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- RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖Week of 12/22/23
RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖Week of 12/22/23
Team RBV Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, & More
Austin Ritter
December 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.
We would like to thank our LPs for a truly expectation-exceeding 2023, and look forward to a 2024 full of great deals, positive markets, and more great things from the startup space!
In this week's RBV Weekly Newsletter:
📻NEW EPISODE of Red Beard Radio 📻:
Taken from an insightful fireside chat, Drew Austin hosts this discussion with Jarrod Dicker (Partner at TCG Crypto) and EJ Rogers (co-founder at Fourth Revolution Capital) on what investors are seeking in the innovative spaces of crypto and Web3, from current trends to investment strategies, team and product evaluations, and tech perspectives. The topics discussed during this conversation could help shape your approach to fundraising, token design, and product strategy. So, stay tuned and get some expert perspectives with invaluable knowledge for navigating the ever-evolving landscape of investments in the digital realm. Don't miss out on this enriching discussion on this special edition of Red Beard Radio!
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 Jake Craven, head of product from Knights of Degen; Jake brought a wealth of knowledge to our cohort from his years in developing token projects with great benefits to the ecosystem. Andrew Albertson returned later in the week to go over practical options like legal-compliant staking; Oliver Bell of Marfire came in to discuss foundation companies as legal buffers for token issuers. Read more about the past few weeks!
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🚨 TL;DR: This Week in Crypto
This Week:
Super-PAC forms for crypto advocacy
Bitcoin Ordinals move to different chains
ICP works with EU data privacy
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🪙 Crypto News:
EU regulations, previously blocking many dApps from the region, have stringent personal and financial data privacy practices
All nodes in this subnet are located within EU borders, transmit data with EU-compliant encryption, and give users data access controls
In the days since announcement, $ICP has jumped 81%, peaking around $11.50
Farishake, a collection of crypto-positive Political Action Committees raised the amount in the final three months of 2023
The money will be used to fund pro-crypto incumbents’ reelection campaigns
For reference, this puts them at around four times larger than the NRA Super-PAC was in the 2020 election
Hedera Foundation is partnering with Envision, a dApp development company, and the UN climate hub
The purpose of the project is to collect and store millions of points of verified climate impact data, while also giving the tools to manage and extract valuable insights
By having this data, things like carbon credits can be more easily tokenized and exchanged
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🗃️ Portfolio News:
Crabble, by Byte Pitch allows NFT owners to lend in short-term loans
This gives a return to an otherwise idle asset, with rental contracts managed by Crabble
By building on Agoric, the application is able to handle collateral, asset return, listing, and more over multiple chains using the IBC protocol.
The race is open to the top 48 qualifying horses from 12 multi-length races
Top 3 horses from the 4 groups of races qualify for the Grand Finals
Winners receive a VAR Gang skin, with Grand Finals winner receiving a Gold VAR Gang skin and 20% of all entry fees plus 25k-15k $ZED depending on class
Entry fee dependent on class is 0.0045-22 ETH and will race Jan 8-10
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💸 NFT Alpha:
The "inscription" method of creating NFTs and tokens on Bitcoin is spreading to other chains, with market bumps seen for each
Even chains that natively support NFTs are using the novel method, like Ethscriptions, because of much lower gas costs for creating most inscriptions
The transaction-heavy method is creating big spikes in volume - and token price
The platform, which is known for listing BRC-20 tokens and other Bitcoin inscriptions, hit $45M daily volume on Dec 18
This came three days after listing SATS, bringing their BRC listings up to 50
7-day volume on OKX was over three times higher than the entire NFT volume on Ethereum
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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
Sinn 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