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- RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖: Dec. 15
RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖: Dec. 15
Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, RBV Fund I Closing & More
Joshua Howard
December 16, 2023
RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖: Dec. 15, 2023
Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, & More
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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 📻:
We sat down with David Perry, CEO and founder of Carro, a B2B SaaS company that enables any e-commerce company to sell products from the world's best brands without spending capital upfront, making inventory commitments, or handling fulfillment. Carro is already working with some of the top brands and companies in the commerce space including NBC, Netflix, Tiktok, Flip, Barstool, Univision and more!
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 dug deep into development and technical considerations. First we had mentor Alex Melville, head of curriculum at Macro; Alex brought a wealth of knowledge to our cohort from his years in developing fault and attack resistant blockchain systems. Josh Siegel, CPO at DFNS came later in the week to go over practical business security for Web3 companies, including multisigs and biometric security. Read more about the past few weeks!
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🚨 TL;DR: This Week in Crypto
This Week:
Fed keeps interest rates steady
Nameless sells product in acquisition
FIFA, Trump release new NFT collections
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🪙 Crypto News:
Jerome Powell and FOMC announced that the rates will remain at 5.25-5.5%
BTC, ETH, and other blue-chips melted upwards immediately after the announcement
More favorable credit conditions allowed more institutional money into crypto markets
Rostin Behnam on CNBC, “Under existing law, many of the tokens constitute commodities”
This is not the first time Behnam supported this view, as he made a similar statement at the Senate Agriculture Committee
He also mentioned that the US needs a new way of thinking regarding policy
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🗃️ Portfolio News:
StealthTest is a Web3 dev platform, toolset, and set of private test networks
Hashlock will integrate the platform to create a fullstack developer suite
Collin Woodward, President of Nameless, called the acquisition “a part of a shared vision to advance Web3”
Menace-X, a modular and fast-deploying secure information network, was deployed in Yuma, AZ
The purpose-built Command Communications (C2) unit is built into a 20ft shipping container and can be deployed from an airdrop by one operator
Marine paratroopers and Menace-X were dropped from a C-17 aircraft, and within minutes were targeting precision rockets and tracking F-18 Hornets in realtime
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💸 NFT Alpha:
The first 100 pieces of the collection will released on FIFA+ Collect and has a chance of tickets to the 2026 finals
The seven teams competing in the cup kicked off on Tuesday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
900 more collectibles will be released of memorable moments from the tournament
Buyers of 47 “Mugshot Edition” cards will receive a card with a slice of Trump’s suit from the arrest
The previous two collections featuring a muscle-bound 45th president sold out
The NFTs are wallet-locked to the buyer until December 31, 2024, after the election
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🔔 Active Investment Opportunities:
Carro: embedded marketplaces for influencers, streamers, and creators
Carro's platform allows anyone to sell products from the world's best brands without spending capital upfront, making inventory commitments, or handling fulfillment.
Rev to date, $2M; 3.x2 GMV growth Sept to Nov; partnered with 20k brands
Investing alongside PayPal Ventures, Alpha Edison, 11:11 Media, and more
Sunn Studio: Rising Star Game Studio Building VR Best-Sellers
Swordsman VR, all-time bestseller game on Playstation VR, has sold 300k units
They are raising their first money, $2.5M at $12M-post to the Epic Games ($15B) of VR
At a profitable $4.8M run rate, we are co-investing with Boost VC, Hartman Capital, and others
Moviepass:The Relaunched Cinema Subscription Platform with Nearly 1M Waitlist
This series A is after the original founders repurchased the company post-acquisition
Investing alongside Animoca, Kelly Ventures, Caritas, and Sand Hill Angels
Est. $100M+ ARR sitting on waitlist for full relaunch
Discord: 175M MAU Communication Platform with IPO Looming
We are acquiring shares at an implied valuation of $6.5B, 56% discount to previous round
Discord previously rejected an acquisition offer for $12B
Expected to cross $640M revenue this year
Exclusive deal with gen AI company Midjourney, only available as a Discord app
Kraken: Secondary Shares for one of the Largest, Oldest Crypto Exchanges
Trusted by over 9M traders worldwide, they are #2 in total spot volume in the US
Shares are trading at implied valuation of $2.1B, a 15x upside against Coinbase
Kraken holds 47% of the top 10 altcoin pair market depth
They are also launching their own own bank, announced in March
Lightship: The Tesla of EV Recreation and Camping Vehicles
The groundbreaking company is raising a Series B round after selling out of 700 towable RV pre-orders at SXSW
Thor Industries, the current leader in conventional RVs, has an order backlog of $18B and a valuation of $5.3B
Like Tesla, everything about a traditional RV has been reimagined to be as efficient, modern, and comfortable as possible
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
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
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!
We hosted another Pickleball event in LA for Founders and Investors - Thank you to everyone who came! Thank you to our sponsors, Sequoia, Escalon Services, and Stifel.
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