Revolutionizing Youth Online Safety in Gaming with k-ID CEO Kieran Donovan

hey folks and welcome to the deconstructor of fun podcast I'm your host Michigan katkov and in this episode I'm joined by two fantastic guests returning guests more inspired lens partner at light speed adventures and Kieran Donovan founder of kid now in this podcast we'll first dive into kieran's diverse career Journey from a screenwriter to a lawyer actually from a lawyer to a screenwriter to back to a lawyer and now a very successful startup founder just 10 months in uh we're going to learn about what is kid uh a pioneering platform for creating safe online gaming experiences for Youth and of course if you look at the uh the title of this podcast they raised 51 million in just in nine months so very interesting Journey uh in this podcast we will have the discussion that cover funding stages of a startup the complexities of gaming regulation the critical importance of building a robust solution for youth Online safety what you will walk out of this is

hopefully insights into Venture Capital Dynamics the Strategic decision that lead to attracting top tier investors like light speed Ventures a16z Convoy and turta all among investors in kid now if you like this podcast I suggest you subscribe to what to this podcast whatever platform you're using um I also suggest that you subscribe to our newsletter Link in the uh description below and and leave a comment or join the conversation on the deconstructor of fun slack Channel along with about 3,000 game industry professionals you can access the the slack Channel by going to deconstructor fund.com and I'm sure you'll find the uh the link somewhere there but without further Ado ladies and gentlemen Kieran Donovan and morit buyer L you've heard of heroic Labs by now and we keep talking about them because in

today's mature Market you need every Edge to be successful rather than spending those precious company dollars on building game Tech focus on building your game and shipping it get into your players hands faster and grow your community heroic Labs is Battle tested partner and friend of the podcast their Tech enables you to be flexible creative and scale for Success heroic Labs has your Tech stack covered whether you're looking for a worldclass backend game server an amazing game development framework Fantastic live option tooling our reliable Mass scalability heroic clouds has solutions for all of these challenges and it's not just us a deconstructor of fun praising heroic Labs the company works with some of the world's biggest Publishers on many of the Beloved games focus on your game save a big chunk of cheese and avoid Tech risks with heroic [Music] Labs hello and welcome to the podcast we

got two fantastic guests as always so let's start with the uh with the returning guest uh Mr morit buyer lens partner at light speed Ventures Moritz good night I believe it's pretty late with you right now it is I apologize in advance if I make even less sense than usual well first of all congratulations on your newborn and this should be normal for you to to be up at at crazy hours so we don't feel too bad about it's just a part of the gig and um and we have another very very interesting guest so Kieran Donan I'm just going to go quickly through your resume because it's very interesting Before I Let You Go you start so you're an Aussie that started as a screen Rider in New York then you were a lawyer in Sydney London Hong Kong became a partner at lawyer company then you founded a startup which is currently in Singapore where you're right now uh and 9 months into your startup you had three funding rounds

with total funding of $51 million seems like you've had three different careers in a short span of time when I'm looking at the video you look like you you're about 27 28 uh a bit of a Wonder child so Kieran it's a pleasure welcome to the podcast great to be here that's the shortest version of of that story well well uh well before we jump in and talk about kid give me a little bit of a longer version yeah so you're right I've been a lawyer my my whole career um for for the last 14 years and and I had a little bit of a side quest before that where uh after I finished law school I decided that I didn't want to be a lawyer um and so after interning at a number of law firms I decided I would uh jump ship fly to the US and uh and live the dream writing for TV and film so uh there was a there was a little bit of that by the end of a year I'd run out of money and so I needed to call the uh the law firms back up and ask for a job again

and and so kicked off the legal Journey um so yeah I've done an orbit of the planet as a as a lawyer and then that naturally LED in to kid which is what I'm doing now so being a lawyer naturally let into startups that's not a natural progression just like a screenwriter to a lawyer is also not an maybe it is you're kind of like writing fiction making others believe it that sounds like what lawyers sometimes do there's definitely creative elements to it I I'd say it feels like there's been that yeah that that consistent thread throughout my whole career which is uh solving creative problems yeah okay so we're here to talk about K kid and you just raised your series a so how large was the series a uh it's just over 45 million that's a serious serious a so for folks listening to this more it's if I correct me if I'm wrong the way it goes is you have a preed sometimes early on which it means that you have a good team you're working on something very interesting you get investors to put in some money so you

can focus fully on the idea that you're working on then you have the seed round which is you've built something that has you know early promise it could be a prototype it could be even in some closed markets it's in testing it's showing traction that you're heading towards that something interesting and you get a funding and then you get series a which means you have serious traction and you're giving money to fully attack the market am I correct to kind of summarize it this way I think it sounds good I mean the way we think about the series a versus this see this it's no longer just a team and a concept but there are these first signals of product Market fit and so I think in the case of kid and we'll get into that um there's been quite significant traction even even though since I believe the preced is only about 10 months ago now um you know to kieran's defense he was planning to rise maybe half the round uh when this all kicked off and um so this

is this is not this is not him getting greedy or or telling the story this is almost uh investors all wanting a piece of the pie and so that a big function of that was also having two uh uh firms who are really digging into the the serious a and and contributing equally the other investor that we should name is andr Horowitz um who who shouldered this series a together with us and there's also participation from other well-known gaming funds including Convoy and terta and and strategic investors here awesome so light speed and a6c that's a that's a mega win and mega pressure that you're putting yourself on because now you're on that1 billion doll train that you need to uh so so let's talk about let's talk about kid like what is it first and then I'm going to talk about what makes you such an amazing fundraiser so let's start off with kyd what why what what

made you do it just wherever you want to which point ever you want to start up yeah so I I do say that there's this Common Thread throughout my career because it did feel like it was this natural extension of what I was doing as an attorney that then let into kid and I was doing a ton of work for for game Publishers um globally on how do you launch a game in 100 countries or 150 countries um when you've got loot boxes and chat and you've got advertising you've got all these different functions and features and you need to to localize it in different ways around the world that's a a hugely complex thing to do and as you can see because you just keep reading about it every day there's more and more complexity being at it every day so I'd seen that I'd seen the increasing level of complexity and so it felt like a couple years ago that the there was an opportunity for someone to skate where the puck was going and build an infrastructure that would deliver the an answers that were being provided by

lawyers and Engineers manually um traditionally and there was an opportunity to build something pretty special so that that's sort of like it rolled very much as a natural extension of what I was already um helping game Publishers with and when you see the opportunity to build one common framework for everyone and and solve a lot of challenges at the same time it's a really compelling thing eventually became so compelling that you know I I couldn't quite convince myself that uh that staying in law was the right idea and that I should uh should go and build it so there was a market demand and you saw it in your day-to-day job and you saw that you can build a scalable solution to tackle this market demand right yeah that's exactly right those are just like hardcore motivations to uh to solve this problem it it was seeing the opportunity but also seeing the two different versions of of the future you know one of them was I had a great career uh L

The Firm I was working out great clients love doing all the work with with game Publishers and so I was very happy continuing to do that but as an industry the risk was that everyone was going to try and solve these problems in a different way and so from a user experience you think about like I'm a I'm I'm a parent you know for me as uh with my kids signing up to to online games me going through like family experiences all of that I don't want to deal with 40 different versions of that or 100 different versions of that every time that you know I'm signing up or my my kids are signing up what I want is is one to go through one process like that's the best user experience you can have um but if I was kind of to continue doing what I was doing then there was the risk that that everyone would try and reinvent the wheel over and over and over again when it came to youth online to try and deal with all these challenging questions but there was an alternate version of the future whereas someone looked a few years ahead and went okay well what if we built infrastructure

that would deliver all of the answers that are uh required when you're dealing with youth coming into any online platform particularly gaming and we do that for everyone all at once globally and that vision of the future means there's a consistent unified user experience it means you don't need to go through verification over and over and over again it means you can centrally manage games it's just a way better vision of the future it's it's a much more compelling think just as a as a dad um and so you know you wake up one day and you think let's do it let's build it I mean we we can relate sure on this on this podcast like your priorities change quite a bit at least with most people when they have kids um how about this part as a parent starting a startup how did you you know discuss that with your because you're in a ripe age like I said 26 but you can add 10 to that and um and you have a you

have a partner that you probably have to discuss these things because startup is not a solo Journey you have to have the uh the uh the backup at home how did you go through that decision cuz it's a lot of work and the ups and downs of your company are your emotional ups and downs at least that was my experience I'm sure you're much more mature and that won't affect you in that same way so so how did you how did you get make that call this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps flyer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into Data driven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they interact with your app app sler where your apps potentially meets

performance I the the the reaction from my wife was um she thought this was a a really interesting side hustle and then it hit that inflection point particularly when we raised our precede round that it suddenly occurred to her that I was about to uh turn my back on my career and go and throw it all in on the on the startup which was definitely an interesting conversation and I can tell you that that uh I was in the US um I was traveling I was pitching VCS we we raised Al um preed check and within the space of 3 days I had resigned from the firm and was on the journey and I called my wife at some point in those 3 days to tell her about the decision that I was about to make and I said oh you know we we can take our time thinking about it and then 24 hours later we were on the phone again and I said I just I have to do

this I have to do this I can't not do it um and I probably should have waited until I was back in Singapore to actually have that conversation in person then do it remotely but uh to her credit she had seen how excited I was getting and how passionate I was getting working on this um over over the prior year and she'd seen all the the late nights the early mornings everything that was being built and and all the I think the momentum she could see that was building and that I just have my spark back that that was she she could see that this was something that this was not work this was something that was more than that and your your founding team it's it's you do you have your co-founders or like what what did the uh the early stages look like and then I have some questions for morence so the initial uh founding uh team was myself and and Timothy Mah who's um head of the

Privacy team at at tensan um so obviously one of the biggest game Publishers in the world and he and I have been buddies for almost a decade we worked together for a long long time and we were out go- cutting One Night in in between rounds uh we've been talking about the complexity of kids regulation and everything that was happening and you know gosh it seems like someone should try and solve this like this is this is something that's really expensive and challenging and we just looked at each other and we're hyper competitive so you know we were going round and we were racing these these go-karts and uh and within fractions of a second of each other and then in between rounds we would have this sidebar talking about what the world could look like if someone built this technology and by the end of the night um in Tim one and he reminds me of that all the time that uh we we should do this we should we should give it a give it a go and then spent 6 months uh 6 months ideating on it um and as part of that Journey we we brought in

co-founders who filled a a specific Gap in our knowledge one was trust and safety you can't do kids online without trust and safety and so um Jeff had been uh an early hir at Google in 2003 had had built out trust and safety in the very early days before it was called trust and safety and then did the same thing of Facebook um and then we had Julian who joined who had run a game publisher he he'd been at take to interactive so between us we had all these different skill sets and yet the ven diagrams like connected in the Middle where we had all orbited the kid issue at some point that's awesome so it's it's like this is the maturity part because like normally the way it happens is you have that emotional yes and then you start pitching and and going you know and then you know encountering the problems but what you did is you had that emotional yes super excitement but then you took half a year of really not only ideating but Planning and Building building the core team before starting

to get the traction so you didn't have to kind of you know build the first part of the plane while while jumping off so that's a it's a it's a very important learning experience for anybody who's planning to do a startup is just when you get that Rush Hold on plan you know really think about it make your cord team solid and then go pitching because you can only P make the first impression the first pitch once so um yeah totally that makes sense moris I wanted to ask you like um you know a a ripe age of a Founder a good founding team like how do you how do you make investments decisions in in series a and also does an age of a Founder what type of a role does it play because you have invested in companies where the founders were 20 something probably 30 something probably 40 there's there might be stats I've seen some stats with uh with the founders age and correlation to success and and like H how does this play out it's an interesting topic we actually looked I think about a year

ago at um just statistical profiles of successful Founders in multi-billion dollar companies across the different domains that we cover in uh as part of our consumer sector including gaming and and entertainment but also other domains um you know like Commerce marketplaces and Creator economy and I believe that for gaming and entertainment the median age of what made uh multi-billion outcome was actually the lowest it was in the high high 20s on average so if anything in gaming excuse younger I don't think about it much um funny enough I only found out about the ages as part of the confirmatory legal diligence so it's not like we dig into this stuff like we might be 10 years off sometimes by by perception and I think that's totally fine um it matters maybe a little bit more for the studios at

least that's what I tell myself um I think on average the founders I've been backing are standout designers and producers on the studio side that have a demonstrated track record of pretty scaled commercial success and that's how I've been picking my studio teams as as you know and as others maybe have observed but I think for something that's more akin to a platform a tech technology company that's trying to disrupt the status quo like this this investment here kid Rhymes a lot more with what is a traditional V VC opportunity and you know software SAS software and so I think on average you you'll probably skew a little bit younger in in the 20s and 30s rather than than backing an experienced designer or producer who's who's in their 40s um but frankly we don't think about H too much so what what was the main driver here it was

commercial attraction it was which Publishers were were interested here how many of them and also then the caliber of the individual contracts the scale of the the contracts and how quickly they came together really from I think zero million AR or contracted AR just maybe even 6 months ago um to where things are standing now I'll let Kieran decide how much he wants to disclose and any names he wants mention there or maybe maybe that's reserved for a later podcast but um yeah I mean while this is it's it's beautiful to find something that also does good and and I think that makes this investment extra special I don't want to I don't want to beat around the bush like we're we're we're not investing because we feel good about this we we get excited and especially at the at the scale here because of of the commercial attraction with the the Publishers so I

think probably should talk a little bit about that too and and and why this Syndicate builds such conviction at this point in time so what I was trying to kind of get through more is is there's a lot of uh a lot of notion of of how much intangible elements there are when when making an investment decision and people are like well I didn't get invested because X Y and Z but you're basically saying that really it's all about the traction it's all about the the metric so we don't look at other elements that are that are like of course you look at the background of the person and the track record and so forth but but you don't look that much on on the demographic side you look at the the traction elements right I would say for serus a I mean when we do these early stage investments in seed or um if we're talking about a game Studio that's still pre-launch we're basically using Team Caliber pedigree um where they've worked but more

importantly also what roles they've really held at certain companies at certain games we use those as a proxy to predict future attraction and and and and maybe outsmart other investors who are who are not going as deep on the diligence on the founding team but when it comes to a series a or series B for platform or technology company you usually well at a point where this is no longer just a b on the team the team continues to be important because you know frankly at a at a serious a it's still primarily a bet on the capabilities of the founding team like when when K goes public in 5 years like what what what are the chances that it looks materially different from how it looks today or how it looked in the pitch pretty high right so so first and foremost we still need to find people who can navigate the inevitable probably two or three heavy p that will happen even

in the next 5 years but for for round like this to come together and you know more or less double in size during the the process of the race and like for all these Dynamics to happen that's usually a function of heart metrics and and traction and so when we when we look at rounds of this size especially for a platformer technology company it really rhymes with traditional VC investing it's less speculative it's um it's pretty um mechanical and I think also an important Point here if you visit the kid website I think this will look like you know a nice good to have maybe bit cute tool for parents their kids their teens um to really design at appropriate gaming and online experiences there is another side

to this which I think is actually the driver of the traction is this is also a really important tool for all Publishers to have right on on on their side and there's there's a few things that changed in the market here as well is if you look back just two years ago pre 2022 I think there were Collective $200 million in fines or so paid for violating h roate gaming experiences and if you look at even just 23 and after we're talking about more than 2 billion so Ju Just the last two years were 10x in in fees and violations then then up to that time um and so there's clearly something changing in the market The Regulators are coming down on triaa Publishers epic games has been in in the use specifically I think with now over a billion and a half and finds I mean I'm

sure Kieran has all these numbers at the top of his head but from a publisher perspective there's also immense pressure and more pressure than there ever was to get these important topics right and so they're looking at kid they're seeing a solution that um not only replaces what is currently done manually idiosyncratically for every publisher and in some cases for small Studios and midsize studos they can't even afford to have that five person legal team or however that looks on average they certainly also can't afford to make mistakes they can't keep up with the 200 countries in which their game is published which has have you know daily weekly changing regulations of what even constitutes youth there's different understandings of of what what age is the right uh cut off for certain things where does voice chat need to be stand standered disabled enabled um and if people want to dig in

I think the kid website has has reports that just show the complexity and also how quickly this this landscape is changing all the time so no one can afford to track all that no one can afford to make mistakes especially the big ones so to have one technology that keeps track of it that enables you to do it um and interestingly because this is not only a unique team and a unique Tech it's also a unique legal setup um that can provide uh Publishers even a safe harbor um and and Kieran should should talk to that because he's really the expert here um it's first and foremost a lecture in how powerful it is to have a real solution for a real problem if you know if like there's a lot of these founder pitch templates that start with okay describe what your company do what's the what's the problem you're solving what's the solution this therefore reason right the the the the

reason this is getting the funding is because it has the traction and the reason it has the traction is because it really solves a problem there's really a big problem and there's really a smart solution here and that's probably like the one takeaway from a from a you know how to raise or how to pitch perspective that this just Nails spot on step into the future of game monetization with exola exola empowers developers and Publishers to market sell connect and optimize their games globally from payment solution to a full suit of tools designed to grow your game's Revenue while fostering a lawyer player base exola is your game's gateway to worldwide success with exola the world is your playground visit exa.com today and find all the solutions that will help you to power your games into success everywhere yeah thank you Morris that's that's really thorough and and I think

like correct me if I'm wrong but I think that Kieran when you were first pitching this this kind of came from Left Field to a lot of investors like they they maybe didn't think that because there's not a lot of companies that are doing the same because normally you get the pitches that are like Hey we're making the next mobile and the next this next that and you kind of put it it into into the the existing lockers of your understanding but this is coming a little bit out of left field like you know of the priv privacy regulation you know all the elements but now the founder is telling you something very unique something that only you would know about the market because you have been working as a lawyer there and you can talk about the numbers you can talk about the size of the the problem and the size of the opportunity that you're solving and then suddenly you see those like clicking and you become that unique person who's nobody else is pitching this and it makes all the sense and that's how you got the traction like am I kind of interpreting it correctly yeah absolutely uh I think uh at least initially VCS were very

confused about why a lawyer was pitching them uh on a on a startup um and I think that was sort of the the initial gut reaction the second one was well you have so much conviction that you're willing to step away from partnership at a at a really successful law firm with a great practice and go and do this and place this on yourself uh and the third thing was I kept hearing over and over again so this isn't AI uh this which which gave us I got I got I did get a lot of questions which were so tell us how AI either tell us how AI is part of this or tell us how AI is going to disrupt this um what is this a problem that could be solved with AI and the great thing about a legal

problem where the solution to moritz's point that clients that Publishers are looking for is not just a technical solution but something that actually solves for the regulatory risk that big penalty because they can go and build these things um now yes it's hard to keep up toate and it's it's better to have someone solely focused on it but in theory and historically that's what they've done so you really have to solve the actual problem which is can I go to market in this country with my game expand to a youth audience or a teen audience and I'm not going to be taking on this huge amount of risk that you're reading about every day in uh in the media where there's huge fines being handed down or or bans or all sorts of things that are being talked about and can you talk a little bit about the value proposition of kid because we we talk now a lot about the publish aspect so there's a very clear value

proposition there Publishers are essentially this is an insurance for Publishers and and almost like you know not even an insurance it's it's just it's it's how you should operate when you're expanding especially across demographics and Geographics but what is the value proposition for the kids for the parents like how do you think about that because you kind of have to get both on board yes Publishers will need this but you also need the people ble to sign up because this is a service where you create your ID and by creating that ID it's if I understand correctly the kids or the parents create that ID for kids and then they use that ID across different games so you have to have the consumers actually wanting to do this otherwise it's not enough that the just Publishers want to have this absolutely and there's a whole range of reasons that we've worked pretty hard on to to make it compelling speed OB ly crossplatform the ability to

manage things centrally that are that are really fundamental but here's the Crux of it 90% of the internet today is predicated on the basis that kids aren't there which is why you see over and over again that popup that says I confirm I'm over 13 and every kid knows exactly what to do when they see it every kid knows exactly what to do when they are asked to enter their data birth and this was a stat that I I didn't know until recently which is some of the research is show shown that in in more than 60% of cases kids are lying about their age to go online with the help of their parents uh and that's not because it's an experience or a space where the the kid shouldn't be it's because they want to be social with their friends they want to game with their friends they want to you know build their community and their identity online in a particular space uh where their friends are and yet the first thing that they experience as a pop-up saying I confirm I'm over 13 and the crazy part of that about that

is that what the byproduct of of that level of the internet is we're teaching kids from a younger and younger age to lie that's their first interaction with the internet which is crazy right like okay welcome to the internet you can do all these things and by the way in order to do it you're going to have to lie um and what we unlock is the ability to engage that youth audience that 11-year-old that 9-year-old that's going online or that 15-year-old in some countries when they're going online you don't as a platform need to say this is too risky and too complex and therefore I'm going to say this is 13 and up or this is 16 and up you can say no I'm going to welcome the entire audience including the youth audience as part of this and you as a as a 9-year-old as 11-year-old as 15-year-old going on and saying like great okay this platform respects me for who I am and where I am and now I can go online and I can build

my community I can build my identity online and I'm not forced to to become invisible because one of the big risks is and we've seen this which is once you go through that gate if the platform discovers that you're under the age of 13 they have to kill your account that could be years worth of progress or Identity or social um credit that you built up online with your friends gone and it's crazy that there isn't an alternative today and that's that's what kid the key value proposition is that is well you shouldn't live in fear that as soon as you get discovered about for who you are that your your online uh your your account your online identity is all of a sudden gone um there should be a space where where you can actually be who you are and if you're a kid you're you're able to build a community with other kids um you're not forced into a world where you're speaking with strangers who could be you know three or four times your age on the other side of

the planet um but that's that's the way the world works today and so we think there should be a better way and and how is the kid like how does it work in practice like can you can you walk us through the uh the funnel yeah so if you are a Game Dev today and you want to launch a game in 100 countries you log on to the kid developer portal you select which markets you want to launch in what platforms you want be on you can figure the features that you have in your game so if you have maybe paid loot boxes or you have um certain free-to-play aspects maybe there's there's an ad Network that you're integrating you go through you pick your features you generate an API key you put that in your game and we'll handle the rest so we will handle everything that needs to happen in terms of adjusting those features for any of the markets that you want to launch in so for example in uh if you're looking at Korea where certain types of loot boxes are really sensitive from a regulatory perspective so our system

will make sure that if there are additional consents that are required that goes through in the US for example if you're a teenager so you're between the ages of 13 and 17 you can you can chat with your friends you can even chat with strangers but you need to make sure as a game that chats off by default to begin with you don't just throw people into into the the chat Network so our system handles that and and everything in between so it'll handle all of that complexity and then if you need to get a parent involved at any Point um to unlock more then our system handles all of that as well I think one um aspect to also understand it once a publisher or once a game uh onboards to kid all users of that game will run through the kid pipe um if they're not kids and teens they won't see the kid ux or or interact with the platform in any meaningful way but effectively a game is on or off kid so so that also is a massive onboarding

opportunity for the platform got it and and if if uh I create this account for my 10-year-old when my 10-year-old turns 13 14 it automatically adjusts based on the age so the uh the the game experience adjusts accordingly right that's exactly right good it grows up with you this podcast is brought to you by data AI now you're asking didn't they get acquired by sensor Tower they did and that's awesome here's why whether you loved using data. a or sensor Tower the combined company will offer customers even stronger and more detailed insights on the full Digital customer Journey exciting times lie ahead a sensor Tower and data enforces go to data. a or sensor to.com and get on board with undeniably the best data partner in the

business now back to the episode got it so you don't have to manually do anything it just remembers everything and and there's more features and of course what's the business model of this like it's a SAS uh and who's paying or and what are they paying for yeah it's uh designed to be flexible in the sense it we want to be able to service the aaa's and and a lot of the traction we've had early is because a lot of the big AAA Studios see this as a as a big problem and a big issue that they want to solve and they want to do right but the mission we're on is that we want our kids to be able to benefit from this better way of doing things everywhere and so in order to do that it means that Indies and ablea and everyone in between need to be part of the the kid value proposition and so if you're an indie it's free you can take exactly the same stack integrate it into

your game and it's good to go and you'll have all of the the benefit of the the ease of global go to market um being able to open up to a youth audience instantly if you are um more than um certain we have certain bands of users but once you take over a certain band of Mau um then there's then there's a sliding scale in terms of um cost we we keep it pretty simple and straightforward so we want to make sure it's predictable um for all the Publishers that are integrating with us so that it's it's uh the type of proposition where it's just going to solve so much and open so many opportunities that it's a it's a no-brainer and and that's where we've uh We've made sure we we keep the pricing model got it so basically you make sure that you get as many clients as possible but that your Revenue scales with the success of the of your clients exactly okay well that makes sense uh

Morris uh how does this investment fit into light speed's gaming fund so you are running pretty significant size of a fund and you know when looking at the uh the the annual invest game stats you're the you're you're the one with the biggest checks to the biggest name to the to all the AAA Studios coming in from La this is a very different play how do you how did you approach this um you know the the investment thesis and how does this play out like of course all the scenarios have been made I think actually about 8% of our dollars have gone to La uh so we we maybe have to we have to fight a a market misperception here um but you know it's it's a it's a fair push I think um the the one name that comes to mind which was my first investment after joining light speed was the believer

team which is like I think people looked at this and like okay it's a very credential team um former producers of League of Legends and and wild drift based in La how get you how do you get like such a round together what's the rationale here but think in my own defense that might be the only one that fits that that stereotype of combination of location and and pedigree so you know people want to get hung up on that and then that's their choice but uh the the way I think about this and the narrative you'll see us use um on the website and everything we do in the programs we run like game changers and the the type of events we organize even with the COO Forum at GDC the one common threat that runs through everything and I I love to reiterate over and over again is that we want to work with extraordinary Founders and and that's really that's the gist I'm I spend most of my time on early stage investing I do some grow

stage investing I love the early stage work a lot more and that like nine out of 10 investments will be Investments because truly of the I don't know about 2,000 things or so I look at in a given year I say these are these are the two or three investment opportunities this this year where this team is this team and this opportunity are truly so extraordinary that I won't be able to sleep at night if we don't partner up and Kier will smile like we we had our first uh we had our first call arguably late so I I think I I missed a lot of the initial K traction all through March they had a big splash at GDC we only met in April a week after my daughter was born it was the first call I took coming out of the hospital it was during my parental leave and the

running gag at Lightspeed was that I wasn't taking my parental leave and instead I was working on on a deal immediately but I told people it's parenting related so it should be covered under under the agreement um but uh we we had our first call and um it was the 11th hour to say the least to to start conversations um and I think we we barely had a day or two in four or five weeks where we didn't talk for an hour or so and it was a pretty pretty short intense romance and I always told Kieran we'd be able to figure this out and I think it died like three times and um there's a lot of tenacity involved and like I I and and and you know I'll I'll I'll I'll be honest I thought for most of the time of April and May that this wouldn't work out but

I also couldn't live with the fact that it wouldn't work out and I really wanted this to work out and so honestly like to have that energy and tenacity while you really should while you really should focus on on other stuff you know it's one of these things that are special in in a given year and so I had actually not sent a term sheet in 8 months or so that also feels weird to sit on your hands for such a long time but if we try and come out as a firm per partner at like two three High conviction bets per year that's not super unusual um but it also feels amazing to to find something that you really want to pursue um this much so it comes to show what I think is the right bar to hold yourself to when you're really trying to back generational companies and how that feels like from the investor perspective and so I think even in the months now that we've spent on the same side of the table after like two two months on

opposite sides of the table it's been it's been a very productive month on on on many fronts uh hopefully Kieran will feel the same um but yeah I'm happy to talk more about how this fits into into light speed more broadly but I want to pause here too because I I can see you're smiling so you probably already have some follow-up questions no no it's a well it's a you know there's some typical aspects of it and thanks for clearing out the uh the LA perception but uh but there's there's some aspects to it like coming in on 11th hour so that means Kieran had a good amount of fomo probably a16z was pretty far off at that point and that gives you more reassurance because they do a great due diligence as well uh that that this is something tangible something you need to really figure out if you want to be in and out and and Kieran you have two very different uh investors in light speed and a16z well a16z has does a lot of volume of course

with the speed run and and the amount of Investments and like combine 1.2 billion in gaming is is perhaps the biggest gaming fund at the moment if you combine fund One Fund two and then you have uh and you have light speed that is incredibly selective almost at Benchmark level selective maybe not quite like you do uh Benchmark is like one deal per partner here you have like two to three but almost as selective uh where the term sheets are are hard to get and you really have to get whenn more it's over so how does um how does working with these two like of course you have uh full board now but how does working with with your new board uh after the investment I I think I knew exactly what it would look like because to Mar's point we spent so much time together trying to find a way to make it work uh and and get a deal done I think one of the unique things

for us is we were're able to bring together those two Dynamics um that that you've pretty well articulated we've been super intentional about the investors that we've brought on you know when we brought on Convoy as our they let our seed around it was very focused on who can help us price gaming infrastructure SAS as far f as possible because we had clients banging down our door saying hey how is it ready can we use it and we were still trying to figure out how to price it and the Convoy team had had done so much work in that space so they were able to give us really highly targeted support and that's exactly what we were hoping for when we we sort of put the word out about the seedr and in uh in andreon and light speed I mean that was that was my my wish list um was that we able to do something where we could get

them both together um to to help push kid forward for different reasons I think you know the e6z team is fantastic um you they've been super supportive of us and um there's been some some helpful go to market opportunities that have that have accelerated us I think the exciting thing when Mor and I started talking was he one he really got the value proposition straight away um and he was very quickly uh well this this is my read of it Mars can correct me if I'm wrong but very quickly understood um and was educated on how complex the problem was and why this was a unique solution I had I keep a a spreadsheet so I can can follow up with people but I 98 funds reach out um after we announced a GDC and um I kept detailed notes on each of them like what was the what was the value

prop where were everything from where were they based what was the value prop um you know what were the specific connects or introductions that they felt would be meaningful all of that and what Mor brought was just I mean it was a tab of its own um with all of the really specific and thoughtful go to market um it was it was a standout so bringing those two investors together so Andre and and light speed for those very different reasons and the the support that were very different and the vend diagram was quite unique was what was exciting for me we're also tapping into Collective energies from both funds just to get the word out about K I think go to market was was one area where collectively we making introductions to the cosos of presidents or and or the legal Departments of a lot of the the big

names in in gaming but by the way also Beyond gaming right uh this this is already also a play for um other media and then also consumer apps um but yeah I think um this this is recorded before the press release um but uh but by the time it comes out hopefully there are there are a few high-profile Outlets that have put out the word about kid not just as a report about the fundraising and the amount and and all that good stuff but really educating the market that this platform exists why it matters how it works um and also telling a story about why this team is is uniquely capable to address this problem and actually has built something very very special that I believe is also extremely hard to replicate and so I think um you know we we go out often to approach Outlets with a story and I think this is something that has been picked up by uh not just an exceptional amount

but also by certain names that are a lot harder to get to I mean Kieran and the team will also just named technology Pioneers by the world economic Forum like it takes a bit for a serus a company to get that recognition and get noticed on that global scale and I think you know it's I'm I'm honored to be a part of this I'm really excited to see see where we can take it um and I'm also truly glad to be on the same side of the table with with Kieran because it's not fun to be on the other side you know after after so many years as a lawyer he's a tough negotiator you know and I always thought I was good at it but I I got I got schooled at least a couple times well that's that's awesome and I wanted to like you mentioned Convoy a couple of times I want to give a shout out to Ventures they're fantastic especially at seed rounds and especially with tools Tech and platforms so that

must have been a great help as you were gearing up for your series a so as part of the Testament not only what you've built and then the traction you've had but also the uh probably the support from Convoy to get such a you know such a huge fomo for what you're doing and and testament to the fund that when they're recommending you to the uh the next Founders the the next funds then that that immediately gets serious track ction so just you know credit where credit is due so Kieran um you have fantastic investors 10 months in you've raised tremendous amount of money you're on a on a very positive Mission um that that people are excited and are happy to back and you're in a trajectory that is you know has to be on Quantum scaling like you can't do anything else when you have both light speed and a16 Zs that have to return their billion dollar funds at a 5x minimum so what what does it look from from this point on to let's

say like a next year or two because you're sitting on all the cash on all the resources on all the connections you're going to fly to Davos like you're you're you're as connected you're going to be on every single game like tell me a little bit about the uh the next couple of years and what we be we'll be hearing about K kit I think what's super exciting so I I'll say one thing first up which is when it came to speaking to investors and when it comes to speaking to Publishers when it comes to speaking to Partners and now when we're speaking to social networks and and online video and others that exist beyond the the gaming space the the phrase that I hear over and over again is I am a parent within the first couple of minutes you you articulate what K is trying to do and there is there is a paino not just on a business level but at a personal level and so I I think the the macro

piece for us is very much the hundreds of people that I've met who've articulated and recognized this is a personal issue for me being able to walk into a room a year from now and say hey wear kid and have someone react with oh great that's that's what's solving all these issues online uh when it comes to kids and teens that that's kind of the exciting personal motivation for me is to get to that point where I feel like that Paradigm Shift um has been pushed um over that inflection point you're right that there's a lot of pressure on us and mostly pressure we put on ourselves to build something that's going to be meaningful and change the way that kids go online today because we do strongly believe that the the ways of thinking about kids online is so imbued with the en enironment of the mid 1990s that there needs to be a shift um

and that means that we need to do a fantastic job in gaming and build better gaming experiences and unlock more uh for kids and teens today than uh what they have and then we need to take that same philosophy and the technology that we built and affect that paradigm shift in other verticals and social is one one uh online video is another and there are a number of others where we've been approached um by a lot of Indies and larger players about helping support different ways of um different different modalities in a way um in terms of building products and some of these are brand new some of these haven't even gone to Market but the way that they're thinking about the DNA of their product and how it needs to deal with kids and teens is now part of the thinking this isn't like a pivot and oh how do we deal with the kids issue this is we are building a social network and we want to

think about kids day one so being part of that is going to be pretty exciting and then you know the sky's the limit I think we're going to build some pretty pretty exciting infrastructure that's going to unlock a lot and we get asked to do a lot of things we say no a lot uh so we can stay focused but you know I'd love to say yes love you know I the new shiny object where that sounds like a great idea let's let's try that out uh so I'd love to be able to to explore more of more of those problems that you can start to solve once you've built the foundation to to solve the kids piece well can't wait to uh to follow the story um I'm sure you you've already like all the Publishers all the big ones are working with you and going to come out with the announcement in the uh in the coming weeks and rolling out this uh the service see seems like a a very important service these days and um I

also acknowledging that it's almost 2:00 a.m. where moris is at so Morris kudos to you like look at this investor he's is through thick and thin no matter what time it is he'll jump on your side and and uh and support so um so kudos to to Mor and um you know Kieran have a great rest of the day and let's catch up when when the product is scaling and you enter that next stage that that series C you know heading towards the uh the IPO and uh and mors have a great night I probably will it will be short and starting with moderating a panel in about 5 hours here at awe so it's um but this is still this is still a lot better hours than Kieran is working on a regular basis so Mar knows he he he usually can call me and and whether it's 1:35 or 7:00 a.m. yeah um I I will I will answer yes

scheduling this podcast was extremely easy because apparently you two work 247 so you were just like just send us a time whatever fits you so uh that's that works uh but but thank you so much and uh and fascinating to hear about the um the the founding story I hope people found it useful to understand how these type of uh rounds are getting made uh how to approach it and in and in your case like how to be diligent how to start the company press pause when needed how to you know what type of a funds you want to work with because it's very important that you do the selection correctly and not just jump with anybody but actually think about how well you fit at an early stage at a at a following stage and doing your due diligence and especially when you get that fomo and you have 98 funds wanting to work with you and you're able to to like hey hold on and then really interview and think about how well you gel with those funds this is uh a very mature way of building a business

through very solid Partnerships and not just you know uh focusing on one aspect of the business and forgetting about everything else and and kind of building this gel team so so Kieran clearly you are a very mature founder at a at a first take it's uh you're best better than 99.9% already so nice nice path yeah great great to chat about it really enjoyed it all right well have a have a great rest of the day and the beginning of the day so bye-bye everybody and thank you for listening thank you