#16 Fundraising for your Web3 Startup featuring Game7 DAO

This is a live recording of our question / answer session hosted within the Game7 DAO around fundraising best practices for your Web3 game. 

We took live questions from the audience and had our guest panel provide their answers.

Our original guest had issues joining, so the flow may be a bit weird at times, but overall a very informative session!

Helpful links:
Gaming Startup Collective Discord - https://discord.com/invite/FHZzMfBBqa
Game7 Discord - https://discord.gg/g7dao
Guest Speaker 0xJoshua - https://twitter.com/0xJoshuaSL

Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/GamingStartUp_

Transcript

0:00

Do your own question. Oh, yeah, sure. All right. So, um, so, uh, not a lawyer and not an accountant and, um, the advice that I give is not particularly, um, it's just being recorded, uh, it, it is being recorded. Yes. Okay. Then I'll, all right. Then now I know how to answer my questions. All right. What was the question that this asshole asked So he, wait. Before we get into that, uh, before we get into the questions, um, we had a suggestion in the chat if Nick Mika would be, uh, open to coming on Google Meet and someone can stream, oh, that's an idea. Um, here, Josh, why don't you answer that question for yourself and then I'm gonna try and see if we get him on a Google meet and maybe I can share my screen. I don't answer my own question. I want Miko to answer my question. Um, we can do a. Do you need a streaming software? I have a streaming software. Um, it's okay. Let me, let me try this Google meets thing. And if it doesn't work, I don't want to waste his time or everyone else's time. Especially if we can get some of the basic things answered, you know. Um, but here, I'll try this. Go ahead and answer that question, and if I can't get it sorted, then we'll scrap it. The Miko part. Yeah, maybe we can, uh, bounce over to Jordan's question, and then over to Spidey's. Do you see it, Josh? Yes. Although I don't have experience investing in games, so I don't want to give bad advice here. Completely fine. I'll give what you can, and if the question is not appropriate for you, we can just move on to the next. Maybe a more general one, like Spidey asking, like... Does the pitch deck really matter? Uh, it depends. It depends on the investor you're in front of. Everybody has their own kind of corpse. Like you'll see if you go on like VC Twitter, like some people will be like, Oh, it's about the warm intro. And some people be like, yeah, the pitch deck needs to be perfect. It really depends on who your audience is and who you're, who you're, um, trying to talk to. Um, for, for me, the pitch deck doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to get across the information that I'm looking for. There, there are like some finer things of like, um, if you've got 10 decks in front of you and you're only allowed to make 2 deals, like, 1 of the things that you can do to check to, like, whittle it down is like, does this deck have typos? It's like, if they didn't, if they didn't put the care into preparing the deck. With, you know, decent English structure, um, or like overlapping, you know, if it doesn't look as a good presentation, like, is the product going to turn out that well, it's kind of like a first, like, easy test. Um, I've never dinged someone that hard for having a, for not having a deck or for, um, for having not a perfect one, but if your project does entail and, you know, a lot of, a lot of companies do require pitch decks, uh, even to open up conversation with them. Uh, in the expert Q and a Spidey, uh, we've had several people, uh, share their pitch decks, um, and get some feedback, uh, and practical next steps to improve it. Uh, we have Delroy in the audience as well. I know he's reviewed a bunch and he's helped a bunch as well. Uh, I think Jordan has offered his pitch decks for review. Um, I think he was helped out, uh, with reviewing as well. So that's an option for you. I know this is, you know, this is not the perfect answer that you were looking for, but, uh, yeah, this is something that we can help out with it with. And, you know, in the meantime, and we can bring me go back another time for you to get a more straightforward, a more blunt response to your question. I don't know if I don't know if a blunt responses. I mean, like, yes, but you do want to hear from multiple people because. Like, every part of my, it depends is every investors going to answer that question differently. Like, obviously, you should try to put your best foot forward. So I, I have a question that's come up a couple of different times. Um, so if you're a founder who doesn't have a network, like, like, say that you're bootstrapped. And now it's at the point where you need capital to hit your next major milestone. So it's time to meet some angels, right? Like if you're a founder without a network at all, how would you recommend they find angels and kind of start that conversation? That's a good question. Um, I've met a few founders who've had this problem. The, one of the common answers I get, um, when offers is to go out and build that network. It's kind of like a first, like early tell if like nobody, like some people, they see they like, Oh, this is a stellar founder. They've got a thing. It's a slam dunk. Like they'll want to be that first money in the door, but often a lot of, a lot of investors don't want to, they FOMO and so they'll want to like, they'll invest because other people are investing. Right. Um, and this is part of the. Um, warm intro, cold intro dilemma conundrum is like, if you can't find yourself a way to get a warm intro, like how are you going to be able to build a team? Like, how are you going to find the, how are you going to network to find the employees who are going to come work for you? Um, there's a ton of meetups in most cities. Like you can find, um, actually don't know about gaming meetups. I bet there are, there's a lot of web three meetups. Um, so it's almost like my city has a bad, I was going to say, and I've heard this before, but it's almost like a, um, and this might sound harsh, but it's almost like a, a filter, right? Like, it is like, if you, if you're not scrappy enough to go out and like, blunt force your way into a network or build relationships with people to like, help your project succeed, that could be a really strong indicator that. Like, maybe you just don't have the skill set quite yet to have a successful startup, which is, you know, there's, there's been millions of amazing products built, but the difficult part is connecting it to a customer user base or partners that that would value it, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Um, um, these discords, this is like, this is another good community. Um, like one of the, one of the things that's really important is to get yourself out there, but like in person and like on these calls. All right. So I was finally able to connect with Miko, still having challenges with the discord stuff. So I'm gonna have to get him in at another time. He texted me, it seems that there's a, um, uh, on one of the pages, it wanted him to enter a password. And I was like, I think that's probably just an ad and he just needs to find a different button. Oh, that's hilarious. Okay. So we got a bunch of questions piling through here. Let's see, uh, see if we've missed any. Um, do you recommend building a game demo to ask for funding? Or is it better to get feedback first, iterate on that, and then build out a demo. This is from HD Oliver's. Hope I pronounced that right. Um, yeah, Josh, I guess, do you want to take a first crack at that one? So not from a game specific, but from like a product. So it depends on the round and like how much you're asking for and what you're asking for. Um, the, a lot of, uh, I'm helping a company right now in Austin raise, um, a pre seed and a lot of the investors we talked to were like, you need, you should probably be doing a seed and have an MVP ready for us. And so that's kind of like the difference of, like, how much money, how much of your company are you willing to give away early on? Um, some of the, like, the earliest checks, they're going to take a little bit more, but will help you to get that MVP. Whereas, um, if you've got the resources to be able to put an MVP together, um, then you can, you can skip that, like, pre see your friends and family and try to do like a proper seed round. Um, and that's kind of, it's just kind of. The answer to almost every question is going to be, it depends because no, no 2 situations are the same. You've got 1 founder who's got a million in the bank and they're doing a 2nd thing versus a founder who's. You know, washing dishes, trying to like break into the tech scene. I'm like, they're not going to be able to approach the same problem the same way. I'll I'll add onto that too. So in the gaming startup collective, we've had a couple, uh, web three VCs and web three gaming founders kind of talk about the process and what they've shared is. Like you yourself need to determine what your MVP is. Like, don't let the investors dictate that to you. Um, and then you need to find investor partners who align with like your vision is behind that. Right. And so for some teams, if you've shipped games before, maybe you don't have to create. Like a playable alpha to prove that you can do it. If it's your first time shipping a game or like your, your founder team or like first time founders, then maybe you would need to prove more in terms of your capability in order to be successful in your fundraising. Um, all right, moving through here. Trancy, Trancy said, is it much harder to raise for a pre seed round versus a token round? Hmm. And you know, I think a broader question to that is, are VCs still doing token rounds? I thought it flipped to, uh, equity. Um, I'm going to give my favorite answer here. It depends. Oh. Um, I, so I like, again, I think it depends on, um, like who you're, who you're trying to raise from. Like, what arena like, and whether like, what's in demand. So like, uh, about a year ago, all the crypto VCs were like, trying to get into AI and they were trying to buy up what they could. So it's kind of, it's a founders market, right? So the founder can sell whatever they want. Um, and then I also think there's a difference between trying to raise from, like, 1 of the big guys versus. You know, like some Russian with 5, 000, 000 dollars. It's like, oh, I have a VC. Um, we do we do token deals or a Dow that's just doing doubted Dow investments. And they're not able to take equity. They're only able to do token deals. I was doing that for a long while, in which case you're doing token token warrants. If you don't have a token yet, um. And then you're, you know, you have the U. S. non U. S. question, which is if you're going to exclude Americans, the preference, maybe to just go off and sell a token, you know, that you're not going to be regulated by the, so it's, it's, it's, it depends, um, and what the appetite is among the. You know, like, what stage you are and the investors that you have at your fingertips. You know, I think that's, uh, maybe that's not the answer we all want to hear, but I think that's the best answer is that it's really quite different. What did you want to hear? I can change my answer. No, man. No, we want, we want the hard hitting facts. That's a joke. Well, I don't know if there are facts because there's so, there's so much subjectivity and like I haven't built a unicorn, right? And I haven't been on the VC side of investing in a unicorn. Not yet. So, like, it's all subjective. I guess that's the beauty of these conversations is we can pick little pieces off from everybody and hopefully get pointed in the general correct direction. All right. Cruising through here. Uh, so Grand Marquis had a question. Now, I'm wondering if the first part may have been addressed to Mikko, who again, we had some challenges with, but, uh, he said, you're investing in projects across several verticals in Web3. What did these projects, especially at an early stage, have in common that gave you conviction to invest? And then his follow on question was, are you more prioritizing team or are you more prioritizing product market fit? Good questions. Um, Josh, do you want to correct those? I'll just give you, yeah, I'll just give the Buffcorn Ventures answer real quick. Um, we focus significantly more on team and what we believed in this team to be, these teams to be capable of rather than, um, Worrying about product market fit because like we only invest in first money in the door. So it's precede it's like these are hackathon and like the whole point of it is quit your job, go build the hackathon project that you just won, you know, 20, 30 grand with. And, like, spend 6 months to a year building it. Um, and so it's more about experimentation in the ecosystem and trying to build building blocks that that may be able to do something for the ecosystem, be a positive effect for good. Um, so inside of our pieces, it's not so much like. Do we think you have a good idea? It's more of like, um, you as a founder, do you have a positive track record? Did you assemble a team around you that is also willing to quit their jobs and is competent? You know, Lang code and it's going to show a lot of these, a lot of these cases in, in crypto, in crypto investing, like you'll find a team and you've got a deck. That's got 12 people listed on a deck. Um, and like nine of them have full time jobs somewhere else. And so it's like, uh, okay, what am I actually investing in? This is so, it's so common and it's, it's like one of the questions you have to ask people. It's like, okay, I have these people like run through your roster. Who's working on this whole time. Um, and that can be like, 1 of the most important questions that you get asked. Um, when you're when you're raising funds, like, don't just throw people on because you think the name or, like, I got thrown on a deck once because I worked at consensus. And this guy was like, no, no, no, I want you on my I want you on my side, because you work for consensus. It'll add weight to the thing. It's like, that's not no, no, it won't promise a month. Um, so there's. I'll give another, it depends. Or did I answer that one? No, man, you crushed it, but I have a followup on it then. So, so you talked about like founding team members or equity owners having working full time jobs or maybe in multiple startups, I'm curious, like, what is your due diligence process look like when like a debt comes across your desk and you're trying to validate, okay, are these guys like all in, or are they like half in half out? Like, what does that process typically look like? What does the due diligence process look like? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Usually just asking questions. People don't usually lie about that stuff. Um, especially because if you lie on due diligence, like you can, like, those are, those are legal problems. Like you're going to court and you're probably going to lose. Um, you can't lie to investors. Um, I can't remember the exact someone here. I want to help me out on what's the, like, there's like, the SEC is like, real strict about lying to investors. You just cannot do it. Um, that's why a lot of these calls are recorded. Um, yeah, just ask the questions. Um, there's some like, LinkedIn digging, like, there's nothing wrong with in web 3, like. I have three different part time jobs right now. Right. And I'm, I'm probably on at least one or two decks that are raising this. It's a part of part of the ecosystem and how it works. It's just like, uh, as a founder, when you're answering these questions, don't oversell someone's participation because you think it'll serve the narrative. It'll come back to bite you. Be, be, be honest. It would be my advice. It kind of feels like for a lot of this. It boils down to relationship building. You know, um, being trustworthy forthright, you know, admitting the fact that maybe you don't have all the answers, um, and that you're looking for a partner to fill in your blanks. Yeah, that's definitely a big part of it. And then another thing to consider is investors that you bring on to your, your seed round, especially if it's not just like all angels, um, is like, these are your partners. That are going to be around for a while, like the, the, you, okay, I don't know if I want to give this as financial advice, but like, you shouldn't just go out and look for investors that are just going to write a check and fuck off. Um, because they're not going to help you. There's no value add there. Like, anybody can write you a check. Right, but you want someone who's like, like, industry specific. And or has some sort of like ability to help you hire, um, and can connect you to their other portfolio companies and et cetera. Right. Um, but most importantly. You're probably going to have to raise again. And so if you're not being honest with the people you are raising in the 1st round, like, they're not going to follow on and they're probably going to tell their friends not to follow on. When you go to raise again, if you lie to them, the VC community is super tight. Um, and I know this because I'm on that outside and I don't get invited, I don't get invited to the cool kid table. Um, but they all talk, all of them talk. I feel like you should be at the cool kid table, man. Like the whole buff of corn, like come on, man. What are they doing? They need to, they need to open the door, let you slide through We have our own Cool Kid Club Um, but like we, our, our, our checks are like 50 to$250,000. Um, and so they, the cool Kid Club is like when you're writing a million dollar checks, you know, we're not there yet, but we will be soon. Okay. So, so this is gonna take me on another somewhat relevant tangent. For the people who don't know. Can you explain. Where VCs get their money from, and it may be like some of their concerns or considerations around how they deploy it, like Um, the frequency that they have to deploy the returns that are expected from the people they've taken the money from just for folks who maybe aren't familiar with how that side of the coin works. Sure. Um, here's another classic Josh. It depends. Um, so let me start with, with, there is like a clear answer here, but it also depends. So Buff Corn Ventures, um, is very specifically. All right. So the easy answer is, uh, other people's money. Um, of the person who is like in these meetings is not usually writing over their own money. It is the case that some VCs are invested in their own funds. Most of them do have to have some skin in the game. Um, so there's, there's limited partners and then there's general partners. Um, the LPs are usually the ones who, um, they'll write a check to join the fund, but they don't take an active participation. Okay. In in any of the like investing in due diligence stuff, they'll just kind of read reports. Um, some are more active than that, of course. Every VC is different. So this is why it's a broadly inside of the answer of it depends. Um, and then you've got GPs who, um, who generally do have to write a check and it varies by size of fund and type and whatever. Um, so that they do have skin in the game. So they're not just like signing away other people's money. And a lot of the guys and women who are involved in these deals get something that's called a carry in which, um, if they make an investment deal and you take off and you have another round and then that's it. And everybody gets money. Everybody gets rich. Um, they're getting a cut of that. And so they, they very specifically like, so they've got. You know, their day job where they've got a, um, a heavy plate of, they've got to take X amount of meetings and write X amount of memos and make X amount of deals per year. But they also have to make sure that they're making good deals because if they invest in all duds, they're not making that variable comp and that's, that's where they get rich is, is investing in the right deals and being able to carry and, and, um. And make that that big, um, those bonuses, right? Um, so that answers 1 side of the question. Um, with popcorn ventures, we did a couple of the major web 3 companies and Dallas gave us grants. And the rest are so, um, like, harmony wrote a 500, 000 dollar grant, meaning they don't have any investment into the fund. They don't have any, like, economic rights to the fund, but they just want to support the ecosystem. And then you've got, like, near and polygon and and a bunch of smaller angels. I don't think Nico joined that. So he's not here to defend himself. So I'm not going to, um, the, maybe next year. Um, and so basically anybody who invested in the fund, like we did it all on chain. So the money's in a Dow and, um. If at any point the LPs wanted to withdraw their funds, they could, they could rage quit a pro rata amount of what's left in the fund, which is, uh, we, we did an on chain thing, which is unique. It's particularly it's, it's not common. Um, but anybody who, who joined that Moloch DAO has access to the discord and the charm verse, um, um, and actually summon soon, uh, when that, I don't know. This is not public, so this stays here. In the recording. It's public. Yeah, it's, it's public in the recording. By the time this comes out, or if this ever gets reproduced, it'll be public. So it's, I mean, we're like weeks away from the point. Um, but, uh, Buffcorn Ventures is going to use Summon, which you guys all used here to become citizens. Um, like me. I love being a citizen. It's one of my favorite things. Um, to like token gate access to deal memos and that kind of stuff. Um, and some of the bigger funds do something similar, just off chain. I know it's like Google drive and stuff like that. Did I answer the whole question? Yeah, no, you really did. You crushed it. You crushed it. Um, other people's money. OPM. Always remember that. Other people's money. So, okay. So in that, in that dynamic, like where we've lived through a pretty deep bear, a lot of those. Limited partners maybe don't have as much capital as, uh, as they did. Yeah. And so like, I imagine that makes the job of a VC very stressful because you're trying to squeeze, you know, lemons out of a rock in the market. You got the people who gave you the money, you know, maybe needing that in a lot of cases, in a lot of cases, they actually don't even have the money yet. Um, and this is what 1 of the cascading problems from the FTX, uh, kind of, well, started with Luna, but the FTX contagion, this is 1 of the problems. So, um, when, when someone like, here's a good example, uh, uh, bankless ventures just raised the 30M dollar fund. That doesn't mean that 30M dollars. Is sitting in a bank account somewhere because, and I don't remember the exact details from the deck, but um, the capital calls are like 10%, 30%, 30%, 30% or something like that. Which means that like to close the fund and have the deal, like have it ready to go, they only needed of that 30 million, 3 million sitting in a bank account.'cause they only called 10% of the commitments. And as time goes by. Those commitments are called and they're able to deploy more capital in these deals. So what happens during, during this bear market? Um, and this is all like conjecture, not all conjecture. It's somewhat conjecture. A lot of the funds that were operating in the space were actually, they were, yeah, mile milestone based commitment. That's a good going to camper. Um, a lot of the funds were actually storing their commitments in FTX. And so when Sam went on the spending spree, like was investing all these politicians, it was with these funds money, um, allegedly, um, 1 of the things that we'd like, it's still being shaken out that a lot of these funds, like, have not. Like the, I think that they're maybe hiding it from their investors a little bit because they're just waiting, um, to see if they can get the money back before they have to start getting into some shit. Um, but like, it's, you know, I can't say definitively that's what's happening because it's, it's conjecture. It's we, we assume, um, that all of this capital not being deployed is not being deployed because it can't be deployed because it's not there anymore. Um, and this also happened with like Genesis and BlockFi. And so. Um, like the funds that were, that were storing their funds on chain. Absolutely fine. Still deploying capital because they were self custodying their money and they were, they were living their values. And this is another 1 of the things that you want to like, pay attention to, especially like gaming industry. If you're raising from the gaming industry, still going to be banking and wires, probably. Right. But if it's like web 3 niche gaming, and like, when you say, hey, you can send the USBC to this multisig and they're like, no, we only send wires. It's like, maybe is that a red flag? I don't I don't know, I don't invest in the space specifically to be able to say if that's a red flag or not. But, um, to me, it would be, I don't I don't like people who can't use us. D. C. it's too easy. Can you expand on that a little bit? Like, what's your fear or concern in that situation? Um, my concern. Because I'm a decentralization maximalist rather than a gamer maximalist, which I'm in the process of converting. I was like, um, yeah, my concern would be that like, if you're trying to build a web three game and you take money from pure like gaming industry, like, I mean, it's on them for writing the check, but like, maybe they won't be as on board with the web three stuff. And so, you know, the next time the SEC does some sort of bullshit regulatory crackdown that. That we all know isn't going anywhere, but it spooks them and they're like, no, you got to pivot. You got to cut the web three stuff out. Like, are you going to buckle to the investor that has 20 percent of your cap table? Or are you going to, you know, you, I mean, you don't want to, you don't want to put yourself, and this goes back to the question that I asked because I wanted Nico to answer, um, how do you involve more of the community? Um, I'm, I'm part of two very large communities that, um. Don't have investors who can dictate terms doesn't have investors. It doesn't have investors. They, it does have investors, but investors that don't have governance rights. Because the way the cooperative was designed, the members. The citizens of the cooperative have that, that. That power and so we don't have that that issue doesn't come up and when we get further deeper into this next cycle and the deal starting structure and becomes a founders market again right now, it's a bear market. Everyone's struggling for oxygen. Right? Um, but once, you know, everybody and their mom is deploying smart contracts and they're raising money and it's like. It'll, it'll, the money will be flowing much easier once, you know, ETH is back at 4, 000 because instead of having to write a 10 ETH check, I'm able to write a three ETH check. You know what I mean? Um, like the, the, the founders will be able to dictate terms a little bit better. And, um, I think we should be really focusing on these like web three terms that, um, empower the community rather than empower. Investors now, obviously it's, it's their capital and they should be able to deploy it how they want. And, you know, we live in a capitalist society. Um, I know I said it with a tone, but what we do, we live in a capital society where, like, they can put their money into treasuries at 5 percent or they can take a risk on your game and your company and, and potentially, you know, 10 X, 100 X, 500 X. Um, and that's a risk that they're taking. So they have every right to try to dictate terms. Um, but you have to remember it's your company and you should be dictating terms. That's my financial, not financial advice. Boom. Boom. All right. So we got three minutes here. Uh, 12, 08 AM. I am so sorry. I, uh, I was thrown off my game by, uh, by the struggle to get me go on. I just realized you're on the stage. Who's on the stage? 1208 a. m. Yeah. So, oh, I'm like, it's not that time. It's like, well, 45. How little you think of me, man. Come on. Come on, Joshua. I know. Nice to meet you. 1208 I'll take a seat. Yeah, so, um, Brian, to your earlier question about, you know, what can people do if they are working on a project, they're coming into this space without a network, uh, what can you do to, he left, uh, but what can you do to expand your network and, like, have more reach? Um, and 12Away, he, you know, he joined the Game 7 Discord and he wanted to share a story of, like, how he was able to meet people and, like, get him off the foot. And if we have time, maybe we can bring Jordan on the table as well. Um, I think he has a, he's had a lot of Positive experiences and he's, he's been able to leverage the game seven community, uh, in a way that works for him and is fun for him. Um, so if we have time and if he wants, yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. Go away. Is your, is your mic working? We can't hear you if you're talking just blame all the technical difficulties on me. It's it's all it's all no autos fault You're good, man. We, we live and we learn and we've, we've run into discord issues in the past too. So like we've had to move our like 40 percent calls onto Google meets to make sure to include everyone. So 1208, make sure that your computer settings are the same as your discord settings because my, those will always get screwed up and I have to go into both and make sure that they're connected to my headphones because I'm a stupid boomer. You know, Discord audio is incredibly annoying and frequently, like it'll, it'll pop up that, uh, hello everyone, it'll pop up that, you know, it'll pop up a notification saying like, Oh, we've detected something new. Do you want to change? And like, the answer is no, but it makes you think you want to say yes. I think it's working now. Hey, there you go. Oh, I'm so sorry about that. I'm like, what the hell is going on here? But okay, I'll just introduce myself. I'm, I'm from the perspective of like a developer. I do have a question or two. Um, I did, I guess I can share a little background. I find myself, uh, producing this game. I've been working on it for like a year and a half or two. Um, I've been working with some partners for the whole time that I've been Putting it out there in the world, um, we're preparing ourselves to release, um, the demo, uh, basically beta 1. 0, uh, next month and then, uh, continue developing through next year. But like I mentioned, I'm in a peculiar place where, um, I've gotten some significant interest from partnerships in the last couple of years. Um, I landed a third partner recently. Uh, I see him in the crowd right now. Uh, how you doing Delroy? But, um, what I just wanted to ask was like. Or here. The way I got connected through my partners thus far was I approached them with offering them a service that they needed, which was, you know, graphics, um, three D animations. And and that's how I approached them as far as them getting to know me as a person and as a worker. So, um, that opened the doors for me with Moda Dow, and they brought me in as, um, their metaverse experience designer. So what I did is I you. Very quickly in six months, uh, put together a metaverse and decentralized for them. Uh, last year, uh, we hit the meta, uh, metaverse music festival in 2022. Uh, we had like over 50 performances. So we had like a really ambitious space where, um, I really hit the. Hit the nail on the head as far as trying to make an EDM centered, um, space within the central end. So we were going for a warehouse type party, and they were really happy with all of that, and that gave me a chance to work with them for over a year, which then led to our Business partner relationship, right? Uh, they knew I was working on this game the whole time. I kept it in my back pocket and on the weekends. And then when, uh, after a year came up, uh, we started talking about like what I was doing with my game on the side. And we started talking more as far as partnership goes. And that's been the last three or four months or five months now. Um, and so we're coming to the close of the year. Um, we're preparing to release and show everything that I've been working on, uh, and start. Gathering our community, of course, um, but like this is where I find myself, um, uh, I have no runway left with my team, but we've put together a whole product where it includes character NFTs, um, token collecting, um, and the whole thing is based around this music game, right? So, um, that's how I gained trust with someone to give me, you know, money and partnership and guidance, because that's been the main thing that I've been learning from these guys. After these like year and a half or two is all the business side of things, um, which I was completely ignorant to before. Right? Um, and so, uh, what's interesting these days is, um, I've obviously got a couple of really good partnerships that not only fit the game, but like are going to open up doors for me as far as music and the music industry. Um, and what I, what I'm wondering right now is, um, before we start pitching to angel investors, uh, what, Okay. Is an angel investor, like the best strategy to move forward with the particular position I'm in, where we have the product built, we're working in all the marketing stuff, um, or runways is over, but, um, we want to put out the product late this year, early next year, and I'm trying to strategize as to what would be the best way to attract not only an investor, but like, obviously have them giving me the maximum amount of investment money and how to convince them to do that. Now, I was going to ask, should I put. The demo on the market for anyone to play. Should I keep it gated? Um, so that only people who invest money into the project get to play it. Or, um, is there any other strategy for me to like take this company to the next step, uh, so that we can have a community and the funding they're in place. Right. I know it was a heavy question, but if anybody has any advice, I would really appreciate it because that's where I find myself going from 2023 to 2024. So I don't know this well in the music and gaming industry specifically, um, but like, you sound like you're a perfect candidate for an incubator and there's a, there's a lot of incubators out there that Inc. That wanna see. Yeah. They, they want to see like, at least some sort of product. So you're kind of ahead of the game. Mm-Hmm. um, like, like why Y Combinator like the biggest and most well known. And then there's the other ones that are like, we are not Y Combinator. Um, I know Techstars does, does a decent. Um, like I would be wary of some of the smaller incubators that like over promise and under deliver, but some of the bigger names are, I mean, they'll take what 7 percent of the company or something, but like, yeah, the, um, where, where are you based if you don't mind saying. I'm in Los Angeles, California. Okay. Yeah, there's a lot out there. California is a mecca for incubation. That's good. That's that's that would be my first. Anybody else want to take a shot? Incubations. Thanks, man. Wrote all this down. Um, I guess just, uh, just a quick comment. It's really exciting at what stage you're at. Um, yeah, it's super exciting, man. Like, I see all these opportunities. I just don't know where we're going next. Yeah, there's yo. Oh, I was just going to throw in a piece of an answer, which is, um, I can't really think of a situation in which players having played your game is unhelpful to getting into an incubator, getting investment or anything, literally. Um, that's kind of the number one thing, unless someone here can think of, you know, a reason you wouldn't want that. That's how I felt so far because I'm so close to releasing this thing that like, I feel like that's the last piece I need to put out to convince like the next VC, right? Or like the next, uh, investor or whatever it is, incubator, um, to see some revenue numbers, right? And some analytics. Yeah, exactly. Um, and. You know, if the game is fun, but the numbers are low, what matters is, you know, the, the people who are playing it, what's their engagement with it? Like, what's the, you know, re repeat players and stuff like that. Cause anyone can understand, like, if you just haven't had money to scale and market yet, right. That you can get there and they can help you. So it's like, you know, focus on those players and like how much retainment you get and how many players are on there. All those things are great numbers. Yeah. Cool. Thanks, man. You know, another thing might be interesting to look at 2 is, um, outside of fundraising. A lot of the chains are creating grant programs. Now, it won't give you, like, a year's runway, but it could give you 3 months if there's a major milestone that if you hit. Now, instead of raising, let's say a 1, 000, 000 dollars. Now you raise like 3, 000, 000 dollars because you've proven more. So that could be something to explore as well. Yeah, we actually started with grant applications. It's only been a few months. Um, I've gotten some. Kickbacks, but they've only led to talks that haven't led to, you know, movement, but they're still open. So I'm, I'm really hoping I can still get a grant or two. Um, but I think, um, next month when we actually put the trailer out and we've announced our partnerships and everything, hopefully, um, I can. Come back to them and say, Hey, like, what's, what's up? Like, we're going to move forward with a couple of their chains. Hopefully they're interested in moving forward with us. But if not, then like, you know, I need to just keep moving ahead. Um, it's just that they are some pretty big names. It's just, it's just still a bear market, you know? So, um, it's been tough getting grants thus far. Just know you're not alone. Uh, I talked with a lot of builders and it's, it's the same experience kind of all the way around. Um, no, there's, yeah, there's a little solidarity there for sure. So we have. We've kind of ran ran over sorry, June, but I think the conversation has been great. And I think, like, the amount of discussion around it is kind of proven that this is a topic that's. That's top of mind for, for a lot of y'all. Um, sorry that we couldn't get Miko here. It sounds like we're going to reschedule and I'll definitely kind of share that with June and the team. See if we can get that set up here in the G7 discord. Um, two kind of calls to action real quick. One suggestions. So like there's additional guests you would like to have these types of spaces hosted. With or discussions you'd like to explore, um, tag the G7 team, let them know. And then also, if you haven't checked it out yet, uh, game seven released pretty big, uh, massive, important research report, uh, just yesterday. called the uh, Game 7 State of Web 3 Gaming Report. And it gives you like a deep, deep dive into like the current trends of the industry and maybe how you can structure your startup around it to be even more successful than you would have been, uh, potentially without. That, that, those insights and information. Yeah, June just posted right there. Uh, yeah. Helios, have you hosted podcast? Yeah, man. Come on, you don't know about my podcast, bro? Come on, man, I've been podcasting for like six months. Now, uh, yeah, I got a little, little podcast deal. Alright, cool. Thanks, everyone. Cool. I'll pass it over to you, June. Sorry for talking so much. Thank you. Bye. Hey, um... Yeah, as no autopilot just mentioned, I know this wasn't precisely what we were looking for, but I really appreciate Josh for stepping up and, uh, you know, positively, we didn't get a lot of important topics and questions from the community that we can use for Miko and similar discussions in the future. Um, and I'm happy we got together and got to share stories on how we were able to get to this point and what we can do to help each other to get to the next stage. Um, so. Not so bad and uh, we'll learn from each lesson So it'll be better the next time and hope you guys uh, hope we have you guys back for that one, too Uh, so we'll wrap it up here Uh, we do have community hangouts michael sitting in there chilling right now If you guys want to hang out more we'll be in the game seven live voice channel right below this one Uh, if not, we'll connect another time Oh, by the way for uh, I think we have a lot of new members who came from reading the report Would love to talk to you guys. Uh, just shoot me a message anywhere I'm happy to share my calendar. Uh would love to learn, you know What your thoughts on game seven is about the report? What are you hoping to get out of you know, participating in this community and such so Looking forward to chatting with you all. Bye Thanks, everyone. Peace. Bye