Sources: Meerkat founders raise about $50M for Houseparty in a round led by Sequoia, with previous Life on Air investors Aleph, Comcast, Greylock participating
Live video chat apps are shaping up as the next obsession for Silicon Valley investors. The latest object of attention is Houseparty …
Context & Ripple Effects
Life On Air spent 2016 executing a hard pivot: after stealth-launching Houseparty in February, the team pulled Meerkat from the App Store entirely to concentrate on group video chat. The $50M round is the payoff moment for that bet — and notably, Sequoia is coming in as a new lead while Greylock, which backed Meerkat's Hollywood-flavored Series B, re-ups alongside Aleph and Comcast.
The round also extends a pattern around founder Ben Rubin specifically: this is the second time he has converted a Meerkat-era product into a fresh, well-funded company, a streak that later continued with his $25.5M a16z Crypto-backed Towns protocol.
First-order effects
- Life On Air gets roughly $50M to scale Houseparty without monetization pressure, with Sequoia taking the lead seat and prior Life on Air investors Aleph, Comcast, and Greylock doubling down on the pivot.
Second-order effects
- Comcast's participation puts a major distribution and connectivity player directly on Houseparty's cap table, an unusual strategic backer for a teen-skewing social app that rivals in group video chat now have to treat as better capitalized.
Third-order effects
- The round cements the 'pivot-and-refund' template in consumer social: founders of a stalled app can trade attention history for a new large round rather than shutting down, lowering the career risk of swinging at the next format — a path Rubin himself repeated with Towns.
The trend: Silicon Valley capital is increasingly underwriting serial consumer-social founders on their next act rather than their current traction, with incumbent backers following the team across pivots.