RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖Week of 3/22/23

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

Author

Joshua Howard
March 23, 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. 


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

In this week’s episode, Drew and Alex sit down to talk memecoins, Alex’s new merged venture The Truth, Bitcoin halving, and more!

Join us for a weekly dose of investing knowledge and industry expertise.  Subscribe now! →  @red-beard-radio @FewPod

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RBV Spotlight

The OPEN Ticketing Ecosystem, launched in March 2024, aims to bring the $85 billion ticketing industry on-chain, solving inherent problems and restoring control to event organizers, artists, and fans. With a journey dating back to 2016, GET has successfully processed millions of tickets for events worldwide. The ecosystem provides a suite of tools, including an API for ticket issuances, a front-end Wallet UI, an event financing hub, a global ticketing explorer, a subgraph, and a full suite ticketing infrastructure. OPN, the native utility token, fuels all ticketing activity within the ecosystem and rewards stakers with real-world yield sourced from global ticketing activity.

The launch of the OPEN Ticketing Ecosystem brings several initiatives, such as the onchain ticketing movement and manifesto, a roadmap providing insights into the ecosystem's evolution, the OPN token launch and multi-chain expansion across Ethereum, Polygon, Base, Solana, and Tezos, and the onboarding of a large new Integrator to bring significant volume and traction to the ecosystem. The OPEN portal serves as a one-stop-shop for navigating the ecosystem and its possibilities.

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Portfolio News

  • Meowchain has partnered with Celestia and Polygon to support better player experience in Wilder World

  • Celestia will allow Meowchain to leverage modular data for better scaling and performance

  • The partnership with Polygon is using their chain development kit to more easily deploy an L2 that settles on Ethereum

  • Completing an item on their 2024 roadmap, bitsCrunch has indexed all Solana blocks

  • This gives them the ability to support the same NFT analytics and forensics on a new chain

  • Solana users can now check for IP infringement, copyright issues, wash trading, and price estimation

  • Agoric's Orchestration API simplifies building multi-chain apps with automated cross-chain interactions.

  • Five examples: Stablecoin Yield Maximizer, Multi-Chain Vaults, Stake Manager, Swap Aggregator, and Liquidator.

  • Orchestration API builds on web3 interoperability progress, making services accessible to devs and users.

  • The March Madness “Madness Onchain” bracket challenge is partnering with KoD as a minting pools

  • The mint (now closed) allows basketball lovers to compete for a percentage of the prize pool

  • Winners are selected at the end of the season, with points awarded to individuals and teams for making correct round picks

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đź”” Active Investment Opportunities:

Rational Vaccines: developing solutions to globally debilitating problems

  • They are revolutionizing the vaccine industry and developing an HSV vaccine that can impact 4.5 BILLION people globally

  • RVx is using cutting edge technology to edit virus genes, making them harmless

  • Backed by Thiel Capital, Presight Capital, The Madden Family Funds, and more

  • Link to invest

Heights Labs: taking blockchain investigations from days to minutes

  • Their revolutionary AI-backed FLOWS technology digests billions of blockchain connections to find the endpoint of criminal activity

  • In pilot programs with many federal and local law enforcement agencies, totaling over $170M+ in the pipeline

  • Backed by Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Narcissus Ventures, and more

  • Link to invest

BioFire: the world’s first usable biometric smart gun system

  • BioFire uses facial recognition and fingerprint biometrics to ensure the gun cannot be removed or fired unless by an authorized person

  • Round led by Founders Fund, Valhalla Ventures, Draper Associates, and more

  • Shipping their flagship product in the next four weeks; this round will close before then!

  • Link to invest

Travelswap: Denarii Labs Alumni and the Only Crypto-Native Expedia Partner

  • Building the lowest-cost and -friction crypto travel platform, with future token plans developed by Denarii 

  • Backed by RBV and angels, the platform is already post-revenue

  • Link to invest

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

BrandGuard: Safety rails for AI generated content

  • This brand governance platform is able to ensure an AI agent will never generate embarrassing or inaccurate content on behalf of the brand

  • In pilot programs with Amazon, Meta, ThermoFischer, Colgate, Little Caesar’s, and more

  • Backers include Bee partners, Frfly, Argon, Relay Ventures, and Baselayer Ventures

  • 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

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

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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! 

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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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The RBV newsletter is brought to you by Fidelity Private Shares equity administration and cap table solutions: serving founders and their stakeholders throughout the company lifecycle all inside a single platform designed by and for the innovation economy.  Shoobx | Equity Management | Cap Table Solutions | 409A Valuations. Through a partnership with Red Beard Ventures, we are offering a 20% discount to any company that signs up for a paid subscription. For more information, please contact Jason Hammond – [email protected]

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Onwards 🚀 

Drew, Elana, Mitchell, and LaurenÂ