devices—much like a collaborative effort where each participant contributes a small portion.

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How does Rilla do this?

Rilla introduces a transformative model that allows streaming platforms to reward their viewers. By using Rilla’s network, a viewer can essentially earn the equivalent of a free month’s subscription each year simply by watching 1.5 hours of content per day.

The core of Rilla’s technology is based on cutting-edge web solutions that enable nodes to operate directly within a browser, eliminating the need for costly centralised infrastructure. This opens up new possibilities for platforms empowered by Rilla to redistribute value back to their creators and users. It's a complex challenge, but we are confident that the Rilla team is uniquely equipped to tackle it.

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The Visionaries

Rilla's founding team brings over 60 years of combined experience in building and scaling world-class digital products for decentralised and web companies across the globe. Hal Smith Stevens, previously co-founded Altered State Machine (ASM). Pulasthi Bandara, was the former Head of Engineering at ASM. Justin Tomlinson, the third co-founder, was formerly Director of Product and Technology at SKY Europe (now Comcast) and brings deep expertise and a vast network within the streaming industry.

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Why We’re Excited

Rilla is our first investment in the Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks (DEPIN) space and our second investment in a New Zealand-based company. We believe Rilla has the potential to revolutionise the streaming industry by creating a more cost-efficient and value-driven model for content delivery. I’m excited to watch this team execute their vision and onboard traditional streaming platforms onto their decentralised infrastructure.

If you're interested in learning more, following their journey, or becoming a part of their team, be sure to follow Rilla online or reach out directly.

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We are actively looking to support more web3 projects. If you’re building something in the space, please do get in touch. Our DMs are open. :)

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