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- RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖
RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖
Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, RBV Fund I Closing & More
Joshua Howard
September 22, 2023
Welcome to the latest edition of the Red Beard Ventures newsletter, where we dive into exciting updates and insights from all over blockchain, frontier tech, and the angel investing landscape. 🚀
In this week's RBV Weekly Newsletter:
📻NEW EPISODE of Red Beard Radio 📻:
🎙️On this week’s episode, we dug into the AI market and its future. We were joined by Oasis AI founder Matt Mireles and GP at HyperGuap Aidan Gold as guest co-host.
Each Wednesday at 3pm, Join us for a weekly dose of investing knowledge and industry expertise.
Subscribe now! → @red-beard-radio
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Denarii Labs 🧪:
Our Tokenomics Accelerator, Denarii Labs will be launching September 25th! We have secured our five company cohort and cannot wait to get started!
A big Thank You to all the LPs that referred applicants to our program!
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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 $100k - $1M in Pre-seed and Seed blockchain-based companies.
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🚨 TL;DR: This Week in Crypto
This Week:
Pokemon drops official collection on Polygon
Cryptoys releases new official Mickey Mouse line
Knights of Degen launches Pick’em contest
Chainlink talks banking at SIBOS
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🪙 Crypto News:
The two funds are their sixth early-stage fund and their first “opportunity fund”
BC plans on deploying the funds over the next 2-5 years
While these funds are large and promising, BC mentioned that they wanted to keep the fund size “constrained” in this market
At the SWIFT convention in Toronto commences, an interview with Chainlink founder highlight progress for institutional adoption
CCIP, the Chainlink interoperability network, has been conducting pilot programs with SWIFT this past year
This interview can be watched in full HERE
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🗃️ Portfolio News:
In their partnership with Disney, Cryptoys released a limited release digital toy collection
Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto are now available, and they come in several styles in several levels of scarcity
This collection consists of Common (40%), Rare (30%), Legendary (20%), Grail (9%), and Ultra Grail (1%)
Beginning on Thursday 9/21 with Challenger Rounds, MLP will be launching their four day season kickoff in Atlanta, GA
Our portfolio team, the Texas Ranchers, will be playing their first game at Friday (9/22) 10am EST on Court 4, and again at the Grandstand Court at 2pm
All four courts of the event can be streamed live HERE
For Week 3 of the NFL season, PropQuest by KoD is holding a contest
Whoever pics best and wins 1st Place will receive a Museum of Mahomes II collectable
The collection, from Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes, can be redeemed for a physical version of the collectable
Listen to the X/Twitter space with the KoD and Museum of Mahomes team HERE
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💸 NFT Alpha:
Digital card boosters have already been sold out by the hundreds
For a randomized $5 pack, users could find PSA9 graded cards worth $500
The floor price has 10x’d to $50 on the secondary market
Fewocious has been working on this collection for over a year, with 20,000 “Fewos” and interesting mechanics
Users can enhance the fixed base traits with collectable accessories
The snapshot for further releases and updates will take place Sept 25th at 1PM ET
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🔔 Active Investment Opportunities:
The National Thoroughbred League (NTL): Pioneer of team-based horse racing
Investmenting alongside Red Beard Ventures as part of the 100% ownership of the New Jersey Horse Racing team.
Key figures include rappers Nelly and Rick Ross, NFL star Kayvan Thibodeux, the NBA's Danny Green and retired basketball player Baron Davis.
Revenue streams from league-wide, mixed, and local sources.
Upcoming launch in Nashville with a $500,000 race and a concert by Anderson Paak.
NTL incorporates Web3 concepts for NFTs, digital games, virtual experiences, metaverse activations, and DAO participation.
Terran Biosciences: Pioneers in Psychedelic Therapeutics
Psychedelic treatments for neurodegenerative diseases are a groundbreaking new treatment extolled by many leading experts in neurology and psychology.
Neurodegenerative disease represents a $15B market and are expected to grow dramatically with a continued aging population around the globe.
Backed by notable investors: Valhalla Ventures, Peter Thiel, Christian Angermayer, Presign Ventures.
Collaboration with a top-10 big pharma company; 120+ patents filed.
FDA Application: Seeking 510(k) clearance after testing in hundreds of patients.
FlickPlay: Digital Toy Infrastructure & Gamified Social Experiences
A unified automated ecosystem that integrates collection release, minting and transfer, and ownership - under a Web2 Umbrella.
Frictionless + Walletless user onboarding; multi-chain wallet aggregation system.
Partnerships with Disney, Bandai, PinkFung (BabyShark) - 90M+ subscribers, Payaso Plim Plim (80M+ subscribers), SEGA, The Little Prince IP.
Innerwell (Greycroft): Behavioral health care through data & psychedelics
Product launched 9 months ago,went from 0 to $2.4m annualized run rate, path to profitability by October.
First company focused on commercially scaling true ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
Patients who are diagnosed by licensed medical professionals have the option to receive therapy during their psychedelic experience.
Thrive Fantasy: Sports-betting made simple and more accessible
ThriveFantasy has exceeded $50M in entry fees, showing a 250% YoY growth, and anticipates reaching over $90M in 2023.
They're finalizing their white-label tech and aiming to launch by Q3, targeting $450K MRR in the first 6 months.
A revamped 2.0 UX is launching for the NFL season with the team planning for a whopping $10M/month in bets – the new UX is also expected to support multiple languages, opening the platform to an even larger audience.
Setscale: a Key Financing Tool for SMBs
Solves the cashflow gap that small/medium size businesses suffer: Post payment, pre sale
While large businesses have credit partners, SMBs generally have to float every shipment
Setscale solves this by covering the shipment payment in return for a small premium after the sale
Venus Aerospace: LA to Tokyo in ONE HOUR at Hypersonic Speed
A promise of the space age finally fulfilled, the craft designed by Venus Aerospace will be the fastest reusable hypersonic system in the world.
Their patented rotating detonation rocket engine (RDTE) will propel passengers at speeds up to Mach 9
The craft is designed to fly just outside of our atmosphere, where air friction poses no risk to the craft
Tafi: The Global Leader in 3D Assets and Text-to-3D genAI
Largest commercial library of 3D assets in the world; customers include Coca-Cola, HBO, Warner/DC, Coinbase, and others
Their product DAZ 3D (link to demo here) creates ultra-HD fully compatible and customizable characters
Exclusive partnership with NVIDIA to train even greater AI capabilities
Canza Finance: a New Financial System for Africa’s FX Markets
African FX TAM is $5T, yet is still highly inefficient and expensive
Canza is building the Jara Network to facilitate OTC
The round is being led by Polychain Capital at a $15M PMV
Edison AI Systems: Zapier for AI, Link Multiple Models into One Workflow
Edison AI is building a web platform to build complex, interoperable AI systems
Developers can cut their time and costs by 60–90%, deploying in days, not months
The platform can operate as no-code or low-code, meaning even novices can link together StableDiffusion, GPT-4, a voice mimicking AI, and more!
Siegelman Stable: Streetwear with a Conscience - Gary Vaynerchuk Lead
Rapidly gaining mass appeal and A-list celebrity endorsements
Nearly one million dollars in gross revenue in 2022
Founded by the son of a top horse racing family, Max Siegelman, past collaborator with Kanye West, NBA teams, Puma, Hypebeast, Lexus, and more
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
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
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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!
The RBV team is in Atlanta for the MLP season opener; reach out if you are also attending!
Major League Pickleball season opener (Sept 21-24, Atlanta, GA)
Art Basel (Dec 8-10, Miami, FL)
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🤝 We are hiring!
We are looking for part-time 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, Mitchell, Frankie, and Lauren