Livepeer Studio Helps Korkuma Bring Immersive Commerce to the Masses
About Korkuma
Product: Live Shopping Platform
Location: Czechia
Website: korkuma.com
In January of 2021, Korkuma founder Robert Tarabcak and his team had an epiphany: while video content has gradually become augmented with social interactions – likes, comments, recommendations, even tipping – video players haven’t changed much since Quicktime debuted in 1991.
From this realization, Tarabcak decided to start Korkuma: a new, richer live video platform allowing any business or creator to sell through live commerce experiences on their website. This wasn't his first venture. A few years prior, Tarabcak had started Cinnamon, a platform that allows creators to get paid in real time.
“Video is the most expensive medium in the world,” Tarabcak says. “In order to build something for everyday creators and businesses to use, it was truly important for us not to overprice our services.”
After interviewing small businesses considering using live commerce to sell their products, Tarabcak said that industry-standard solutions like AWS were either far too costly, too time-consuming, or too complex for them to integrate.
“My fear was having only the number-one player as an option. Because if you just compare how much AWS and the other players charge, what they charge for livestreams is ridiculous. We have some startup program discounts here and there, but it’s not enough.”
After finding Livepeer Studio, Tarabcak decided to use it for their video transcoding needs. Livepeer’s decentralized infrastructure offered significant cost savings – enough to pass on to customers in the form of a less expensive product.
“If we didn’t have Livepeer, we’d have to strongly consider repositioning ourselves in the market. We’d probably have to go after enterprise players instead.”
Tarabcak's main concern came down to latency. But soon after integrating with Livepeer Studio to access the Livepeer network, he realized he had nothing to be afraid of: “I must say that our latency with Livepeer Studio is smaller than the latency you see on Facebook...the fact that you can do it faster in a decentralized way, I love it.”
The process of integrating with Livepeer Studio was also a breeze. Tarabcak explained that Korkuma's CTO Novak told him, “They have just three functions, their documentation is pretty straightforward, they have an API, and oh, by the way, I was able to set it up within a week.”
After switching to Livepeer Studio, Tarabcak says the team is looking forward to continuing to build out functionality for creators and small businesses.
“Soon I’ll be able to go to an ecommerce website and watch experts show me products live, or see Elon Musk tweet he's going to be shopping online in five minutes, and follow along to see what he buys.”
Eventually Korkuma will allow any business to spin up live commerce experiences from wherever they interact with customers.
“We position ourselves not as marketing to help you drive sales, but as a sales tool that you can integrate into your own website or mobile app, and whether you are a startup selling software like us, or trying to sell a physical product, you can create amazing events that will be an impulsive buying experience.”
Four months after Korkuma started working with Livepeer Studio, their performance has been smooth so far. And as for those concerns over working with an up-and-coming service provider, they seem to have faded away.
“We were initially worried about scaling alongside Livepeer Studio. But now, we see all these partnerships, and the list of nodes growing each day, and we don’t have that frustration anymore. We consider Livepeer Studio as a reliable partner for us for many, many years to come.”
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