Bits of Signum 5.30.2020
My neighborhood overnight. Plus: E3 Replacements, Blankos, League of Legends Ads, XRSpace!
I am glad that I didn’t have time to send this until this morning because before I dive into the future, I want to talk about today and express my support for protesters against police brutality and for George Floyd (and many others who died before him). I do not support this violence, but I do support the ardent plea for justice. After watching many violent clips from across the country, including this one a few blocks from my house, this singing group of Amish protesters in Minneapolis with a sign that read Standing Against Systems of Oppression touched me. They captured that none of us should stand for this. It is wrong and it must be stopped. You can listen to them here.
Back to the future...
June 9th 2020 would have been E3, one of the biggest video game industry events of the year. Instead, others are picking up the slack and we have a packed lineup of events over the next couple of weeks - see below for a good chart that I found on PC Gamer that is worth keeping handy. IGN is in focus for me next week with their Summer of Gaming Event. See June 5 line up for Mythical Games’ Blankos Exclusive Trailer Debut!
In esports sponsorship news, Riot announced that they would add “on field” sponsorship banner opportunities, and the first two are MasterCard and Alienware. Its great to see the non-endemic brand opportunity in MasterCard but Theo Priestly’s (@tprstly) tweet resonated regarding GenZ’s likely lack of connection to MasterCard - I would love to do a survey of Gen Z to ask if this banner would even ring a bell as they zoom by?? Maybe a better opportunity for PayPal’s Venmo or Square’s CashApp?
Finally, on VR/AR, I find myself continuing to come back to it (yes, finally) given a lot seems to be coming together at once - real game availability, tech that doesn’t make you sick, tech that makes VR just work better (Unreal Engine 5) and of course the move to the metaverse which coronavirus just accelerated.
So THIS GOT MY ATTENTION...
Peter Chou, who was the well-known architect of HTC’s smartphone success, launched XRSpace, which was in the making for 3 years. The XRSpace’s headset is called Mova (see specs and comparison to Oculus Quest here) The virtual world is called Manova.
“We decided to just use bare hands,” Chou said. “Something simple, really easy. No controllers. No need to carry anything else. We want people to use their hands in the virtual world, like they do in the real world. It’s natural. You put your hands out to shake hands, high five, kick a ball, and clap.”
These are the avatars in the Manova preview that were shown in the press. They seem more lifelike, which is better for the Metaverse. And maybe even better for #standingtogetheragainstinjustice.
Thanks, and have a great rest of the weekend,
Angie
Angela Dalton | LinkedIn | Twitter | Email
Digital Assets
Max Fiege | LinkedIn | Twitter | Email
HEADLINES
Digital Dollar Project publishes its white paper
Diverges from the digital dollar proposal that originally was in the stimulus bill proposed by House democrats in March by calling for a bearer asset design (i.e., Bitcoin) instead of an account-based platform (i.e, Ethereum)
Does not provide clarification on surveillance and censorship concerns
Foundation launched as an Ethereum-based FOMO platform for streetwear
Allows artists and designers to issue tokens redeemable for limited edition drops, with each subsequent purchase within a release going for a higher price than the last
Watch the NFT + culture space: this is the third platform to launch, after Zora and Saint Fame
BitGo launched BitGo Prime in a bid for the cryptocurrency prime brokerage market
Primarily competing against Genesis, Coinbase (through Tagomi), and FalconX
Both DCG and Galaxy Digital previously invested in BitGo Series B
Gemini announces integration partnership with Samsung Blockchain Wallet
Current market of ~4M high-end Samsung units
Gemini’s acquisition of Nifty Gateway bodes well for built-in NFT wallets going forward
SEC settles with BitClave for unregistered $25M ICO
BitClave ultimately on the hook for $25.5M in disgorgement, prejudgment interest of $3.5M, and a penalty of $400k. The interesting point here is that they will pay a total of ~$29m, or more than they raised in the ICO, versus BlockOne who paid ~$25m, or 0.6% of the total $4 billion raised.
The Howey Test elements that were cited: CAT tokens were sold with the promise of profit as BitClave sought exchange listings while guaranteeing profits to early investors
Disruptive Entertainment
Nik Vantzos | LinkedIn | Email
HEADLINES
Virtual Realty / Augmented Reality
Magic Leap raised $350M from undisclosed new and existing investors. This may have given the company a life line after press reports of struggles and its reach for a $10B valuation, a significant premium to its $6.7B valuation in March 2018. Having been founded in 2011 means they have 9 years and $2.6B invested under their belt, but what is the product market fit? Further to this, as of Friday, Magic Leap CEO Ronny Abovitz is stepping down once a replacement is found.
In other VR news, XRSpace (led by HTC Co-Founder Peter Chou) announced XRSpace Mova, a controller-free, hand tracking and 5G-enabled VR headset that is guided by hand motions and gestures, as opposed to most headsets that require controller use; priced at $599. XRSpace is ALSO launching a social VR platform (or “virtual world”) called Manova, that focuses on education, collaboration, gaming, and fitness, leveraging hyper-realistic avatars. Cue a new inductee into the race to the Metaverse alongside Epic’s Fortnite and Facebook Horizon, as well as niche players VRChat (launched 2017; 10K+ DAUs) and Rec Room (launched 2016; 30-50K MAUs - Steam-only, does not include PSVR or Oculus).
Speaking of virtual worlds, Sims and Second Life inspired, free-to-play virtual world Avakin Life (Lockwood Publishing) reached 1.4M DAUs, and is now at 200M registered users since its 2013 launch. The Sims 4 (launched 2014) currently has 20M unique players according to EA, and Second Life (launched 2003) has ~<1M users.
Esports
Riot is launching in-game advertising: League of Legends is ramping up “on-field” advertisements, with in-game embedded ads, with MasterCard and Alienware as the first two sponsors. This is a good datapoint on non-endemic sponsor acceleration we’ve seen in esports, and also provides an opportunity to showcase embedded gaming ad technology, including 4DSight and Anzu.io.
Mobility in Esports: An interesting example of non-endemic sponsor acceleration is Mountain Dew’s recent partnership with PUBG Mobile for its South Asia Pro League. This is noteworthy as it demonstrates the increasing trend towards mobile Esports vs. the traditionally PC-dominant Esports scene. This tilt towards mobile is interesting as mobile opens many options for peer-to-peer competitive play given the massive volume of mobile gamers around the world, as well as peer-to-peer wagering.
We also saw strong progress around Chinese streaming & social media:
Huya (Similar to Amazon Twitch in China; $3.3bn mkt cap) Q1 2020 MAUs +22.2% YoY, paying users were +13.0%, and revenue +47.8%
Note reports of Bytedance private share transactions of over $100B. Gaming is a very logical next step for Bytedance, as it slowly ramps up taking on Tencent.
M&A and Raises
Digital Assets
Fortmatic, rebranded as Magic, raises $4M in round led by Placeholder Ventures
India-based exchange CoinDCX raises $2.5M in round led by Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital
Floating Point Group raises $2M in round led by Naval Ravikant
Disruptive Entertainment
Tencent invests $65M in Marvelous (Japanese game developer; creator of Story of Seasons) for a 20% stake. Funds will be used to build new and existing IP.
Gamestream raises $3.5M to build up B2B cloud gaming tech, led by Eponyme Partners
Statespace, a New York based gamer training platform, raised $15M in Series A funding, led by Khosla Ventures, and joined by June Fund, FirstMark, Lux and Expa
The backers of Voodoo SAS (French mobile game developer backed by West Street Capital Partners) are seeking to sell the company; expected valuation of $1.6B+
From PC Gamer:
Signum Growth Capital Team
Angela Dalton | Founder and CEO | angela@signumgrowthcapital.com
Max Fiege | Director, Digital Assets | max@signumgrowthcapital.com
Nik Vantzos | Director, Disruptive Entertainment | nik@signumgrowthcapital.com