RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖Week of 2/9/23

Team RBV Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, & More

Author

Joshua Howard
February 09, 2024

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:

THANK YOU to all that attended the inaugural Red Beard Ventures Summit! We saw hundreds of attendees come from all throughout our network, and wanted to thank our Syndicate LPs directly for their participation.  We hope the event was enjoyable, informative, and valuable to all who attended.

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đź“Ł 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 where we invest $100k into companies interested in designing and launching a token, over a twelve-week hands-on program.

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RBV Media

Thank you everyone for joining us at the Red Beard Ventures Summit this week!  We will be processing all the sessions into video format to post on our youtube channel ASAP.  Until then, you can watch a teaser session!  On day 1 of the summit, we held the panel “DeFi and the Financial Revolution”, hosted by fund principal Mitchell Wilburn.  He was joined by Jerome Faury (CEO, Immersve), Paul Ferguson (Co-founder, Azteco), and Stefan Rust (founder, Truflation).  This talk was very energetic and spanned subjects from TradFi x DeFi, Bitcoin x DeFi, regulation, and more!

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RBV Spotlight

On the Lunar New Year, February 10, SAGA will kick off their tournament gaming fest!  To sponsor and highlight the successes of Web3 gaming and the great performance Web3 games get via their provisioned appchains - or “Chainlets”.  Prolific Web3 gamers will be competing in games from the “Three Kingdoms” of blockchain: Avalanche, Polygon, and Solana.

On Thursday, SAGA hosted a Space on X/Twitter to give more context and details on the tournament.  The games the competitors will be playing are

  • Parallel (on Ethereum)

  • Gas Hero (on Polygon)

  • Phantom Galaxies (on Polygon)

  • Angelic (on Solana)

  • Megaweapon (on Avalanche)

The prizes for each winner include $SAGA airdrop raffles for viewers, and one viewer receiving a .7 ETH floor Parallel Avatar NFT!  Other games are giving away in-game vehicles and items, whitelisted spots in upcoming mints, and more!  The event will be streamed by Web3 gamer Brycent, so be sure and join the stream to see the current state of Web3 gaming!

More information on all the games, prizes, streams, and more can be found on the SAGA Medium page.

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Portfolio News

  • Beginning in February, ZED will be reducing entry fees for all paid races, with 100% going towards player treasury

  • Breeding algorithm is changing to make Class 1 more accessible as well

  • These changes and more will be taking place from Feb 19 to Mar 4

  • The decentralized domain hosting platform has convinced the judge to move forward with their process

  • In 2022, Unstoppable sued a domain registrant for the .wallet secondary (or “handshake”) domain, who then filed a counter-motion to declare .wallet not infringing on that IP

  • Unstoppable had been offering the .wallet blockchain name before the registrant filed their handshake domain

  • CEO Sarah Duggleby was featured on Brian Sullivan’s “Last Call”

  • Sitting down with Contessa Brewer, the founder discussed their revolutionary hypersonic aircraft

  • The aircraft - Stargazer - is a revolution in aerospace engineering, utilizing their groundbreaking Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE)

  • BHBW is a boutique publisher focused on memoirs from America’s complex culture

  • Blue Heron was founded in 2014 by novelist Bathsheba Monk

  • Their best seller - “Before You Go” is a memoir of a hospice nurse working with end-of-life patients

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đź”” Active Investment Opportunities:

Atmos Labs: Web3 Gaming Developer Powerhouse

  • This is the seed extension, receiving both equity and tokens, is supporting the 2024 launch of their flagship game, ExoGP

  • Atomos is building a narrative and economic ecosystem around their game series IP

  • Led by Sora Ventures, Sfermion, GSR, Tectona, and more

  • Link to invest

FranShares: Fixing the Franchise Model

  • They are fixing the operator-to-franchisee model by applying an equity share and crowdfunding model

  • Live today, FranShares has already facilitated $18M in investments with a pipeline of $200M more

  • Backers include Chicago Ventures, VU Venture Partners, and Shawntae Spencer 

  • Link to invest

Deep6 AI: Clinical Trials at Turbo Speed using AI

  • The costliest and longest bottleneck of bringing new health treatments to market is being accelerated by their AI matching system

  • By speeding this delay, Deep6 is able to save billions in revenue, massive drug cost increases, and potentially hundreds or even thousands of lives

  • Backed by Point72, GSR Ventures, Samsung NEXT, 3M ventures, and more

  • Link to invest

Blocklords: GoT Meets Axie - Revolutionizing Play-To-Earn Gaming

  • Blocklords already has 120k pre-registered for their play-to-earn game

  • The medieval-based game allows players to craft their narrative while simultaneously earning cryptocurrency for tasks they complete within the game

  • Blocklords is focusing on delivering value to the user first to build up the user base and ecosystem first - This approach seems to be working by their massive sign-up and connection numbers

  • Bitscraft, Delphi Digital, and Animoca Brands are all investing

  • Token sale: SAFT, $100M FMV

  • Link to Invest

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

  • Link to invest

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

  • Link to invest

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

  • Link to invest

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🥳 Upcoming Events: 

Events are a great way to stay informed in our industry, so we are planning for a very full 2024. 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! 

This year we will be attending ETH Denver on February 29 through March 3! If you are interested in meeting, please let us know by emailing our chief of staff Lauren at [email protected].

Red Beard Ventures ETH Denver 2023 dinner

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🤝 We are hiring! 

Red Beard Ventures is seeking a Venture Capital Intern to join our team. The intern will focus on identifying and evaluating potential investment opportunities, writing deal memos, and helping with the operations of the syndicate and fund. This internship spans 6 to 12 months, requiring at least 20 hours per week of remote work. For those interested in this position, here is a link to our application.

We are also 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 LaurenÂ