Investing in Game Startups | Venture Capital ft. London Venture Partners, Konvoy, and Transcend

you welcome everybody we're here today to talk about the current investment environment for gaming studios we'll be focused more on the mobile side but certainly can try to speak a bit more on the PC console opportunities as well and specifically we'll be talking about six things number one what are investors investing in right now - what's missing from an opportunities perspective in other words what are some of the biggest problems that need to be solved number three investing in the current environment as far as pandemic and shelter in place and how that's infecting investments for how defensible our gaming companies five what's controversial in the games industry today and finally what are big future trends in gaming and with us today to speak about all these issues and more I'm very happy to have our guest today Jason Chapman managing partner of Conway ventures David Gartner

a general partner and London venture partners and Graham cockily principal at the very new transcend fund so welcome guys again I'm really excited to have you guys on I was telling Graham earlier that there are a lot of questions here that I'm personally just very interested in hearing the answers Jason I'm definitely looking forward to our conversation but maybe we could just go ahead and start with like a quick intro from the three of you and maybe starting with you Jason yeah happy to do that thanks for having us on Joe I appreciate it yeah so we launched Conway ventures in 2019 before that I worked in product and research at IBM and so there's three of us on the team that launched Conway we hired a star associate that's also on our team which is great we chose to focus on more of the infrastructure and platforms and gaming over content we have done a couple of content deals and so I'm gonna look to my I always use the word colleagues but Co funds here on the

podcast that have a lot more experience with investing directly into studios but that's us that's where we were focused on and we're based in Denver Colorado in New York City and best in you know Europe North America and also have done a couple things in Israel too so that's us great I gave it I'm with London Venture Partners one of the funds that are focused on the game space exclusively I think that many people may know some of our investments in the past we were early investors in supercell and unity and natural motion Playfish a few of those which is great but we've done about 30 34 investments now I think we're also focused on the Western market so in North America Europe etc about 60 70 percent of our investments are in Europe but increasingly more so in in the USA I think that's because venture in the past has been shy of investing in the game space so it's you know and it's a global business so people have been

moving around yeah happy to get more into it is we as we tour great okay yeah and Joseph said I'm here representing transcendence fund were brand new fun we launched just just earlier this year in March but yeah we're investing in games and games related digital media businesses we've already made a handful of investments and continued to make more My partner and I have been both on the product side the production side the corporate development business misses excuse me business development side of the games business here for the last ten years for my part 30 years on shanties part so we focused exclusively on games games companies and really try to work with the best founders and partner with them to build really great games businesses awesome all right so maybe we could jump right in with the very first question which is really what are you guys investing in right now what's sort of hot in the industry to invest in well I'm happy to start on on that we just announced an investment team called treehouse based in California who are

some X right guys working on a mobile product so certainly if you want to touch on that I mean it's mobile this is an example there it's content another interesting couple of investments that were made before that double-loop games that Emily Greer started she's ex-head of congregate working on games that are going to excite I think you know it's it's too easy to say a female audience because it really doesn't do justice to the broader demographic of people who just don't want competitive games and also Jill who founded ramen games who's working on an entire lifestyle type product which i think is super interesting so for me those all define products that are trying to move into new demographic areas expanding the market looking at players that maybe would not self-identify as gamers in the past and I think that's one of the very exciting trends that we're seeing with devices everywhere finally we and finally we can see

content that's for for the wider for the wider audience right Jason Graham do you guys have any thoughts on this yeah no I think that's very exciting I love the the trend that David sitting on with you know moving into new demographics that maybe weren't focused on you know another one that I threw out there on his Dorian to which you know I think the the evolution of you know players versus creators is constantly blurring and so you know something that I would sort of just add on to that point of very excited about you know new groups that weren't gamers becoming gamers but I'm also really excited about new groups of people that weren't creators becoming creators and I know that UGC is a very very big you know hot-button topic and I know that one of the things that a lot of people get excited about but genuinely that that is something that I think we're gonna see as we kind of step into the next couple hundred million gamers we're gonna unearth a lot of new creators in that process I'm really pumped about got it

so it sounds like you know demographic expansion kind of like potential for creator platforms to what extent are there's kind of a joke in the industry that VC is trying to chase these like keyword terms whether it's the meta verse or you know games as a social network or things like that so to what extent are you guys looking at you know and I guess a positive way to think about that is like trying to bet on big macro trends so in terms of investing in terms of themes or trans relative to like specific you know entrepreneurs that come in that excite you guys how are you guys thinking about the sort of investment framework where what's the mental model in terms of thinking about investments in those terms I think it does depend a lot on who comes through the door I think you're right if it's you know if you're getting a I did use an extreme if you know if oka and some of the supercell guys came and said hey we're starting a new company you go right sign me up oh yeah what was the company again oh yeah you're making snowmobiles oh okay you know so so you

do I think one filter is you say okay is that a crowded space so you're trying to do something that's hard and then if the team's credibility is incredible you'd say yeah go go ahead and do it normally we're saying you know go into blue ocean space because it's really super hard on mobile but you know Jill Wilson from Robins are really interesting because she's a very experienced leader had a senior position at jam city so she's she's not a newbie doing what she's doing and she's also focusing on where the market I think is headed so that in some ways is an ideal is it was an easy yes for us she could have probably said yeah I'm gonna do you know I'm gonna do storytelling games or match-three or whatever and we probably would have done it but we just we like the combo so I think it can it really does depend on on who walks in the doors is the ultimate answer for that question to me good

grief adder yeah I'd second that I think we filter mostly on the quality of the founders their experience and then the business opportunity that they're pursuing so we evaluate all of that it's very rare for us to go after just a key market or a key buzzword in the market and and filter on that there are a lot of talented teams attacking things like the Metaverse or attacking user-generated content and there are just a newer like just tons of teams going after those opportunities but really the quality of team the experience what they've been working on is is really important and how they're transferring that experience into the new product and the new category that they might be creating is is the most exciting thing so at early stage it's it's really hard to filter on a thesis like that I think you people have to remember that VCS have two jobs I don't like to go out and talk to the founders but also to represent ourselves to our LPS and our investors

so sometimes the what gets put out in the market is more of the marketing speak that is attracting LPS and other investors to invest in your own fund and that's that's a great marketing tactic but when you're actually going out and talking to founders you're usually getting more granular level and talking about the game mechanics specific ways that you're want to target an audience as it goes to a broader trend err or yeah I think I think the only thing I agree with both of them I think the thing that I would just kind of add is you know you're always struggling to not be just totally reactive but also thinking proactively and so that's kind of what we're getting at is you know how do you identify trends that cross the market and be like huh these are the few things I'd want to take from this startup to the next one that you know it's missing right so for instance there's a lot of really crowded markets but a couple of companies are doing a few things really really well and you're just constantly storing that information kind of like a bank as you continuously

evaluate things in that sub sector something we're doing as a team right now actually trying to do is leave this living breathing thesis documents if you don't think it was like the Constitution of convoy and how we're thinking about different sub sectors and every week we're taking a couple hours and we're taking a sub sub sector and saying this is how we think about it we're updating it from like a couple months ago how we think about it and it's kind of like a lively debate amongst the team and we're finding that to be helpful and we're even seeing ourselves over time just you know we're less excited about one one area versus the other and why is that right is it because we saw a couple of deaths in that sub sector are we being influenced by that so that's something we're doing to sort of try to track being proactive and reactive yeah I do you think that's a very interesting topic though in terms of investing in terms of teams versus markets right I think one of one of my friends who's in that sort of Silicon Valley venture capital community told me a joke that he felt that Silicon Valley venture guys prior to YouTube always said teams were

the most important but after YouTube they're like actually much it's more fortune yeah I mean that I think that's that's true it can be both you you sometimes you you're you used your intuition maybe too strongly but you you are looking for reasons to invest so you might say you know what that's a real interesting and interesting thesis on a part of the market I'd never considered before no teams have pitched that so you know let's get behind it you know I think he even you know somebody with a high reputation came in and was pitching a VR product we would find it very hard to invest we were early we called the VR kind of Sherrod early on to say it's just not ready for primetime and we made no investments in that space and I think so you know that and that came from debate internal debate and then we did a big trip to say okay well let's really look at this we spent time in China we looked at all the installations and we just didn't feel like it was it was it was fun in a in it

for a 15 minute session but we just saw there are too many blockers to make it a scale business up until now I mean always still hoping to be convinced but okay and maybe kind of shifting to this next question around what's missing in terms of the biggest problems and David you'd alluded to the opportunity in terms of demographic expansion you know Jason you mentioned you know crater platforms but what are other problems or big opportunities that you guys are seeing in the market if we're talking about markets a bit more I mean I think like you know we definitely loaded to it with you know the next couple hundred million gamers right if we saw anything in Co bid its that we saw people you know are stuck inside and a lot of them turned to games and a lot of new people turn to games which is really really exciting right I think not all those users are gonna stick around and we're seeing you know early metrics of that but generally speaking I think we just expedited the acquisition of the next couple hundred million gamers which is

really really neat and so looking towards looking towards those gamers again like what kind of niche Jon Rose are gonna be created that we didn't think of before right and that that's what I'm personally really pumped about is you know I want to find personally the platforms that is fueling creators for niche genres that personally I don't play maybe I'll never play but have a viral community and you know someone that did this really really well was crunchyroll right you know they tapped into the anime market perfectly right they fueled that market they owned that market I want to find the country role of you know the next couple you know genres of gaming so that's something I'm looking for constantly and chatting with both of David and Graham about what what about some of these notions around let you know that's kind of popular in the media as far as like Metaverse you know sandbox creation platform things like that what do you what do you guys think

about the opportunities and some of them the more popular things being discussed yeah I think it's hard to maybe define Metaverse I mean that's probably define defining any of these terms is probably one of the hardest parts of of marketing them and then understanding and creating a conversation with the founder group about what they're trying to build when we talk to people about meta versus or animos I think there's a long history of mmo's so it's very hard for kind of a new person to come into this space and say that building an online community is this new thing that can only be enabled in 2020 I think that's a that's a hard pitch to somebody who's been around games for as long as as long as this group has but when you think about the the platforms that can exist as Jason was saying the amount of different gameplay and storytelling that can happen in games right now has been democratized to the extent where anybody can build a game I've been talking to a lot of craters on roblox recently it's very interesting to see the ways that they're trying to innovate around building gameplay for for that audience

I think one of the things that Jason was touching on is just building the community aspect of it as well I think that's something that hasn't necessarily been been there even as games have I've evolved and become great kind of engines for for content and gameplay I think only now are we really scratching the surface of how to leverage the community both inside the game and outside the game so we think about things like bunch that are allowing people to play in video chat with each other or as David mentioned treehouse is really thinking about community in terms of a co-op game the the founders that are that are putting that front and center in terms of the way they understand their audience or think are gonna have the leg up just because the tools that they have to then retain that audience and provide them with value over time I've never been better and they're gonna find ways to create those games and build those communities over time and just continue to aggregate where where they might start out being nice like Jason was saying but then Kroger to be something

mass-market over time that's the extraordinary changes in games is the way that the longevity and it is all about the community which i think is i didn't really want to lead with this answer when you ask that question because I feel it was too negative but one of the greatest challenges is the the ugly side of community which is the toxic potential for toxicity and it's so heartbreaking and but you know so vital that that the communities are don't are they're kind of create mental illness or hate or you know all kinds of terrible directions that it can run so I think that's a big big challenge that we have great that things are far more social friendships are made common goals are met there's so many fantastic positive experiences so I think work on the toxicity and it's interesting to see that you know sometimes it's technology but it's just getting the right to the voice and not letting the audience take

take this thing in the wrong place to to protect and encourage things now if you never see my own finding in Disneyland and not that's because everyone's happy that's because something like a tree opens up and the people just get sucked out of the park there's a there you know so we need we need that kind of thinking I want to see that tree right there what you're hitting on is is this concept of there's no what do you lose from being toxic right and a lot of a lot of people there's nothing there's nothing at risk right you know if I was going to be toxic in public at Disneyland I might be removed from the park or or I might get you know locked up for something I did or find there's something I had to risk and you know the problem with a lot of like cheating or just toxic behaviors there's not much to risk and so people are willing to be gutsy and you know I I I think you know there's got to be some social element here to figure out a way to fix this

because you're right it's heartbreaking we've all been on multiplayer games especially and you're you're in there and there's someone who's saying something that you've never even dreamed of and you're just like you're 14 how are you thinking like this and if you hang out long enough you can see why they think like this because someone's ridiculed them in the previous game and they just kind of pass on bad behavior or you're just fodder you know I mean I don't have the I am coordination I kind of go into these these multiplayer first-person shooters and you know I am yeah most within seconds right where's that where's the dad mode where my the golfing handicap gets applied and I get a little extra bonus so you're saying I shouldn't queue up free queue for war zone or call or for csgo that's it you're telling me no I got it I can bring in on my side I like it I like it yeah I think so i'm yeah i'm really passionate there's a lot of people trying to figure this out and i know that most people and the games can you

want the same thing which is you know we don't we don't want this we don't want you know to influence kids or create a safe place for kids to behave a certain way like i don't want it to be a no-risk situation to act like that right like to act cool poorly and ridicule and shame people and you know something just really frank like what I try to do whenever I hear that is I don't just like to mute that person which I do all the time but I also like to ridicule them and say stop talking that person or you know just just jump in have some guts and say hey look we're not okay with that because usually they're picking on one person and that's you know it's bullying that's terrible and so I just encourage all you guys on multi players to stand up I mean you know you have nothing to lose it would be all something I tell you right and maybe in terms of opportunities from a team perspective it does seem like there's been a trend of gaming Studios getting funded that are like X Riot X Blizzard guys like that is there can you guys speak in terms of why you think that kind of trend is happening well I think there's been a

light there is there is a lifecycle right if you're if you're on a project and you've been on that project for five to ten years and you want to do something new and that opportunity doesn't exist at those companies that we saw it at Electronic Arts all the time where you know you just you're tired of being on the tenth version of math and football and you're ready for something new so I think that's that's one of the roles that we play as investors we help that ecosystem take that talent very talented people that want to then you know get the backing and support to try something new and for us the risk is so improved because they are experienced and particularly some of the I have to say even though we haven't invested in every extra height of person there's clearly a culture of and a discipline right that's pretty impressive and people are impacted by that and they come out and you see that they're the way that they process things the way they are organized it puts them in a great

position so I like that and I think we're going to see obviously more of that and and that's good for the industry okay great so maybe shifting to the next question which is really around investing in this current environment of pandemic shelter-in-place no so it's you can't have in-person meeting on in-person meetings I know there are some venture firms too are pretty public about not investing in companies without an in-person meeting not only that but we're kind of seeing this potential for recessionary depression-era environment but the countervailing side of that is that gaming is kind of on the increase so like you guys speak to the current environment and how it's affecting their processes or how it's affecting you know how you're going about evaluating and investing in companies right now yeah I think for us actually probably be having this conversation is great at bringing

together people from the industry internationally and that's where we do a lot of our networking that's where we need a lot of new net new people and increase the size of the our networks and the people that we know the fact that that's not happening naturally and organically right now is very difficult and challenging so I think we're all trying to find different ways to meet new teams meet talented founders make sure that we're getting the same kind of high level high quality conversations that we would be getting in a non code environment in terms of kind of closing deals and evaluating I don't think much has changed other than we shifted from in-person meetings to a lot more zum-zum calls getting a level of comfort there I'm not sure how Jason and David are dealing with it is a little bit different especially if you haven't met the person previously and I've even arguments it's a weird thing better i mean i i'm more confident answering this question than I was three

months ago okay yeah partly because it is to quote the new normal and we've done multiple investments now where we did not physically meet the team but the reason it's better is that it forces us to be more disciplined with references and I think it was too easy in the past to fall into a trap where you would meet someone and if it was a good meeting that would sort of set the the positioning and that kind of first impression would set the train in motion and you'd say I really like pitching I like those that team I think they're great then you might do some references and that may or may not come back as positively as you had in your in your head and you know it's very hard to make these decisions when you spend one or two hours with someone and you take references from people that may have worked with them or know them for hundreds of hours and you probably should be listening to those references more now we have no choice and I think we're getting slightly I think we're getting more objective data and that's helping us be more disciplined with our with our decisions but deals are definitely being done follow on investments are definitely being done

and as you mentioned the game sector and I've been speaking to various bankers about M&A things they're saying read you know it's red hot in gaming so I think this is a great time it's such a digital market and its global this is fantastic yeah I would you know I'm trying to say it I feel bad for some people who are not in but yeah we're lucky yeah I would I would agree in that there's some things to add on it you know time is your friend with deals in my opinion you're like I've you know we've all fallen in love with a deal and then a couple weeks later than like that's that's actually not something services what it's about that under the team the market and and you know I think actually kovetz given us a little bit more breathing room on the old times that's for police for us we've seen that I think we're actually making better decisions because we are jumping on way more zoom calls with our founders ahead of it we have actually I think more touch points and you know just echo we

do and have to get very creative about how we get references for a person right no store chling in around eight you know eight different ways on this one founder to just find if there's any skeletons in the closet you know we we do that better now and I think we did before so I'd echo that the thing that we're also seeing is there's a flooding of you know generalist funds that you know part of their portfolio is on fire not in a good way and you're burning the ground right now and they're like shoot we're you know a third of LA allocated to this funds we need to look towards you know new horizons which they should be doing which is a good you know do you know for their own LPS and they've looked at gaming right and so we're seeing a lot of people and we've seen it massive uptick in generalist fund reaching out to us which I appreciate hey how do I you know how do I play this sector how do I get into this sector and so I don't know if you know you guys are seeing this as well but it is interesting to see a lot of people that have you know paused allocating because you know their traditional sectors are on fire and

they're now trying to get a POV on how to allocate in gaming which is interesting yeah I mean that generally when that plays through is bad investments get made and then not actually duties the water a bit because people then wonder oh no games that you can investment the classic classic criticism gaming is it's a Hits driven business and the answer is yes and what's the problem with that and the problem then becomes when people aren't actually building a portfolio and they take one two or three shots and they actually fail I mean who who making games hasn't had to make minigame before they got their success off the door this is same thing with investing so I just saw they encourage those investors to really allocate a decent amount of capital make multiple investments and not just or or follow-on and companies that are already just successful I'm looking for growth capital because that's a different decision tree yeah it just sounds like based upon the feedback so far like the

current environment hasn't really slowed you down and potentially you did initially okay initially I think it's normal it's opened up the playing field such that we can instead of being talking to a founder who's based in London and saying yes I'll be there in July let's have a meeting kind of two months from now or whatever that natural touch point would be we can just hop on a zoom call tomorrow so in some ways though a lot of the ways that there was paste in terms of how we would meet new people that's kind of all been accelerated it's been much easier to meet new people it's also been easier to meet new people in places where you wouldn't necessarily expect and actually meet founders from more diverse backgrounds so I think in a weird way it's actually advantaged a lot of founders to to reach out to us because we have less logistical barriers in our schedules and in our time in our time management to meeting people right so

potentially less geographical bias I think some Silicon Valley guys are famous for saying they only invest within a certain square mile no Menlo Park or whatever but yeah and then in terms of valuation so Jason you're saying that there's money now kind of shifting in is that impacting valuations in a positive way despite potentially recessionary depression Airy concerns as well or is that do those offset I so interesting enough right so we just did a little bit of a study on this as the deal flow we've seen since kind of like March to now yeah right on average valuation still have plummeted okay in some regard so about 20% is what we're seeing on seed deals and Series A deals right from where it was before so you know if you're raising it at $10 valuation you're not risen in a so nothing crazy but it has gone down and I think a lot of that has to do with founders maybe having slight fear of you know hey this is an unsure environment you know I do want to sort of round this round up I don't want to take you know twelve months to raise this round let's just

get this moving I want to make it attractive for investors that's what we've seen yeah the other thing I would say is I think that the valuation spike will come as more of those guys that have been trying to create a POV on this industry actually do start pulling the trigger because I don't think a lot of them are pulling the trigger I think a lot of them are just looking at it and trying to figure out what they want to do with it that's that's kind of my hunch and so I wouldn't be surprised to see valuations go up a little bit my q4 and q1 okay great so the next question I want to ask you guys is actually I don't want to open up a can of worms but in terms of when we think about defense ability of gaming companies I think there's kind of a debate you know is there like an Amazon like or fang-like type man gaming company like what your perspective is you mean other than $0.10 [Laughter] there's a firm in FX that's you know

kind of famous for talking about network effects but when we look at a lot of the game content companies we don't see a lot about that but just wondering if you guys just speak a little bit high level in terms of your your your thoughts around that really interesting question because I think and Graham was speaking about it earlier as well with games that might start out in Asia and grow I think that dynamic has changed so dramatically from we used to jokingly call it a TA we were in the you know the fruit business because you'd shoot something and you know go into retail and it would start spoiling you kind of made your big giant day one orders you tried to get as much through the door in the first 60 days and then you moved on to the next release completely reversed now the games that you know roblox is how old is roblox now is it eight years I hear 12 yeah well you know going going getting stronger every year so most people are

have community or and therefore online components actually report their largest ever years and I think that is changing the the general growth curve but even if I think about EI and ei had all kinds of defensibility strategies and you know all the kind of classics business school theory so it tried to own and control distribution it built franchises it did all these great things and and it is a huge success but it I would you know distribution no longer is is valuable in fact there unwinding most of the districts because it cost overhead we all know you go to distribution through digital now so there on steam and so that's no longer an asset but EA still having its best year ever but now they're not the only game in town so now we've got I was talking about ten cent but ten cents another good example ten cent has been born out of another era

and so I think platforms spawned these these companies that are hugely successful and they don't go away they don't seem to have a life cycle but they don't own and exclusively control anything Island then something else comes near them and also does well so super salt has come out of the moai are king and other other mobile companies and so I don't know about fifty years that that cent seems long in game terms since its longer than the history of the industry but it doesn't seem to be quite the same system of like you know how Netflix destroyed Blockbuster Video where that company is completely gone it's it's a different it seems to be quite different in the game space not that that was mind you yeah I'll happen I agree with everything David said I think we think about IP in games yes there's always gonna be great differentiated content and the most talented teams are gonna build the next great franchises there's hundreds thousands of games that have yet to be

built yet they're gonna be massive hits so that's always exciting to us there's gonna be a constant thirst for that kind of new IP and then once you have an idea think it's what's most interesting is what you can do with it and right now I think once you own that audience I think we've moved from a product line like they were saying with fruit two more software games as a service model in which if once you own the audience and understand what they want and what they need you can continue to provide them with value in terms of different gaming content for years to come and that's a really exciting relationship that you can build with that audience and you can learn more about them over time so I think there's a defense ability there that is more like a tech company than an entertainment company but it also brings kind of the best of both of those worlds together in terms of what you can can give that audience yeah I was just gonna say like I think you asked the question I also ran I'm like super selling Zingo like which one of those would be around in 50 years like I mean I really thought

about that for a while I was like okay like what what would justify then be around in 50 years and then you know you know comparing to iconic you know brands like Disney or a Nintendo and it's like is Farm Bill gonna be the Mickey Mouse of Disney I don't think so I think a really key part of becoming a defensible you know brand that has the moat like of an Amazon or a Microsoft is can you can you translate platforms and I I don't know if you know Zynga or supercell is going to be able to do that Ultra ultra well we'll see you know like whatever the next platform is right I hope they can cuz I you know I'm fans of you know of farmville I'm clash of clans I love you know I love those games but that's something that's top of mind is you know can you jump platforms can you move from PC to mobile mobile to like a UGC and I think that's gonna be a big part of like what what survives and what becomes the

quote-unquote Nintendo of gaming right Graham I think you made a good point in the sense that to some degree the free-to-play operating model serves as a defense ability because now we're instead of like a unit sold business we're we're in an industry where you've got a product that can retain a customer for five 10 15 years so certainly that's kind of an interesting point think about as well yeah and then when you think about the platform side things like Jason was saying that I mean that's ultimately incredibly defensible on both sides if you have somebody that's creating content for you well as you're maintaining the audience and growing that overtime that's fantastic so when you look at something like roblox that's exciting and you look at something like Manticore that's trying to build a similar product for for maybe a slightly older audience I think there's an exciting opportunity there if they hit it right in terms of how you build that business so I'm actually almost more complicated because it's it's it's dual sided you think about both the supply and demand side of things and then how to bring them

together so it's actually more like three businesses so making sure you have the right leadership team that understands how to how to grow that and scale that over time is even more important but if there is success there it is highly defensible because you have yeah just market dynamics on all sides that advantage it to continue to grow and to continue to for the quality of content the content quality to get better over time great but I feel like we're agreeing too much so in terms of like having more debate and controversy you can want to ship our next question which is what is controversial in the games industry today what can we argue about guys I can kick us off with a controversial topic so we'll see if see if the counterparts here agree with me so something that you know is very top of mind to me is the way that ad networks are purchasing up studios and in how they're creating a customer adversarial relationship that's very very topical to me you know it kind

of reminds me of there's a reason right in an investment banks right you have a wall between your sales and trading and your best men banks right there's a reason the two cannot cooperate that is no longer happening for games and adsence so just for everyone to understand you know I'm sure that a lot of the audience does know this but they can use the data of their customers to get a UA advantage for their own studios and right if the 30 to 40% spend for a lot of studios is on on UA and that's where a bulk of budgets go is 2/4 net users maintain users that is that is a clear problem in my opinion and I either it needs to get fixed with some kind of legislation potentially or you know I think that you're just gonna see all their clients leave so that's that's something that's kind of topical for me right now this is not isn't that the curing look I mean I think it's it is a problem but I just kind of view the free market as as the tool to sort it out we've had the same issue with Sony

and Microsoft and Nintendo Nintendo maybe it's even better example that's maybe arguing that which they the platform holders had cost advantages because they they didn't have to pay their own platform fees yeah so I think I think if content is truly King you will find that those ad networks struggle to to balance great product and running the actual utility of that ad network so I think that if if users you know people are going to go where they they have the great experiences where their community is where there are therefore their eyeballs are on the house will have to follow so I think there is there is a there is a some competition play that will push back on that yeah there's a lot of private slack groups where people are privately furious but you know but we're also

seeing this in other industries too right like Amazon recently got caught for taking the data of their sellers and then using that I feel like a lot of people in the industry are like well what can we do you know so I just I guess I would want transparency and maybe that's being a little bit transparency is always good I think that's true people should also and add a user level people people should know what's going on with their data yeah you know that that's still a bigger fight with the whole internet I guess I go into also wonder is and maybe you know Joe actually you could probably comment on this too it's like as a small studio like maybe not everyone is totally aware of how their data is being used and I know that you're keenly aware because this is a topic you've dug it into yourself but you know I think that's like one of the things I'm trying to hit at is I want those guys to know if they're

gonna use that ad nor that that information will potentially be used against them obviously that it's not evidence that they 100% do that so that's a big disclaimer like there is not a direct correlation but that's what I would guess as a platform if you had that information why would you not use it and there's nothing stopping them from in my in my opinion right and so I would guess that they are to create a competitive edge on the UA spend which is you know as you guys know it could be everything right if you can move your UA spend from 40 percent of 10 I mean it's huge it's a game-changer yeah so yeah I think on the studio side it's really just about weighing risks for us it's like what went advantage do we get what's the potential risk will this information be used against us or will it be used in you know different kinds of ways that do you feel you have choice I mean do you sort of feel like well that's the pound of flesh we have to give up in order to get I think that's the current attitude right now is that again privately a lot a lot of people

are incredibly furious but you know at the end of the day in terms of what what people are saying publicly in terms of like you know like you look at say Rick's I mean I mean you know talking to some of the guys there they're like well we're gonna we're gonna if we can buy that out love and traffic now yeah I'm curious to see how ads shake out and obviously you know Apple's announcement and that's that's a game changer too in this very it's very linked to this whole it's tangential to this topic I'm here to see how marketing is done I think marketing for users is going to dramatically change in the next couple of years in games which drives a lot of the revenue and spend and so yeah that's a lot from reset it mean that's an opportunity yeah and I think you know I'm thinking about how to play that space to actively right now because obviously if you can capture some those dollars that's great and you know yes

you challenge you know Facebook and Google Facebook owning you know your interests and Google knows your intent with your searches I mean those are those are two behemoths that don't want to be disrupted and I game this might be the catalyst to figure out a way to maybe capture back some that spend and so that that's something I would be pretty pumped to find yeah I do think that's you know definitely a lot of changes there will Facebook be able to continue to do high levels of targeting or not so will will will types of games because of the lack of targeting decrease and and we have to go broader or more casual oh yeah that's we'll definitely see how that shakes out but yeah absolutely yeah all right any other controversial topics that we can that's the most controversial we could be how about eSports is anyone made any money in eSports other than you know other than twitch isn't isn't a hundred feeds

profitable am i making that up there might be fig news I mean eSports is great for the industry but it's it's it's still in my mind is is really more promotion it's a marketing activity it's not a business and it's if your business is doing about generating cash flow and I guess there are a lot of definitions of business but to me it just doesn't seem it's it just seems stuck in that sponsorship swag etc etc and look I love I mean I'm glad that people love it and you know tons and millions and millions of people are watching it and that's all cool and that's that's really great but I and I would love to be able to make a profitable investment in this base but all the money that's being poured into that I can't see it getting getting the returns and so yeah we get pitched on eSports team just about every week and you know they're I think there were a

couple opportunities very early on to make a bet in a few great orgs and make you know a good investment that's gonna hopefully return money a lot of people describe eSports teams to me as art you know you're kind of investigating waiting for somebody to come and the next billion or to come along and say no this Monet is actually worth 200 million now instead of one in a 50 it kind of falls in that that realm usually for me I think some teams are getting create it by you know leveraging their brand and their kind of honestly becoming more like an adidas or Nike I'm just saying you want the 100 deeds brand or you want the cloud9 brand and I know I agree with you David I like watching eSports but there's a reason our portfolio does not have eSports exposure and it's because you know you got to chase the money and you know a lot of when we talk to our LPS and investors right everyone talks about eSports and I'm like okay gamings are over 150 billion dollar market eSports maybe is 1.5 so it's you know

one to one and a half percent depending on how you cut the market that's the scope of the industry and so if you say hey I have a billion dollar Tam and usually eSports claims the gaming market as their tan which I don't think it's fair yeah it doesn't carry and so I there's a reason I I think a lot of people are also gonna lean out of eSports it's kind of like this similar in my mind blockchain we now know you saw a lot of investors get really hopped up on blockchain and they're like oh shoot how do we make money and I think that you know that's sort of happening in eSports as well yeah I feel like every sports deck has that graph where it shows the monetization per e sports fan and the demonisation of the major sports leagues and there's something being that over time another straight line to the monetization of the NFL like that'll just happen eventually I think we're seeing a lot of challenges to that and figuring out what kind of business models that are going to work I mean

obviously the NFL and the kind of Euroleague Euro Football League's have all made very successful audience expansions and figured out ways to monetize the audience eSports is completely digital and trying to figure out a way to do that and in a completely different economic system and economic age and we're yet to we've yet to find kind of business models that have been sustainable and scalable over time and there might be some short-term arbitrage I think Jason was pointing out that the brands are an interesting way to do that if you're a team and then the definition of eSports also kind of expanding not just from the competition but also on the twitch other things in terms of what gets streamed and what happens there on the audience side I think we're a little bit more excited about that if teams can figure out how to leverage live streaming or other types of content content delivery vehicles to aggregate audiences figure out interesting ways to interact with them and maybe monetize them on that side of things I think there's incredible opportunities to be

had there but as David said nothing's really kind of come to light yet though that would make us feel like we should be as bullish as some people out there are or as the larger media landscape might want to make it feel like eSports is what do you guys think about these these flash ads that essentially happening where you know apex did this with you know they wanted to promote you know the launch right and they got all the streamers for a couple you know couple days just just purely streaming apex and I see that as an opportunity for you sports teams but what do you guys think about that mechanism I mean you know riot did this as well you know we had why with drops yeah that's yeah yeah yeah like what do you what do you guys think about that marketing mechanism do you think it's actually sticky or do you think it's just flash-in-the-pan kind of thing where it's like it's really cool for a couple days or do you think it's actually gonna stick like do you think those users stick around I can tell you I don't play I don't play I

play balalaika ranked by the way it's really really fun game but I went back to playing cs:go and a lot of people claim to it's gonna be the csgo killer and if you look at csgo scheme numbers that's obviously not happening I'm a very biased love that game probably will until I die but I don't if you guys think about thought about that marketing mechanism which is like first of all it's it's genius marketing I mean is yes getting getting people to sample and to move communities like that but you know I think there's a lot of that depends on the game and then of course once you see 100 of those every month then it's not gonna feel quite so special so I yeah I I guess we have to see how it plays out but maybe not everyone has the budget to do that maybe that's the limiting a self limiting factor yeah I mean I think the reality is that on the PC console side that influencers and twitch is the numark right that's what drives all the traffic on that side and so to your point at least it got you in the door right so

top of funnel bad that's what and then bottom of finally it's always gonna come down to the product so yeah it's gonna come down to the product and then smart marketers are their job isn't just to engage you that first time which is great that Jason got a key and got to play a few hours of valor and I was symmetric toe it feels special when I got it I had it then I felt like I won something it was ridiculous I was like let's push back on the app that works right that's another it's another outlet yeah it is absolutely absolutely um so it's great that Jason kind of got in the door there but I was gonna be moved to these more games and service live operations models that's not the most important thing the most important thing is retaining them very engaging them over time so I think marketers are not only gonna have to kind of figure out their short-term arbitrage of finding the best hot upcoming influencer to to peddle their products are going to figure out how to do that looks like will be over time and as you're seeing like a lot of these streamers like yeah they'll play valor and or they'll play FX for a little bit and then they just go back to fortnight or whatever their

natural audience likes to likes to watch them play so I think there's gonna be a lot of intelligence that's gonna happen around figuring out what the audience wants and figure out how they partner with the best influencers over time to keep them engaged to keep them even deeper engaged with the product such that when you have a live update or something like that you automatically pull back in those influencers or pull back in the players to self-promote and get more content out in the ecosystem to keep to keep the flywheel going yeah you guys think do you think that's a statement on the quality of the game or is that more a statement on the size of the audience you know for tonight just has more players and so it's naturally you know it's a bigger fishing pond for the hunt for the for the influencers or are they saying actually fortnight's just a much better game and so that's i don't know I also think there's just kind of a concept of familiarity it's like yeah where your friends are yes

yeah that's what I was gonna say yeah yeah yeah any games King how many games can you have a royalty at once I mean I I can only read like two books at once I can't read ten no because I can't get my head around it but not that's what I've understood I don't know if you guys saw the comment from Reed Hastings on Netflix his biggest competition is for tonight you know because I think ultimately all the media companies realize that it's it's time of time available in the week and maybe that's you know that's one of them you know back to the one of the earlier questions it's that fight for share of mine share of time particularly now with this this generation that's so digital and so happy to be in and out multitasking you know okay I was gonna just it's gonna be a slight tangent of a

pivot here but you know kind of what you're hitting that is time in the week right we're all battling for that time and you know something I've thought of quite a bit about is not offending you guys have been to the console with the universal basic income but you know as we start to become more efficient you know less jobs might be needed and therefore the concept is you know what are we gonna do with people that maybe there isn't a job that is needed to be done and obviously you need to support those people and help them as you can od take creators content creators exactly what do you think they're gonna do and you know I I think there is a strong correlation and argument to be made that you know gaming will continue to rise as our leisure time continues to grow which is inevitable given that we're becoming more efficient more efficient it's not if you guys have talked about that at all it's a slight tangent but it hits on that topic of there's a finite number of time everyone once it and people are gonna spend it somewhere and people continuously just choose to weigh media versus one way media which is gaming versus Netflix or

games on crime because they can impact the actual outcome of what they're doing and doing so kind of an open-ended question if you glimpse into the future basically I think human human we you know we I think most people desire to perform and to have meaning of course that meaning and so you hide into that is this this idea of working and producing so I think if that's where gaming can provide more meaning and we we can build something beautiful that's digital and I have to give credit to Hilmar and CCP who told me about this concept he says you know the world needs gaming because as as the standard of living moves up for everyone the planet cannot support the industrial destruction needed to build all these fancy goods and everything else we need to be satisfied when we have a digital version of something because it doesn't have the same impact on planetary resources so I think that's kind of interesting if you can derive some hey

I've done something nice for another player or I designed some object that gets used content you know and the these can provide kind of purpose and meaning that have are very real and that can help because I think the problem do you universal basic income was gonna throw you beyond I don't know if it's all right if it's called hell but is that if it if it kind of strips you into a blob that sounds horrible so how do you can still contribute yeah that's that's very top of mind it's like you know meaning is everything purpose is everything like you need that as a person and you know how does gaming potentially play a big role into that when we know people having more time and how do you create purpose in gaming moving forward yeah yeah yeah I think the younger audience also has a very different take on it than even like the 20 year olds have listed like I would like I said I've been talking to people and we've been doing road blocks recently and I think

they've all kind of evolved from playing minecraft to playing playing roblox and then they've reached this point where they've loved roblox they love they love doing with their friends and they realize that they either need to kind of create games themselves or start streaming games and creating or posting content to youtube and now I think this younger generation has a very different concept of how they want to express themselves within games whereas I think we would all been fine playing playing Mario Kart or Goldeneye for for dozens of hours and doing that as a linear experience I think the younger audience thinks about it multi-directional and I think about it they think about socially in terms of of how they want to engage with their friends and how they want to create with them so that I think that's gonna create entirely different set of what games will be going forward so I think it's gonna be tying into the ubi tying into the creator economy how that passion economy whatever you want to define it in getting back to buzzwords there's just gonna be a lot of opportunities there maybe I could ask you guys about

one last controversial topic before I'm moving on to the last question and probably just you know as as a game studio trying to get you know trying to raise funds I think the one point that we've seen the most difference of opinion on is kind of our stance on work-life balance and so I actually don't believe in work-life balance but there are some people who strongly believe in it and so that seems like the most controversial thing that I've been kind of coming across and wondering what you guys if you guys have you know certainly there's an issue in the industry in terms of you know certain environments and stuff like that but wondering if you guys have an opinion on that well I think there's probably multiple things in what you were commenting on there I mean there's a toxic workplaces which it's not just work-life balance I mean there's like people not being respected properly as individuals and so I but I think more CLEP balance if I'm

talking about pure productivity I mean if I think about my my own I'm I'm I'm not highly disciplined I'm I have bursts of incredible productivity but very inconsistently so I can't do work-life balance I have to kind of and I'm very lucky now in the role that I'm in that I can just work weird hours at night when I might be productive and you know not maybe not work the next day and so I think everyone has a slightly different work format so it sounds amazing when somebody says we are going to work from 9:00 to 5:00 there is no crunch you know everything's highly ordered and if you can hire employees that can work in that fashion and be productive and you can still meet your your production goals and then hit the economic output that's necessary and that sounds amazing personally it would never work for me because I'm just not organized personally like that but I believe they can't exist but I nor do I believe someone show obviously be you know chained to a desk I mean in the early days I mean when I first came to the UK

literally people were like all they could do and they couldn't like leave their office the the bosses like drove Ferraris and they hired underpaid people that just they made him work every day of the week and is like okay that's like modern-day slavery so I mean that's obviously not okay so I like to hear how founders articulate their workplace how that's gonna work but you want highly motivated people and I don't know that I have a straight answer for that hopefully not that provides some color but I know great points yeah I mean I think was so it's slightly different take on it right you know it is you know I I love structure and that's probably just because of you know my engineering background like I love you know I've got my 12 hour block I'm going to crush it and then I am done right and please do not call me do not text me I'm hanging out with my wife and having a great time you know and like I like this separation of even like you know during coab it was

really hard for me personally working from home because I like to separate work and home and just kind of mentally that five minute drive to my office and then five minute drive back it's like my transition time where I get to blare some music and just you know change change modes entirely I also would say you know there is a huge part for a Sabbath like taking a Sabbath there's a reason you need to take a Sabbath and unplugging from work is you know it's very topical for people to take you know a break one day during the week and so I try to do that on Sundays just not work I don't always do that but I try to and so you know for you is starting to start up it's very easy to get burnt out you know all three of us on this call have actually you know launched funds which are very very similar to launching a start-up you know getting your crowling and tons of investors I always joke with my founders saying hey look I understand what it's like to pitch for cap I'm just usually axing asking for more zeros on the end not always some of our

founders are going on to raise probably more money than I ever will that's fantastic I'm so so stoked for them but you know in that process I wish I had done a little bit better of separating my work in my life we're integrated almost too much and you start to tie a little bit too much if I think your value and purpose to your work which can become you know dangerous for you personally yes especially when you're not successful especially when you fail which which happens all the time and my wife has had it picked me up many times and I've failed and encouraged me so I think we've all been there so yeah I agree with Jason I think there's like the illusion of having or achieving balance is yeah it's more of an illusion than it is a reality in the games industry particularly I think as we move from more products that have a specific launch date and therefore you need to crunch to get to that launch date that's historically been the way that a lot of these studios have

operated to more live a live operations and service based models I think the studio's especially the smart studio leadership for realizing that crunch is not sustainable if you want to keep your best talent of employees for years that again can support a game or a franchise or a set of games that can retain audiences for years you want to keep the talent around and therefore you can't be burning them out with 80 100 hour weeks you need to keep them motivated keep them give them the tools they need to be creative give them the tools they need to feel productive if their most productive at 2:00 a.m. versus at the most prepped of a 10:00 a.m. in the office I think Cove it has also been interesting because a lot of us are working from home we're trying to figure out what what's what's happened most the teams that I've talked to are actually performing and feeling fairly productive in the remote environment which is I think interesting and again makes me feel very fortunate to be in the gaming industry that's probably ahead of the curve in terms of embracing collaborative technologies and remote technologies oh the communication tools

necessary for for this type of development how that evolves over time I think will be interesting especially with globalization if you're working with team in Asia or South America and figuring out when you need to be online I think that will stretch us to a different extent maybe but overall like I think the games industry is moving to a healthier place over time and that's that gives me some hope in general I think each of you have actually touched on a very interesting aspect of work-life balance issues so David you talked about like the incentive structure right so it's like said you've got like the executives that the game companies or the founders it's like hey you guys kill yourselves make me rich hope the days are gone there's more equity sharing and stock are cheaper but let's kill yourself and make yourself rich and me too and then Jason you're talking about the importance of yeah

sure you can work really hard whether it's you know whether it's 12 hours or 16 hours but having some points of rest or or a break and then you know to what degree do you separate your work from your life or do you integrate it and you know yeah I think you you want some form of separation I I personally like to integrate my work and my and then grab your point about situational context because I do think that yes like if you are there's a difference I think between the zero to one problem where you're trying to create a new game trying to find product market fit which could get very intense relative to you you know a very predictable consistent content cadence around a live operating model so then you know that kind of shifts the requirement for whether you need a lot of a lot of work and potentially unbalanced sort of work-life balance or not but yeah yeah definitely you know not to go into that and too much and open up more of a can of worms but so maybe we can wrap this up with

our last question around what are the big future trends in gaming what should we expect in the short term or long term feature in gaming market expansion into new - new demographics definitely UGC sounds like we we need a new a new customer relationship beyond the kind of private data snooping model that goes and you know it's kind of despite my my I I always love new technology so I'm always super hopeful I'm an eternal optimist so I'm hopeful that Apple will solve the AR thing and make it somehow magical and we all have some kind of new fun piece of kit that we all want to buy an experience and it transforms our our our digital life but those are some some

vectors that are that are in my head I think I would also just add I think you're gonna see the pairing of gaming giants and technology giants maybe in a new way that maybe it's not the form of an acquisition but it will most be like strategic alliance that it's like you know roblox and Microsoft and like epic and you know AWS you know like I think it's it's really interesting it's you you go towards this Metaverse you need the ability to operate the Metaverse but then you also need the Metaverse to be created and neither of them have totally in my opinion the ability to do that and so that's something I think I think it's gonna be very fascinating to watch our next decade is you ever see a scenario where an epic gets bought out by one of these technology giants I have no idea like I think it's unlikely given the purchase prices getting so high but I think that's gonna be really interesting to watch and see kind of how people team up and pair off and it's gonna be kind of like school kids that clicks you know

like going off to each other so I think that's interesting yeah I was a second that one I think everybody's been waiting for platform shifts so David said assumed 5 years ago that VR was gonna be the next big platform and everybody got excited about that I'm I was using a quest for hours yesterday loved it but clearly hasn't expanded to a mass market experience for for a large portion of people that love to game the could get there eventually I'm also hoping that Apple in the next few years releases something that that blows our mind on on the AR front and unlocks a new set of digital experience but if a platform change isn't gonna happen I think an ecosystem change could so with Jason's pointing to in terms of like are you aligning to the Amazon Amazon ecosystem in terms of how they might potentially integrate a game engine with their with the twitch service over time or something more like Apple which is which is more like a walled garden or Google which is more open or Sony and Microsoft where

whatever they build I feel like they're all gonna have these little fiefdom is over time they're gonna have different incentives for developers to partner with them over time and that's gonna be very challenging for individual and small developers to figure out how to align themselves with all those powers and how those powers are going to help them grow and attract their audiences over time so I think there's just a pitch for VCS I think we are gonna see that first because we're talking to all those all those platform holders all those ecosystem leaders and we're gonna understand it from the perspective of all of our portfolio companies and therefore might be able to help navigate our portfolio companies to the best to the best possible situation for them over time but it is gonna be gonna be challenging but exciting because I think it is gonna be a lot of funding but the success criteria for each of those different outcomes can be different okay so maybe a final question underneath

this topic is - because Jason you you brought the metaphor so what is the when does it get here you know what is the metaphor so I guess all right a few top things that are really like topical for being a Metaverse it's something that's persistent it's a you know fully functioning own economy is something I think it's important it kind of spans both physical and digital those are things that are really important in the Metaverse actually everyone should go read snow crash no I first kind of exploring this topic fascinating by neil students and really interesting I think I'll start there that's what I think the Metaverse is and who who does it I mean epic and roblox are probably the best positioned in my opinion to attempt it right now given the way that you see users interacting on those platforms you could argue minecraft - but no you

could say GTA and we by the way we totally missed a super controversial topic on GTA somebody to ask me did a lot of the people that you know big distinction between protesters and looters here right but you know was looting more prominent and trained by GTA somebody asked me that question recently I didn't really know how to respond to that question would be frank with you living art imitates life yeah looting was invented a long time ago yeah and I think that I think that's fair Vikings were early looters and now they make clash of clans I mean you know the Vikings man yeah it's yeah it's interesting i I think that those are probably the best positioned groups to go after the metaphors right now I know what do you guys think yeah I think in the short term I think defining what is a game and what is digital experience is gonna be very interesting if you look at

the four night concerts or the movies that I'm now showing I think they're even doing a like a black lives matter something like that protests were presentation on the fort night platform coming up so like that's incredibly exciting is a way to leverage their power and they leverage their audience but I think we're going to see a lot of music companies try to figure out how to build the best digital experiences and present them to an audience I mean while the game companies are gonna contain innovate so there's gonna be a lot of people kind of aiming towards that Metaverse concept what happens is that a personal expression of you or is it a role-playing expression I've been bringing up GTA 5 and GTA 5 mods it's very interesting to see what's happening in that space and there's a lot of role-playing games that are happening on all the big kind of mmo's right now so what that looks like over time I still it's hard for me to define obviously reading sci-fi is a great way to open up your mind expand and think

about they think about what's going to happen there but smart people are gonna continue to innovate that way I think games are gonna be continued to be in the driver's seat I think the amount of verses is what people from outside the games industry call the games industry right yeah and my philosophy is if if it wasn't on Star Trek it's just simply not going to happen so the medic if the Metaverse if the metaphorce is the holodeck then I believe it's it's possible and it's on its way but otherwise I'm not there yeah can we expand it to Ender's Game two well it's in there and that whole series we have any Ender's Game fans on here but that's interesting Star Trek so Star Trek's the North Star we're shooting after day with that that's whatever you said I think look I think all the way from back when the Motorola invented the flip phone I think you can see that you know and now we're doing zoom calls right so it's it's all it's all whoever

those authors were they were writing the future and that's where every every kind of engineer that came through school so I've got to crack that I've seen it on Star Trek how do we do it so we need to we need to all study all the Star Trek episodes see what technology hasn't actually come to fruition yet we're all gonna invest in that together that's that's our next billion bill right yeah that's it that's it there have been crazier investment processes probably than that I'll be honest but uh sound strategy like it I like it Joe I should have a question for you for us to maybe it's actually what do you think you would you would hope would be a little different for games focused VC's I mean you're a founder in this sort of flipped it back on you what's what's something you're hoping for that you think would change the next couple years or something you think we could be doing better I actually think that from my perspective just more transparency in terms of like documenting the thinking documenting

your process is just like having more online so I have this you know I I believe in this concept of kind of personal branding as well as organizational branding and so kind of similar to in like there are certain firms like and effects that I think are starting to move in this direction where they're just putting a lot on line a lot of their thoughts online and I think that that that would be very helpful just so that is you know as starts are looking for investors that it really will know you really well and there there's gonna be a lot of information readily available to really understand who you are the philosophies approach all that kind of stuff I think that would be helpful and how much of that probably jumping back into a controversial statement but how much is that do you think is authentic versus more just literal branding because I feel like all of us are pretty authentic people but I think when we think about projecting ourselves into that space like the winners in that space are people that

are super self promotional probably there's a lot of jokes about VC twitter for a reason because that's that's how people kind of get get recognized and get content I think that we want to be more authentic in terms of that but maybe social platforms aren't the best way to do it so maybe Jacob is there a better way for us to express ourselves there I actually would hope for a world where we actually get to see like real world deals or presentations or like even like you know when you're coming up with a term sheet like I would even like hope for an investor like with us as you know if you know starting a company and if we're getting investment where we could actually film us talking to our lawyers and putting that on with other people sorry that's a DD constructor of gaming BC that's great but yeah that would be my hope Jason okay Joey you

should sell that to Netflix that sounds like an interesting Silicon Valley episode yeah you know I honestly it's super interesting and actually you can't just watch the like on Val leave and that answers most of it I know it's that's sure then you'd hope his HBO not Netflix but nevertheless he's still painfully close to the mark yeah all right well on that note I think that's it so maybe do you guys have any final message for our audience yeah you know I think it'd be great to hear that how if there are entrepreneurs out there that are interested in contacting you how would they get in touch with you or if you're gonna be at a digital conference or something how they can see you guys yeah I mean well there's I mean of course if you the best way is through a credible link because there was a lot of noise I try to explain to people it's not we're not trying to like be difficult or a non-transparent it's just the amount of noise separating signal

from noise is really tough so one way to do that is a credible referral but I mean the the usual ways of LinkedIn and you know there are all kinds of conferences and Deconstructor of fun and you know you can hit up our website London VP comm and see things but I guess what I want to encourage the entrepreneurs to understand is that it is it is a long journey that's you know filled with ups and downs so they there has to be a tenacity to accept the amount of and failure is a terrible word it's the it's the learning moments of how you have to have cause and effect you break something to understand how to fix it and you build yourself up and but you really I think that's also a journey together with the investors so ideally you're with investors that of course you respect but you enjoy and that will work with you on that and well you know collectively help pick you up and and help you find the path and that's that's

what I'm looking forward to that's why what I'm doing and what I enjoy is sharing my knowledge with people and that keeps me learning because they're bringing new things to the party that's why I feel so excited about what I get to do and I do it in a domain that I spend my whole life and I love that kind of continuous circle so yeah just you know want to be encouraging but realistic that's that's what I'm trying to message Jason okay yeah I would just you know completely agree and you know would also just encourage you guys we've we've passed on founders multiple times have just kept coming back to us and then we actually invested so as an encouragement it's never final and over and you know what we try to do in those situations if we think there's potential and say hey these are the things that are missing come back to us when maybe this is this is complete or finished and they have into the credit of some founders they've been very persistent and one of them literally made us invest

in them because they did everything we said and they kind of made this presentation he then said you said to do all these 10 things we did him and we're like you're right and so I got to put my money where my mouth is and so I would encourage you guys there you know you can reach us either through our portfolio I talked to a baby a company in our portfolio that does something that's tangential to what you guys are doing you know that's a great way to come into our network or just reach out to us directly on LinkedIn we do get a lot of people reaching out to us on LinkedIn and email or go through our website convoy ventures con whatever you see so yeah excited to hear from you guys and you know I don't think you go wrong if you apply to all three of us too so go for it yeah yeah since similar echoes you find us on any other social media sites LinkedIn our own website I think as far as like final words of encouragement messaging is like we are

investors from your eventual capital investors and venture capital isn't the right fit for every business and every games business particularly so like just just because we are not interested in a particular idea or a particular pitch doesn't mean that you could be wildly successful in your own definition of success I think it's also hard because you feel like games is a mix of arts entertainment people often feel like we're making a judgment on the creation of their art which is which is difficult because there's a subjective layer of opinion there so like there are games companies that come to me and pitch a game and I'm like I would play that game for hours please make it as soon as possible like great you do want to invest I'm like absolutely not so it's very hard why you might not be a good fit for venture capital and I may be a good fit for the types of business small types of returns that we ourselves are seeking as investors but keep in mind like we're all just huge game fans and I think we all want kind of a rising tide

for the industry and we're just trying to partner with the best teams that fit our criteria both in the learning and in the learning cycle as David describing we like to learn with our founders and industries and and sub segments and subgenres that are really exciting and then in terms of just the type of businesses they're going after we think our highly scalable likely to create a massive return for both us the founders and and our investors I think that's the stuff that really gets us excited and we think there's never been a better time there's more mass market opportunities for for game companies to see now and today than there was ten years ago and likely there will be even more opportunities five years from now than there are today so I think we're just on a continual upswing hopefully and that will advantage every founder that's working in the industry right well thank you very much guys for your time I really appreciated this conversation with super-interesting and yeah that's that's basically it thank you very much

thank you thanks Jim hi everyone good seal [Applause] [Music] [Music]