RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖Week of 05/03/24

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. 

📣 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 Spotlight

Azuro Protocol, a tooling, oracle & liquidity solution for EVM chains to host powerful predictions, betting & games apps. crossed over $95,000,000+ in total volume, $3,000,000+ in total revenue, and over $710,000 monthly revenue in the Month of April! The firm recently raised an $11mm round after raising $7.5mm in 2022 with Red Beard participation. The platform has seen unprecedented growth due to rapid responsiveness to underlying demand (launched v3 this year), onboarding new projects at a growing pace (25 live on the platform to date), and strong core technology partners (The Graph, Gnosis, deBridge, etc). The firm is now the largest protocol by revenue on Polygon PoS. Congrats to the team! 

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Portfolio News

Layer Zero announces integration with Omni Chain Yield Market Place Superform

• LayerZero Labs in an interoperability protocol which enables developers to build omnichains dApps. The firm integrates across 50+ blockchains and counting. 

• Superform is a universal yield marketplace which enables developers to deploy a vault to any chain and users to deposit into any chain after opting in to Sueprform. 

• Superform has used LayerZero for over 45k cross chain messages on vaults in early access

Alethea AI deploys Emote Engine within ALIAgents on Base

• Althea AI is a decentralized AI company that produces tools at the center of human-computer interaction (HCI) and generative AI.  

• The protocol created the first intelligent NFT (iNFT) that sold on Sotheby’s for $478,800 on June 10, 2021.

• The Emote Engine of Alethea AI powers the high-fidelity facial animations and body movements of ALIAgents’ onchain AI agents, deployed on Coinbase’s Base blockchain. 

Aunt Flow launches partnership with Bush International Airport in Houston

• Aunt Flow stocks 100% organic cotton menstrual products in business and school bathrooms. The firm has expanded to a critically needed area: airports. 

• While free tampons and other period products have been available at Houston Airports in the past, the ability to track whether vending machines were full or restocked has been extremely limited 

• The TRAX Analytics SmartRestroom technology integrated with the Aunt Flow dispensers allows the airport to monitor and refill supply in real time, as well as predict demand.

Anduril Secures Partnership with US Air Force

• On Wednesday, The US Air Force announced that Anduril will be one of two companies to move forward in building Collaborate Combat Aircrafts (CCAs)

• Anduril Industries specializes in the development of advanced aerial, amphibious, and other autonomous systems. CCA’s are intended to work alongside manned aircraft, and are crucial in the US DoD plans for next-generation warfare. 

SpaceX Launches 23 Starlink satellites into low earth orbit (LEO)

• SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on last Tuesday carrying 23 starlink internet satellites for immediate deployment. 

• There are nearly 5,800 operational Starlink satellites in LEO at the moment

• This was SpaceX’s 48th launch of 2024 and 21st dedicated to expanding its Starlink fleet 

Alexandria Labs launches integration with Base

• Alexandria Labs is a platform for book publishers, allowing publishers to produce limited edition E-books.

• Base is the first L1 added since the project began on Ethereum in 

• Earlier this year the firm announced a partnership with Blue Heron Books to expand its catalog

Azuro finalizes pre-launch round, bringing total funding to $11M

• The pre-launch round raised $3M from investors

• RBV participated in this and past rounds, with the most recent valued at $85M FMV

• $AZUR token TGE is listed as “soon”

• Last week Azuro announced a partnership with Sendpicks

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🔔 Active Investment Opportunities:

Airstack: Leading the SocialFi movement on Farcaster 

• Airstack is the easiest way to build composable blockchain applications and a leader in building on Farcaster 

• More than 1000 development teams build with Airstack’s industry leading tools including Coinbase Wallet, OnceUpon, XMTP, Drakula, Karma3, Degen Chain, Cropsxyz, and many more.

• Over 40,000 Farcaster users have earned “Not A Token” and over $3M of transactions took place on Farcaster in Airstack’s Trending Swaps Frames in April 2024 alone

• 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

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

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

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, Thermo Fischer, Colgate, Little Caesars, 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

Texas Ranchers: Premier franchise in rapidly growing sector of Pickleball

• The Texas Ranchers were one of the founding 8 teams of MLP in 2021.

• Founded by Austin Tech Banker Tim Klitch and oil and gas entrepreneur Bryan Sheffield, the Ranchers had two strong finishes in the 2022 season, which included winning two major national tournaments

• Ownership group includes Grammy award-winning artist Zach Bryan, #1 ranked golfer in the world Scottie Scheffler, All-pro NFL star Micah Parsons, NFL DPOY Myles Garrett, award-winning artist Lil Wayne, Taylor Fritz, Bobby Bones, Kendra Scott and others. 

• Link to invest: 

FHEnix (FHE Labs): Groundbreaking encryption capabilities in smart contracts 

• FHEnix is introducing groundbreaking native encryption capabilities into smart contracts using Fully Harmonic Encryption (FHE).

• FHEnix's core offering, the fhEVM, is a set of EVM extensions that allows dApp developers on Ethereum and other EVM chains to create the next generation of encrypted smart contracts without requiring new cryptographic expertise.

• FHEnix boasts a world-class team of cryptographers, blockchain experts, and entrepreneurs which includes the former CTO of Zama, former VP of Eng at Scrt Labs, and others

• 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! 

We will be at Consensus, and Bitcoin Nashville, please email [email protected] if you plan to be there too!

Stay tuned for updates on future events, and until then, keep spreading joy and positivity in our community!

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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, Joshua, and Lauren