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- RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖
RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖
Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, RBV Fund I Closing & More
Joshua Howard
November 10, 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 Marcus Feistl, COO of Limewire about the future of AI content creation, all things digital ownership when it comes to music and we learned about Limewire’s token, an ERC-20 utility token deeply embedded into the LimeWire ecosystem, designed to provide a series of perks and benefits to holders as well as to enhance the user experience across the LimeWire platform. We really enjoyed talking with Marcus!
Click here to watch this week’s full podcast! (will be posted Thursday 11/9 3pm ET)
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.
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📣 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 allocation. Andrew Albertson from Fenwick & West LLP came in to give a talk about compliance issues in the token space, and Alex Michelson from Hedgey gave a talk about how to monetize a token supply to use as compensation.
Read more about the past few weeks!
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🚨 TL;DR: This Week in Crypto
This Week:
BAYC event harms eyesight
SBF found guilty
Yuga Labs/Magic Eden to launch marketplace
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🪙 Crypto News:
The event, which was a collaboration for BAYC apparel, had some attendees reporting blurred vision and burning eyes or skin
The cause was likely from incorrect bulbs being used by the event space, which were UV lights used for disinfection
Photokeratitis, caused by strong UV exposure to the eye, is similar medically to a sunburn
The former billionaire was pronounced almost a year after the collapse of FTX
Sentencing will take place on March 28, which may carry up to a decade in prison
Former friends and colleagues that testified against SBF will be sentenced at a later date
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🗃️ Portfolio News:
The much-anticipated document has been published, sharing the in-depth tech and plans of the Shardeum ecosystem
Some of the biggest breakthroughs outlined are linear scaling, dynamic state sharding, and transaction-level consensus
You can read the whitepaper here: Shardeum Whitepaper
The San Antonio Spurs rookie got his first moment with Top Shot tuesday afternoon
On the heels of a six-figure Sorare NBA sale for “Wemby”
The Top Shot drop of 2,445 packs have already sold out
Their recently launched generative AI portal has crossed the mark of 1M visits this October
The platform was built after Limewire acquired BlueWillow, one of the top image generation models
Users get 10 free credits towards generating images, with models on music and video coming soon
The Ranchers went to the Dreambreaker round against the Chicago team
Ranchers took men’s doubles 21-19 and mixed doubles 21-14
Dreambreaker round went to Ranchers 21-15
More score info at MLP Live Scoring
BLD token holders now have an option for crypto custody in BitGo
Agoric worked with the custodian to utilize the Cosmos inter-blockchain communication protocol (IBC)
Qualified custody is one of the things necessary for many institutions to hold a crypto asset
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💸 NFT Alpha:
Since the episode release, global sales, unique buyers, and average sales price has shot up to 3-month highs; more analysis
In their yearly “what if” style Halloween anthology, the Simpsons poked fun at NFTs and packed it with inside jokes and references
Naturally, all the big collections and artists were mentioned: Beeple, BAYC, Punks, Doodles, and more
An extra layer of satire was the juxtaposition of the NFT economy and a parody of “Snowpiercer,” a polemical criticism of capitalism
The project was a response to OpenSea no longer enforcing royalties for secondary sales
Smart contracts for the new exchange will enforce the tax by indelible code
The launch is planned for late 2023
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🔔 Active Investment Opportunities:
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
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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!
If you are an LP or Investor and want to join, please use our VIP COMP CODE.
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.
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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, and Lauren