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RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖
Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, RBV Fund I Closing & More
Joshua Howard
April 05, 2023
RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖: Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, RBV Fund I Closing & More
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This last week of crypto news has been colored by a new discussion in American politics about crypto, one where the moral weight of this technology has become politically polarized. It’s an important fact to remember, that though the hands that hold power can affect their own domain, crypto exists outside of that domain. Even if DeFi was made illegal, no realistic prevention could be enforced, outside of removing the internet entirely. So while it’s likely to become a talking point for this election cycle, and politicians will be quick to say they are pro- or anti-crypto, be aware that in truth, they are all pro-money and anti-”making the people that give them money angry”. The heart of crypto technology is more important to our future than what color tie is around the neck of who likes it or not, and will survive.
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🚨 TL;DR: This Week in Crypto
Elon memes, dogecoin dumps
Saudi wealth fund backs crypto VCs
Sen. Warren’s “Anti-crypto army”
Sandwich attacker gets sandwich attacked for 20M
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📣 As a reminder, Red Beard Ventures has both a syndicate and fund:
The Red Beard Ventures Syndicate is stage agnostic and invests in Frontier Technology with a focus on Web3, Space, FinTech, Robotics, Biotech, and Climate. We invest anywhere between $100k - $1.5M.
The Red Beard Ventures Fund I invests $250k - $1M in Pre-seed and Seed blockchain-based companies. Our 2nd and final close will be March 31, 2023.
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🔔 Active Investment Opportunities:
One Earth Rising: Ownable Interoperability for Modern Gaming
Their standard has self-sovereignty and a format game engines can understand
This format seeks to become industry standard
All facets of the asset - items, moments, stats - are able to be minted
Meratas: Expedia for Student Loans - Last check, Oversubscribed Round
This round is led by Jason Calacanis, legendary investor from The All In podcast
Multi-lender marketplace allows users to compare and loan offers to compete
110 schools are current paying customers, at $1300/mo
Projected revenue of $6M in 2023
Toka: Cybersecurity Tools for Modern International Protection
Second year of revenue doubled with multiple government PoCs
Gross margins more than 90%
$22M forecast in 2023
Backed by Andreesen Horowitz
GET protocol: The Premium NFT Ticketing Solution
GET has been building NFT ticketing since 2016
They have a full range of ticketing products for event holders, from self-service to full concierge, and also whitelabel solutions
Issued nearly 3.4 Million tickets (1.7M in 2022 alone), over 17k events
Investment includes a token grant AND discounted token purchase rights
Simply Eggless: The Future of Egg Alternatives
Simply Eggless is the second-largest producer and supplier of plant-based eggs globally, with a revenue of $2M in 2022
Their products are sold in over 2.8k stores in North America and the company is looking to expand to 1k more stores, serving their massive popularity among Gen Z and Millennials
The main ingredient used by Eggless is lupin bean, which offers high protein, excellent baking functionality, and is environmentally friendly
The competitors in vegan egg alternatives all fall behind Simply Eggless, which has a much more versatile and shelf-stable product
Knights of Degen: Co-Founded by Drew Austin! Web3 Sports & Gaming Ecosystem + $10M in Sales + Acquired League DAO Defi Fantasy Protocol
KoD is building a meta-game for sports betting fans that rewards degen activities, from betting, to fantasy gaming, to building as a DAO contributor.
Assets of KOD include fantasy gaming software, bet2earn protocol, mobile application, media network, p2e gaming assets and teams, professional sports ownership stakes, nfts, and more.
The KOD Inc. cap table will be allocated 30% of the Degen Token market supply.
BoostVC (Coinbase, Etherscan, Alta, Wyre) is leading the round w/ participation from RBV Fund I
Seed, $30M Post-Money + Token
Blocklords: GoT Meets Axie - Revolutionizing Play-To-Earn Gaming
Blocklords already has 120k pre-registered for their play-to-earn game
The medieval-based game allows players to craft their narrative while simultaneously earning cryptocurrency for tasks they complete within the game (Play-to-earn model).
Blocklords is focusing on delivering value to the user first to build up the user base and ecosystem first - This approach seems to be working by their massive sign-up and connection numbers
Money earned can be used to progress in the game or traded on crypto exchanges.
Bitscraft, Delphi Digital, and Animoca Brands are all investing
SAFT, $100M FMV
The Sandbox: Global leader and largest metaverse platform
$SAND is a Top 50 Cryptocurrency >$2B
$250M+ current virtual real estate LAND value
>$700M digital asset portfolio
$4.3M highest LAND price paid
~3X more LAND sales than competitor Decentraland
250K+ creators and brands are using the no-code tools to mind new items and experiences each month!
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🥳 Upcoming Events:
In-person events are a great way to stay informed in our industry, so we are planning for a very full 2023. We would love to hear about any other conferences you will be attending this year, so please let us know as we are still planning our event calendar! We have provided our tentative list for 2023 below:
NFT NYC
Consensus
VeeCon
Bitcoin Miami
ETH Portland
For NFT NYC, we are hosting a private lunch for VCs and Founders! And our very own Knights of Degen is hosting a late-night party for KOD holders and players at Jay-Z’s very own 40/40 club! Check the links below and RSVP if you can make it!
Red Beard Ventures x Girls Table private lunch: LINK
Knights of Degen opening party: LINK
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🎙️ New Podcast Episode:
In this week's episode of The Girls Table, Elana Dickman, also known as TradingFemale is joined by Stevie Cline who is a GP at Vol1Ventures. Vol1Ventures is an emerging fund that aims to write the first check to back exceptional operators and promising preseed-stage companies from the fintech, crypto, and biotech sectors.
Prior to starting Vol1Ventures, Stevie was a partner at a NYC-based BigLaw firm, worked @ Johns Hopkins, consults for firms like KKR, & started a women's health genetics company.
Watch the Latest Episode Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-JXoaQY2gI
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🪙 Crypto News:
Sanabil, the venture arm of the SWF, released investment info into 40 VC firms
The list includes prolific Web3 investors: A16z, Thiel (via Valar Ventures), Soma Capital, Polychain, and much more
While the VC firm investments are made public, their $124B of liquid holdings remain private - even as to if they contain digital assets
This is not the beginning of crypto’s politicization, after Gov. DeSantis and Sen. Cruz introduced anti-CBDC bills
Warren compared buying Bitcoin to “Buying air” on Meet The Press, then going on to praise CBDC
Recent bank runs and liquidations were also blamed on the crypto crowd
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🗃️ Portfolio News:
This news has hit major publications Tuesday, to much excitement
Notable investors in LayerZero included Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Samsung Next, and more
CEO Bryan Pellegrino, “we had very specific goals for who we wanted to include with this fundraise and what our goals were”
While the fund reports on it’s investments into VC, the liquid fund is unknown as to it’s holdings of digital assets
“Stake and Bake”, the KoD staking protocol, will be a way for Knights holders to stake their NFTs
All Knight holders are airdropped a “Deed” via Polygon, used to stake Knights and Steedz
After a 60 day “baking” period, the Deed and the Knights/Steedz baked with it will earn additional rewards
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💸 NFT Alpha
The Miami store has integrated Bitpay for both payments and refunds
NFT-gated Poolsuite partnered with RL for collection drop and estate party
This is one more instance of Miami as a Web3 fashion hub
Yes, the disks of paper! The milk cap game is now an NFT collection
This coincides with the release of an online version of the POG slamming game
A play-to-earn, fully blockchain Stack-and-Slam game is in development as well
Fun fact: Though it’s a “milk cap” game, POG comes from the Passionfruit-Orange-Guava juice bottles sold in Hawaiian grocery stores, which had similar caps
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🎉 We had a successful first close for Red Beard Ventures Fund I, and started receiving commitments towards our second and final close. We would love to talk if you are interested in learning more about the fund, you can reply back to this message to schedule a time to speak with the team.
Below we have provided some additional information about RBV Fund I:
Red Beard Ventures Fund I is a full-stack web3 fund investing across blockchain consumer applications, infrastructure, gaming, the metaverse, and DeFI in both equity and tokens and Pre-Seed through Series A
Fund I closing March 31, 2023
We have completed 15 deals, deploying $6.5M in capital
All LPs in the fund will have their carry reduced by 50% (20% reduced to 10%) on any investments made via the syndicate going forward
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🤝 We are hiring!
We are looking for syndicate vertical leads in the following categories - if you are interested please reach out and we can discuss the opportunity in greater detail:
Biotech
Space
Robotics & Automation
Climate
Fintech & SaaS
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Onwards 🚀
Drew, Elana, Whit, Mitchell, and Lauren