- Red Beard Ventures Newsletter
- Posts
- RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖
RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖
Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, RBV Fund I Closing & More
Joshua Howard
November 17, 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 📻:
In this video, we talk with Tyler Warner, NFT Lead at Lucky Trader. Tyler is a high-volume NFT trader, having reached the top 100 in NFT sales revenue using NFTBank’s rankings, a Pengu maxi (in Luca we trust), and a writer for Lucky Trader. Tyler’s writing spans market analysis, news breakdowns, project ecosystem overviews, and web3 opinion pieces. Find out if We Are Back, and get the pulse on the most recent market conditions!
Each Wednesday at 3pm, Join us for a weekly dose of investing knowledge and industry expertise. Subscribe now! → @red-beard-radio
Red Beard Radio is Sponsored by Alto. Alto makes it easy for individuals to invest in alternative assets with their retirement funds through a self-directed IRA. Access private deals on Alto Marketplace, their new platform for accredited investors.
—------------------------------------------------------------
📣 As a reminder, Red Beard Ventures has a syndicate, fund, and a tokenomics accelerator:
The Red Beard Ventures Syndicate is stage agnostic and invests in Frontier Technology with a focus on Web3, Space, FinTech, Sports, 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.
Denarii Labs is a tokenomics accelerator in partnership with Horizen Labs Ventures, where we invest $100k into companies interested in designing and launching a token, over a twelve-week hands-on program.
In the latest update on the Denarii Labs accelerator, our founders tackled the problem of token distribution. Hedgey founder Lindsey Winder came in to demo their upcoming product TokenReady, and Daniel Haboush (aka CuriousRabbit) from Horizen Labs Ventures gave a talk about gamifying network participation. Matt Cross, co-founder at Metafide, gave a mentor talk about his deep experience in Web3 and token projects.
Read more about the past few weeks!
----------------------------------------------------------
🚨 TL;DR: This Week in Crypto
This Week:
New cash flows into exchanges
Disney x Dapper launches NFT platform
Limewire launches new wallet features
-----------------------------------------------------------
🪙 Crypto News:
After over a year of more stablecoins leaving exchanges than entering, the trend has finally flipped
Measured as a 90-day change, it is a very positive landmark for the market
Much of this can be attributed to the huge Bitcoin gains in the last few weeks
After announcing the freeze on X, CZ explained that the total loss of $12.5M was due to a kidnapping
Executives from a Binance client were lured to a business trip in Montenegro
Binance was able to freeze $11.8M
—-----------------------------------------------------------
🗃️ Portfolio News:
Featuring Pixar, Star Wars, and other Disney properties, the platform will allow users to collect and trade digital pins
Disney Pinnacle is set to launch later this year as an app and website
The waitlist to join the platform is live at www.DisneyPinnacle.com
The decentralized OS’s native token is now open for trading on the exchange
BitMart is one of the largest exchanges with over $2 Billion in daily volume, 15th highest worldwide
This is the first centralized exchange (CEX) to list ZERO
This new version of their NFT keepsakes abstracts away the pain-point of creating a Web3 wallet
A wallet address is created behind the scenes where a user can see all of their associated collectibles
This comes at the same time as the first $LMWR burn program
—------------------------------------------------------------
💸 NFT Alpha:
NHL Breakaway is their official collaboration with the NFT platform Sweet
Users will be able to gift, trade, collect, display, and participate in challenges
In 2022 they launched a beta version, with all early users earning a “founding fan” label
The user-owned social world music festival will take place Nov. 16 to 18
Sixteen creation teams are creating over 80 immersive journeys and performances
A detailed lineup and schedule can be found at the festival’s page
—------------------------------------------------------------
🔔 Active Investment Opportunities:
Versus Game: Gamified Ads using Gen-AI
This B2B tech helps media, publishers, and brands use generative AI to make interactive content
Eric Schmidt, investor and board member, said “This is the most powerful real-world AI application” he’s seen
Almost 1000 digital media partners including Forbes, USA Today, ESPN, ABC, Microsoft, and more
Emerge: follow-on with the cutting edge in virtual reality touch technology
Emerge has developed a mid-air haptics for users to ‘feel’ objects in the virtual world
They use precise ultrasound to create 3D forms
Past and current investors include Steel Perlot, Soma Capital, M13, Vulcan Ventures, and more
Oort: Decentralized AI-powered AWS
Also investing out of Red Beard Ventures Fund I, where we have committed $500k
Oort offers 80% savings, AI-powered smart search, and blockchain integrations
Their no-code LLM is able to act like an expert on any dataset available, with simple conversational commands
We are receiving a 1:1 Token warrant for our investment
Veremark: Global background checks for the remote-worker world
This Series B round is with Stage2 Capital, Samaipata Ventures, Triplepoint, and more
Veremark stores encrypted background check data on the blockchain as a verified digital credential
Experiencing massive growth and giant clients like McDonalds, Grant Throton, Pepsi, and more
Revenue for 2024 projected to be $9m, up from a projected $4.2M this year
Minima: the future of the “Internet of Things”
Minima is purpose-built for device-to-device or device-to-blockchain communication
This is the first solution that’s economical, scales well, and is technologically advanced enough to handle mass data through extremely small hardware
The IoT landscape is projected to hit $5,000,000,000,000 (five trillion) by 2030
IoT infrastructure has been lacking innovation, hindering this growth
Canva: deeply discounted shares in a quadruple-deca-unicorn
We are bringing this amazing allocation to our LPs at a significant discount
Last round valuation was $40B; these shares are at a 36% discount
Canva has significantly higher revenue than their main competitors
Millions of users and growing, adding AI tools, and more
Tactogen: Mental health medicine using MDMA therapy
Science is now learning of the therapeutic effects of MDMA, and Tactogen is developing non-psychedelic ‘enactogens’ that provide a more focused, gentle healing
Conservative estimates suggest up to 25% of adults could benefit significantly from MDMA therapy
First patent awarded in April, on the road to FDA approval
Investing alongside Lifeforce Capital, and co-syndicating with Gaingels
National Cycling League: an NFL-style fan-friendly facing format
NCL is a revolution (get it, like a bicycle) in a sport ripe for racing fans of all types
Expansion plan in place expected to generate $5.2M in revenue from 8 events
10 signed teams, 2 year broadcast deal with Warner Bros., and Discovery+ listing
Low CapEx model for a high participation sport is a recipe for success
The National Thoroughbred League (NTL): Pioneer of team-based horse racing
Invest 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.
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
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
—------------------------------------------------------------
🥳 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 had an incredible time at National Thoroughbred League SoCal Cup: Nov 11, Los Angeles CA - It was great to see so many of you there and to connect with the other NTL owners!
We have another Texas Ranchers MLP Tournament coming up 12/7-12/11 at the Life Time Rancho San Clemente. We will share ticketing information as soon as we get it!
We hosted another Pickleball event in Santa Monica for Founders and Investors - Thank you to everyone who came!
If you are a founder and want to come to the next one RSVP here.
—------------------------------------------------------------
🤝 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
—------------------------------------------------------------
Onwards 🚀
Drew, Elana, Mitchell, and Lauren