Why VCs like IPC Ventures want to invest in teams not products

introduction page yeah today I for about 15 minutes to cover relatively big questions or I'll try to fight through some slides and just give you our perspective of how I guess the small startups can be big so cup of top picks are some boring slides about our company how firm and then give you a little bit of maybe a summary about VC venture capitalists or VC funding and then give you some insight about the global market why are we excited about this and hopefully some ideas what we think that will make you guys successful so we are is actually well district team we have offices in web based in Dublin we have offices in San Francisco tokyo and singapore and i personally have lived in

or most of these cities or countries and i've been the industry for 16 years about 10 years mainly in a venture covering many different aspect of investment and from early-stage too late stage two MA and thing is it's actually quite applicable from investing perspective that we don't really need to be the expert in a specific vertical but we can apply our disciplines and then be able to empower the companies that we invest in your work with to be successful and for us we are not of game fun but we are fairly active in a gaming space so essentially we invest in the mobile ecosystem from back and analytics to maybe the social digital media and advertising we're slowly looking at the

hardware side VR and aro but it's not something we have been doing it at the moment so I guess our key takeaway is I for indie is not about a long like a lonely venture is really about building a ecosystem a network for yourself and for us we really try to draw the expertise from our partners and also try to add value by working with some of the mentors that who can also coach some of our investors and portfolio companies and part of the reason that we are a bit more bullish or comfortable in the gaming space because we have a iconic figure his name is in a fully sound he's our bottle of advice or he is the founding member of Capcom and also

design of fighter and many others and you might heard of his new title call my Tina man I got funding from Kickstarter for four million dollars so our philosophy has always been tackling the global space meaning it could be anywhere and we can bring you to different countries based on our network and also experience but we do i would say much more active in europe and also in us and then we have expertise in the asian countries and also japan so very quick I get summary about vc funding i think part of the thing we refine is there's a lot of bits unlock meets an outstanding but maybe like different perspective about how you approach VC what I'd like to say is VC funding is

not about project financing most of the time their interest in a team and the company but not just your one IP or one project so that's not for us essentially what no matter how good it is we like to really invest the whole entity and then don't come to us and saying you're having trouble with your finance status and you want to us some bail you out or pay your debt or whatever it is and pay your bill salary we really wanted Studios developers to invest themselves in the venture and try to draw as little salary as possible and then invest in the development style things and it's not us to help you to generate stable revenue so really we are looking for something and very large in a sense in terms of scope and really high growth potential

and you are looking for someone who can really bring strategic value to your business and I would have to say you will start your process first and then we will help you or other visa tea will help you to cross the chasm you know what regardless is this growing to the next stage or just kind of get off the ground initially and you can't really get rich by raising money from VC to be honest no matter like you know either your uber or not they raised a lot of money there's huge responsibilities behind a lot of fun actually they they're back like the what we call LP the investor of the fun is of the pension fund you know the government money so you can imagine you burn someone's pensions money it's not something you really want to do right so you won't do something perfectly when you raise money and what we are looking for it's a is actually something about

it sorry not too much of a lifestyle business you if you are telling me you have a very stable and kind of cash for I mean of course we are always looking for like really good business cash flow positive but we are telling me just like very stable business I think it's not really what we're looking for we think you know most of the studio traditionally it's a bit more like a lifestyle business you can really have a like nice life you know working maybe as a work-for-hire studio or project but for us it's not that interesting and on the other spectrum we are looking for something very creative very innovative and but not too much sometimes this I kind of elevate too far the spectrum then you will get a little bit think they will be a bit ahead of time then might not be ready for us so something

to really remember is you really have to have a big vision and have a very strong execution so you can think bay but if you can't execute that's no meaning so just examples are not going to spend too much time with it but that pensei is a very nice you know lifestyle business you know in the Western foot business and the right hand side my right hand side you know I met this guy in San Francisco he's a street performer and I don't know if you can see on a picture he's actually a one-man band he carries like guitar of John everything he can perform a song perfectly by himself but I think it's a bit too creative in a sense I think he should final you know a bad you know member to join him other than just do it all alone so that's my takeaway so our perspective is that why is it like so hard for investor to join

this you know massive market and venture is because I think it's from a statistical point of view that's always what we look for is numbers is traditionally there they show the path of a nice Calif state business like ninety-five percent if they still survive they managed to kind of get by or as such thing based on various projects right and then maybe you sort of one percent of them you know becomes a unicorn or superstar like the king or the supercell and but in the tech world there it's really a potentially a very good sustainable model and a business that they can they need to experiment but and you know if they managed to crack the code then at least like you know about little bit less than fifty percent can get to the past the tipping point and then get through those maybe the

growth stage and if they survive they will be able to sort of joint ten percent of the startup companies to either and be unicorn which is like less than one person or at least have a very sustainable wealthy high-value business which you don't always see in the headline so I'm not saying you know there's no like potential for the gaming companies it's just like the mindset you have to have in order to really go pats like thinking about project at the time really think about long-term vision and then what you really want to achieve and for your venture so what will you the reason why we're very excited but this pocket is that it's definitely something very big and just keep going and right now in the whole gaming universe I mean the mobile ecosystem seventy

seventy-five percent wait for news coming from gaming so that's very exciting and I like to highlight you know I said that this is a really global business and Asia is really growing and with like just the mobile itself it's about two hundred thirty billion dollars mark about 2017 and it's a upside-down pyramid obviously we're basically looking at asia as one big region but individually still individual countries have to have a specific different strategies but what I'm saying is the market is growing and it's growing much faster in Asia and from our investor perspective we always look at a different region and also the potential financial transactions in Asia there has been a lot more exits in the past

at least those who exceed the US dollars a 100 million and it's a stable growth not just like a spike so that's exciting it's also exciting for western developers because a lot of Eastern develop companies are looking for wet cement content with talents from the westin market so again there's a massive massive demand and growing supplier or say so at the end of the day you are facing a very term problem to grow from a small companies to bigger a lot of people compare gaming to movies and such I would think that is actually closer to music industry for various reasons although the gaming industry is more tact cheerful music is a more content your phone and so in order for small companies to grow Baker or be able to go

or be competitive with like bit size or bigger companies is that they really need to find the right partner that includes like right investor so from the different type of investment perspective the my left hand side the smart money doesn't also the passive and some people call the dumb money I don't think that's the right term but I think some investor is just like more passive so but in terms of the smart money and I think you when you are early you should really look for investors who understand the industry who understand your team and has a similar passion has the heart to help you to build get you through that early it's a long journey and and then also those who are understand the market normally love looking for amazing team very very good product and vision and

then because they take a lot of risk to invest early and again you you can't really just give a good speech page but really show your Pass I guess experience and track record to execute and I really show your methodology how you think you can actually get through the whole process to develop games we come across so many developers they may be able to start the project initially and and then they have a prototype whatnot but to make it to a commercial product is a complete different ball game so I really want developers to think through the whole process and then the time of time resources and your commitment and so your partner with like the right investors partners who has the operational experience who you are willing to listen to and domain expertise and then again later stage you

can like look for someone who are the perk up pocket and give you so we call them passive then because their dog hands on they don't really want to deal with you kind of on a daily basis and so this is just a mais like you know sort of some of the bottleneck afford early state developers they have a lot of experience potentially and a lot of talents in the technical side but maybe lacking some of the pizza side so I think it's also a good thing that you really open up your mind really kind of and you might not don't need to be the business experts but you need to have some knowledge and may not have to global experience and all that so even though you might get the funding at the beginning but then you really have to have all this I kind of knowledge you know to get you through and I'm not going to go for the the fundings I think you guys all know the funding wats wheat sources already by the previous speakers so again we have trying to list like I

said I've done a lot of investment in other spaces like you know each other media e-commerce I participate in Pinterest when they were like a billion valuation now they're 11 so we're not worried about like making baked bet but I think you saw about how we can actually have the process and not a fumble at per se bus something solid that we can have a win-win scenario so we like with right now we are actually putting together some of the resources to help empower small developers so get them more focused on building their own IPS and and then we can also leverage you know economy of scale and then lower their burn rate lowered the amount of money they trying to rate so that make it more reasonable it'll be easier for you investors so that's it thank you so much

and if you have any questions that only if I the time but I be around the rest of the event so you can always approached me after thank you