The dominant internet business models, ads and paywalls, don’t work for the vast majority of people around the world, whether they’re users or developers. We think we’ve found a better way, one that doesn’t distract users or compromise their privacy and is accessible to almost everyone. We’re excited to announce that we just raised an $11 million seed round for our startup, Massive, to help developers adopt this new business model.

Here’s more info about what we’re working on and how you can get involved.

What we do

Massive provides an SDK to app developers that lets users opt in to pay for premium features with their devices’ idle computing resources. We pool together these resources, like a bunch of mini data centers, and compensate the developers by hosting blockchain infrastructure, mining cryptocurrency and, in the future, performing general distributed computing tasks. We don’t collect any personal info and we actively collaborate with compliance partners to ensure our SDK is always safe for developers to include in their apps.

Hundreds of thousands of users have paid with Massive while we’ve been quietly building. Conversion rates for our developer partners, when they give users the option to pay with Massive, are consistently 30% or higher and their average revenue per user (ARPU) is over 3x higher than their ARPU with ads.

Who invested

We wanted our lead investor to be a fintech fund with both cryptocurrency and non-cryptocurrency investments so they’d support Massive as a payments infrastructure company and support our plans to collaborate more closely with blockchain projects. We’re excited that Adam Carson from Point72 Ventures, who shares this vision of our compute-based business model, has joined our board.

We also wanted to add a syndicate of strategic investors to bring more blockchain experience to our team, so we couldn’t be happier to welcome Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, BlockTower Capital, CoinShares Ventures, and Xoogler Ventures, as well as prominent angel investors Ryan Selkis, Prabhakar Reddy, Sriram Krishnan, and Packy McCormick.

How users of Massive-enabled apps will benefit

We’ll continue putting end-users first and ensuring that paying with Massive doesn’t affect normal, everyday device performance. Part of our secret sauce is that we automatically throttle the Massive SDK’s usage – as a user needs more of their resources, we use less and vice versa.

We already have dozens of integrations launched and more in progress, through which users get premium apps and services (almost) free. This round will support integrating with even more partners so users can increasingly access digital services they love.

How developers of Massive apps will benefit

We’ll continue R&D to optimize monthly revenue for developers while reducing any potential impact on users’ devices, we’ll strengthen relationships with antivirus vendors, and we’ll extend platform compatibility beyond desktop.

We’ll also extend the tools and services offered in our developer portal, adding more metrics, more payment options, and more configurability around how the SDK is allowed to monetize devices.

How compute partners, including blockchains, will benefit

We believe decentralization is key to a future where people have autonomy, rather than a handful of governments and megacorporations, and we’re committed to accelerating that future by providing blockchain and web3 projects with distributed infrastructure. Let us know if you’re interested in using our network to distribute or decentralize your project.

And we’re hiring!

We need help bringing this new business model to hundreds of millions of users, so we’re doubling our headcount from 10 to 20. We’re currently looking for Business Directors, C/C++ Developers, a Blockchain EIR, a Director of Security and Compliance, a Product Manager, a Business Operations Associate, an Accountant/Controller, a Blockchain Research Intern, and a Social Media Intern.

Our open positions are listed at jobs.joinmassive.com. If you fit (or anyone else you know does) one of the descriptions on the site and wants to join a fast-growing startup, please reach out to jobs@joinmassive.com.

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