#17 How to Fundraise for your Web3 Startup - Episode 4 w/Teri Tan

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pretty global. And my role at Mighty Bear Games is uh, finance and partnerships which is You know, as you might expect two jobs, I do a lot of the internal budgeting and planning on the finance side. I also do the external finance side of things. So that would include investor relations and naturally fundraising as and when the time comes. And then on the partnership side, I do a lot of like, you know, business dev growth and marketing all rolled up in one. Um, and so, you know, Ryan invited me to chat a little bit more about fundraising. Um, in full disclosure, I have not done a fundraise. Nice Asif. Uh, in full disclosure, I have not done a full raise for Mighty Bear Games, but I did spend five years before this at a company called Galaxy. I'm not sure if you guys have heard of it. It is a crypto merchant bank based out of New York with a billionaire founder, Mike Novogratz. And over there, I spent a lot of time on the finance side of things. So I was in VC and I shifted over to do some of the corporate development and internal M& A. And then in my last few years there, I was an investment banker, helping companies fundraise and also do M& A, uh, mergers and acquisitions. And they wanted me to basically start up the investment banking arm because I had spent time before that at Barclays. In the investment banking division. So I have a lot of experience in fundraising, um, and also in, uh, investing. So, you know, I think my perspective is unique and it would not, it wouldn't apply to everybody, but I'm happy to share whatever I can. Boom. Man, that's heck of a track record. What is this over the course of? This is like over the course of just a couple years, too, ain't it? Yeah, I did a couple years at Barclays, and then I did five years at Galaxy. I joined in 2018, right after Bitcoin dumped. Um, and then been through a couple of cycles. Um, and then I left to join Mighty Bear at the end of last year. Boom. Very cool. Yeah. All right. So, one thing I'm looking forward to this and In this particular session is Terry's very, uh, very no BS. So you're going to get the straight answers, which is going to be refreshing and awesome. Um, but also might sting a little bit. It's possible. So I guess like, why don't we start with this? And by the way, anyone, if you have any questions, feel free to drop them and I'll ask them. If not, I'll just kind of keep rolling on questions. Um, can you kind of talk to us about like the current. market and like the sentiment around raising for a web three game. Um, Maybe I'll ask who here is raising or considering raising? Wow, okay. I think, um, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The market is not the easiest, right? I think if you were talking about this time a year and a half, two years ago, you are swimming in money. Today, the market is more cautious. I don't think the events of like Muda and FTX helped because a lot of the traditional investors who were dabbling in crypto have turned away. That is, I would say a majority of, of the, um, of the trend right now. You still have crypto native investors who are always looking. But, I'm going to be very honest here is that a lot of the crypto native investors might not, uh, want to invest in Web3 gaming. Yeah, Andy, I think you said most that are focused on Infra. Actually, not just the traditional VCs, but also the, uh, crypto VCs. Um, that's not to say there's no capital out there. The capital that's out there might be less experienced. There's a bunch of investors out there who are like, I just want to get into this market. I may not be able to contribute as much in terms of, you know, if you want a strategic introductions to potential business partners or, uh, you know, uh, somebody who was like many years of experience in either web three or gaming, you might not be able to get the smartest investors. And so the question for you is, okay, what, what are you prioritizing? If it's pure capital, I think it's still out there, but if you don't need capital, but you really need a smart strategic partner, then you have to spend most of your time working your way up to getting that person. And not just like taking any money that you have, even though it might be like, you know, quote unquote, thrown at you. So it's, it's. Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say, can you expand on that last part a little bit, like, working your way up to, like, your ideal VC, like, Honestly, for a lot of folks, they don't have the network yet. And so it's like chicken or the egg type situation. Um, I guess any best practices you've seen there? Um, so when I say working your way up, this is a site, uh, we'll talk about how to get there. But working your way up is like really spending a lot of time getting buy in from a decision maker. I think the most important thing is you need to be talking to the decision maker because there are a bunch of VCs that have analysts that will spend like so much time with you. And at the end of the day, they're like, all right, let me send out my partner and the partner looks at it for 5 minutes like now, but you just wasted like 2 months on that person. So that's 1. Um, I think that the, if you have a strong partner, it matters less what the VC is, because there's some VCs that are like, notably bad, but. The, there are good individuals at the company, so you want to get the advice. And the input of that smart person, although you do run the risk of what if that person leaves the company, right? That's a bit of a trade off that you kind of have to make, but I would rather have a smart person at a not so good VC than to have, like, an average person at. Maybe it's a brand name, not brand name, but like average name, like, okay, VC, I would say that if you have like a super brand name VC, to be honest, if the talent is good everywhere, if you had a change of partner, it's actually going to be okay. But I would optimize for the person. So hangry had a great question here. Yes. So most are focused on infra. Yeah, I think that's fair question for us is around a blend of angels and VCs. Do you have any experience in a blended race of this nature? And then ideal number of VCs on cap table. Keep going, Hangry. This is the stuff that we, we haven't encountered these questions before. So keep, keep going as many as you got. That's a great question. Um, honestly, there's no ideal number of VCs. It is, um, I would say keep it to like under five if you are raising a small round. Um, this is because when you have VCs, you likely have to manage them a lot. And so there's only that many, uh, people you can manage. And then when it comes to angels, most of the time, they don't really dabble in your business as much. They don't have the ability to make as much decision making, um, as potentially VCs. But what I would optimize for is not like, hey, X number of VCs on the cap table, the cap of five that I kind of arbitrarily said, right? Um, but if that at the end of the day, there's only one very strong VC, but you think they can take you to the moon, then yeah. Thank you. I will keep. The right size to that VC. So that's the other thing. It's not just a number, but also the sizing, right? You want your most, um, invested VCs to have a big portion of the round as well. Um, and as for angels, I think when I think about angels, I think they're just there to fill up the round. Um, if you are doing a formal round. Um, other than that, they might also just be like the original, like, uh, capital injectors before you actually have VCs in the round. So typically you have angels and then VCs afterward, but some folks go straight to VC and then have angels blend into the round. I think all of this is like, up to personal taste. Okay, and then Hangry had another one, uh, what's your take experience on accelerator programs? And specifically their ability to introduce projects to VCs. Um, yeah, why don't you come up? Yeah. Come on, man. A, I don't know how to do that though, Ryan. Yeah. Can you hear me? Sweet. I'm alive. Hello? Can you hear me? Hey, what's up man? Hey. Hey. Good, thanks. Uh, um, yeah, I'm Andy. I'm from a project called Animals. We're in the middle of a road at the moment, so really appreciate your insight. Zdi. Um. It's, it's an interesting one, because when you're building sort of a open world RPG game, right, and you're going at a pre seed round, right, so this is just that initial scoping for, let's say, level one alpha. One alpha fully fleshed out, fully textured, rendered. The beautiful thing to tease. Um, what we're getting is challenges with VCs around like, it doesn't look, uh, you know, that's not enough money to get me to a fully built game. So I was curious about any experience around how you present the narrative to VCs in terms of those very, very early stages of a, uh, of a dev cycle with, with an investment round. Um, of this nature precede, you know, if you're doing something 750 K to a mil, um, you know, that's, that's quite a, that's quite a lot for a precede. Um, so I wondered if you could speak a bit to that a bit. Um, so I think that is a big question. Uh, you know, how do I raise enough so that I can survive? Because you also don't want to raise and then, okay, six months down the line, like, crap, I have to raise again, because you don't expect any revenue to come in, right, as you're building the product, and then you maybe run out of money. So, maybe you don't even start with a, with like a, you raise more as an option. Secondly, telling the story, it actually, somebody told me it's actually better to raise without a product, or without even a, uh, Uh, like an MVP because once they have an MVP, they'll look at it and they'll be like, Oh, it's reality as opposed to you give them an idea and then they can dream as big as they want. And then, you know, you give them this big vision, and I would say, if you have nice mockups, that always helps, but you can just say, hey, these are mockups, right? Imagine you're going to do this, imagine you're going to do that. And I think the big thing is thinking about what differentiates you from the, from competitors. Because, you know, a bunch of other folks can also say, I want to do this open world RPG and. So you're just another one, right? To them. So you need to think, okay, why would you, um, why, why would they invest in you versus, you know, RPG ABC? What's the angle? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's really solid route. Yeah. We, we get in that advice really in terms of, we need to see, um, we need to see what, what you're building in order for us to, uh, validate or invest in that, uh, in that idea or that concept. Very interesting to hear your your take on that as well. Uh, has your team been around, uh, together for a bit or are you a brand new company that you've put together? Myself, I've been around for 20 years in the creative sector. So, you know, proof track record in terms of brand IP creation, you know, tech innovation and, and, and the visual aspect of it with a scaled and sold in animation companies, the accolade. There is fine from a dev, some, from a, uh, sort of a unity dev team building side of things. We're fresh, you know, there's four, four MA graduates and, um, I'm one specialist. So in terms of proof of pudding and, uh, of product that's out there in the marketplace, you know, on the iOS, on the app store or switch and stuff, you know, we're, we're completely fresh on that front. So I get both sides of the argument. Yeah. Um, Yeah, I think you, you can sell them the dream of IP because if you're just building, if you're like, Hey, I'm just building this like game, it doesn't seem as lofty a goal. It's like, I'm going to build this massive IP. I have a lot of experience building IP and the game is just one part of it. Right. And then you can say, look, we're good at building games. We're going to start off with this, but you can think we, we can take this IP and do other forms of media, right? There's just all this expansion in the future. Uh, and you can sell the dream because you have no product and that's what you get to do when you're at this stage. Not to say you have to take this pitch, but that's the idea, right? You can go ham with it. Yeah, no, that's very interesting. And that's my, I think that's my approach because you can visualize sort of the bigger picture, the sort of explorative IP that goes beyond just the game, you know, merchandise, comics, toys, animated series, you know, that that's all in my roadmap. Um, but it was an interesting coming from a VC two weeks ago. We want to see how many games you're going to build and not just the one which was hilarious. It's like well The IPs evolved around one, one concept, but, um, their feedback was like, we'd rather invest in a studio that's creating multiples of games rather than one. So that may be one or two opinions though, but it's just something to be mindful and watch out for that we've come across, um, of late. Yeah. Well, hearing that, my thoughts are, I would suggest you, um, know who you are. As a company and then stick to the VCs to support you because if you're sort of changing your pitch according to one or two VCs, then it's, uh, it's a bit inconsistent. And you might be getting investors who want this particular thing out of you that you might not really want to build anyway. So, you know, it's, um, if you have the luxury of choice, I would stick with your, your core. Yeah, that's cool. Appreciate it. I think I will stick to my guns no matter what I'm going to build, what we build when in answer to an earlier sort of observation around, yes, we're bootstrapping the entire build at the moment, you know, I've, I've taken out a sizeable. Cash loan to accelerate our development process to just get some teaser pieces going that will come back to me eventually. So, um, risking it because I believe in it. Um, yeah, well, thank you. Awesome. Um, I know Ryan threw in a couple of questions in the chat. So, yeah, go ahead, please. Thank you. Yeah, there's a question about structuring and initial equity plus token war and then another staffed round. Uh, I would do those separately, um, you wouldn't structure an equity round with a SAFT round together, um, the valuations are not supposed to be, not, don't have to be the same between equity and token, um, I would say that you, if you can get away with not issuing a token warrant, you should. Because why give up more stuff that you can potentially give, uh, raise more capital on later. Uh, token, raising on a token is some next level stuff that like Web3 has come up with, right? Because you're not giving any equity away, and yet you just created money out of nowhere, effectively. Um, But it's a very useful, uh, toolbox to have. So if you can keep that for later on in your company's journey, I would keep it for later. Of course, if you're talking to more web3 native folks, they might ask you, right? Hey, let's talk to equity plus token war. Um, then, you know, just depending on your investors. You might have to give that up, but um, if you can try not to and then on the staffed round if I would treat that as a completely different round and you can it doesn't have to be mapped to the equity so um, i'll give you the example of mighty bear games our equity and our token rounds are differently valued and The token round I think you can be a little bit more generous with the valuation I think also partly because Um, to be honest, some investors don't really know how to value tokens. And honestly, I don't think anybody fully knows how to value tokens. They just say, Hey, this is the market cap. Like, okay, cool. It sounds about right. They kind of use a little bit of the equity framework, but I, at the end of the day, there's so many tokens out there that have market caps that don't make any sense, but still they're trading. Right. And one of the things that you can use to your benefit is the fact that the tokens are more liquid than equity. In your favor, right? So they're paying for liquidity for better or worse, um, because sometimes you do the lockup and then that slight bit of illiquidity is not so good. And because it's liquid, sometimes the price goes down. It might work against you, but you use the chips that you have, right? The don't negotiate against yourself. Use the stuff that works in your favor and let the other. Um, as for how many, how many percent, or how much do companies sell in tokens in their first and second round, um, I would say typically like 10 to 15 percent is like a good range. Um, if you sell. Less, that's fine because you can do it next round and next round. Some people opt to do like two to three rounds. So far at Mighty Bear or Mighty Action Heroes, we've only done one round. And there's a discussion of having like another round and all of that. Um, some people also tier the different valuations. So your earliest investors get in at the lowest, uh, valuation, which makes a lot of sense. Um, and so that's also something you can play around with, right? Do you sell at different prices for sash? Yeah, I guess the answer is yes then. You can. So all of these are different levels you can pull. There's no, uh, all this stuff really is a bit more of an art than a science. So it's hard for me to tell you like, yes, you should do this. You should structure it like three rounds and, and, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's it's there's no right or wrong really it's who you can get in the round and what you can negotiate You're crushing it I'm, just gonna say you're crushing it, man Oh I uh, I just speak my mind. Uh Let's stop there for a little bit and I just want to see uh, you know, if anybody else has like To chime in on yeah, yeah, so folks if you want to be brought up to stage Feel free to request if you want to throw something in the chat box, feel free to do that as well One thing I one thing I'm kind of curious about is when you go to raise your angel round How much runway should that typically last you and then follow up question would be the same thing for your seed round? Like how much runway should that? Ideally last year, your company, I think the answer is pretty similar, which is 18 to 24 months is a good, uh, range of you can last 36 months. That's awesome. But the minimum is 18 to 24. Otherwise you're. It's very precarious. You're always going to be on the edge of your seat as a founder. Gotcha. Yeah, it's a so what for for my startup. Uh, we were trying to build some infrastructure and we're both 1st time founders and we're trying to raise in the bear. It was, it was hard, to be honest, like, you know, any sign of life from a VC, you would try and almost bend over backwards to, uh, to meet whatever expectations they had. But then it led us to, kind of like what you're saying earlier, chasing, like chasing building a company that wasn't really our intention in the beginning. We wanted to do A, but they were steering us towards B. Um. And honestly, that's kind of why I made the gaming startup collective. Cause I was like, damn, if I, I wish I could have talked to Ziddy 18 months ago, my life would have been so much easier, hopefully. Uh, but yeah. It's okay. You have me now. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah, so I just wanted to continue that list of questions that can you set different unlocked schedules for different investors and different rounds you can so if you take a look at the beauty of I guess the token structure is you can literally do whatever you want structure in the weirdest light fucking way it's as long as in the legal documents like you're free to do whatever right um and so obviously assuming people sign up for it and they don't find it unreasonable um you Again, sometimes it's not even in the legal docs, just like in the smart contract. Um, so if I'm not wrong, MemeLand's recent token raise, uh, token round, had different unlocked schedules from different investors. So you guys can go check that one out. Um, I don't know if your rounds are very focused on like community or maybe just like a bunch of other businesses slash, um, you know, institutional investors. But that's one that you guys can take a look at with regards to the structure. So I dropped a, I dropped another question in there, which, what, what models do you recommend founders use when they create valuations for their company? I think we try to use like the Merkle method or something like that. But I guess any best practices there? Um, are you talking about equity or are you talking about, uh, tokens? Um, equity, but now you have me curious in tokens, if I'm being honest. Yeah, I think equity is equity and tokens. The answer for both really is to take a look at comparables. Because at the end of the day, when you're so early, there's not much, um, there's not much to, to value you on, like, what am I going to do a multiple on revenue, which is zero? You know what I mean? Um, I think that depending on the stage of the company, my, my guts is that any company that started out with like a pitch deck or whatever you're worth. Maybe five at the, at the base level, also depending on which, uh, which country you're from, because some countries, their base level of valuations, like 2 million, and then, like, in the US or in the Western world, sometimes it's just like five, like, you have a pitch deck and a bunch of pretty pictures and you're, you're, you know, kind of worth five already, um, if you have a little bit more going, then you can try to raise it around like 15, 20, Um, Um, but I think after that, like, it really depends on the comps and what you see that's out there because at the end of the day, if you think you're worth, um, 5 to 10, but the rest of the market is raising at 100, like, go raise it 100, right? Um, although there are drawbacks to raising at a super high valuation, because once the market corrects and you're pegged at 100 million valuation, and then the next round, you can't do it. That's a very bad. That's uh, that's going to be a tough kind of hole to climb out of. You weigh the pros and cons yourself. Right? Hmm. Okay. I like that. Yeah. That's kind of a similar, similar approach to what we took to, is looking at some comparable companies, what they had raised, um, solid advice. Yeah. And I threw like numbers around here and there, but those are the, don't hold me to any of these numbers because market trainers all the time. For sure. Yeah. And actually, you know, I probably should have said this in the beginning, not financial advice to you on research, blah, blah, blah. Um, so I was curious, like, from, from all the deals that you've seen pitched to you. In your team, like what are your must not do this as well as your must do this list for founders. One thing you must not do ever is to throw somebody's name and or logo on your deck. That doesn't know that you put their like credentials on your deck I have seen companies where they throw mighty bear games as a partner and i'm like, what are you talking about? We're not really your partner and also they pissed us off And so then and multiple investors came to us and say hey this company's raising they named you as a partner and i'm like Yeah, we're not working with them They pissed us off and I cannot speak to their company at all and that's automatically a rejection obviously from those investors So that's a hard must not do never do that. Um, wow. Yeah, if they didn't piss me off, it might not have been so bad, but they were really annoying. So, um, I think another thing that I maybe not must do, but it's, it'll be quite helpful is. If you are able to have another channel to that investor as a back channel, so for example, if you're talking to a potential investor, but maybe one of your advisors is really close to that investor as well, work that angle as well, because one channel is often not enough. If you have somebody else reinforce, maybe that's your advisor. Maybe that's another partner that you have, or maybe another potential investor was also quite bullish on you. Um, yeah. You want to build a little bit of a, an echo chamber, right, of nice, positive things that, that, uh, is being said about you or your company around your potential investor. And then you just kind of build this coalition of people who like, absolutely love you and they kind of hype each other up and something like that. And maybe not hype is hype is not the right word, but in a sense, they're all very bullish on you together. And I think if people feel like, Hey, other people are bullish, then they are more confident in their bullishness. And then they will be more confident in sharing their bullishness with potentially other investors, and then they all get bullish together. And then that's more likely for you to close your round. Um, another tip is a bit old school, but I've seen it work, is to fly down. to wherever your investor is based and just spend time with them. Uh, I think we've spent a lot of time online and it's worked so far, but nothing says like, hey, I'm really serious about this stuff. Then flying down to meet with somebody. Um, I wouldn't do it too early in the conversation because that just seems and smells desperate, but at the, I would say the mid to end side when you're like, all right, I'm quite serious about this. Like, hey, I would, you know, if we're really going to do this, let's chat, meet in person and I get to know you really well because at the end of the day, this yeah. Think of this like a marriage, right? Like you're going to be spending a lot of time with these people and they're going to be, you know, quote unquote, uh, in bed with your business. And so you want to, uh, really make sure they're the right people. This is a great list. And what's cool about it is, so we've had, I don't know, half a dozen different calls from some from VCs, some from founders who've raised, like we had the folks from, uh, We had Cam from Pixian, uh, I guess last week, the week before. Anyhow, a lot of things you're saying we haven't heard yet. Or before. So it's super cool to be like coloring in any potential gaps. Um. Yeah, maybe everything I'm saying is wrong. Ha ha. Um. But you say it confidently, so we don't know. Exactly. Well, I do want to answer a question that, that BuildingDwarf sent. The question is, is it a thing to plan to hire manpower and specialists in the funding budget? Absolutely, you should do that. It shows foresight and you know what you're doing with the money. Um, and so. Ideally, you have a plan, whether it's internal or something you show to people, it's like, Alright, with this 5 million dollars, I'm going to hire these x amount of people, and I'm going to spread it out by like, first 3 months, I'm going to be focused on hiring these key like, Maybe C suite level folks, and then in the next six months, then I'll maybe hire the middle managers or maybe like, you know, the second and third like engineer or whatever it is, right? So to have a high level idea of what you're going to do, uh, brings confidence as well. Because at the day, the VCs are investing in you as an individual and your team. So to have to know that you kind of know what you're doing. It really helps. I've seen people where they are, they present me a budget and it has, uh, about 10 different product lines and I said, how are you going to prioritize all of them? And they're like, we're going to do all of it in the first year and like, come on, that's complete bullshit. There's no way you're going to be able to do all of it. You're barely going to do one of it in the first year. And so, like, that in and of itself is a hard no in 5 seconds, right? So, yes, planning and being realistic is helpful. I think a lot of time in these conversations, founders feel like they have to have all the answers. Is it, I guess, what's your perspective on that? Is it okay for a founder to be like, You know what? I don't know. Um Yeah, absolutely. I think it's okay. Um, because there is a level of like, bullshitting that you need to do, of course. Um, the ideal is that you fully know your shit and whatever, but there are instances where you just have to like, Make some stuff up a little bit, hopefully nothing too serious, but the, the most important thing is that you need to have a vision, right? You need to have a strong conviction in your vision, and how to get there will naturally change. You can be so sure of your plan today and tomorrow it will change, but it doesn't matter, right? Um, if your vision is, I want to disrupt, Web3 gaming. That's so vague, so high level. I think I'm gonna do it through comics, merch, toys, blah blah blah, right? Maybe that's one way to do it. But, after six months, you're gonna pivot and it's like, no, I'm gonna do films only, right? And then you can have like gamified films or whatever it is. I'm making some stuff up. That's okay. The VCs are investing in you to be able to figure it out. Figure out that vision. How you actually get there matters less. Of course you have to make money, right? But like, yeah, make money and like get to your vision and be this like mega success. I don't have exact stories, but I'm pretty sure most of the big companies today are different, are so much different from what they initially planned to do. But it is your flexibility and um, how nimble you are. As a team and as a founder to be successful, whatever it takes crushing it. All right. A hangry had another one product lines. That's a good one. So we're planning comics, merch, toys, games and animated series. How much do we curb the enthusiasm on a VC pitch but still splitting the vision at the same time? Beachhead being the game, obviously. I mean, I don't think you necessarily need to curb that enthusiasm, because if you're giving your pitch and you're being realistic by saying, look, we're going to start here, but the vision is to do all of this stuff, uh, the VCs love enthusiasm, so I don't want to tell you to curb it. If you make it sound like you're going to do all this stuff very quickly and, um, you're, Not going to succeed if you don't do all of it, then, yeah, maybe, I think, I think it's more than how realistic it is, that, that turns VCs off. Enthusiasm's great. Um, I Keep going. Yeah, sorry, Ryan, you were No, no, no, keep going, sorry. No, I, I wanted to go back to, to building Dwarf, because there was a second part of the question, and I don't know if I, my shmule covered it, so I want to just check in with building Dwarf to see, like, did I answer your question? Do you want me to elaborate more? That was great, thanks. Okay, yeah, feel free to just like chime in if I'm like going, ask your question, maybe not even answering the question. It is totally okay to have future plans for hiring. Yes. You just have to budget for it as you're raising. Okay, let's go back to Craslow. Uh, yeah, actually that's, that's, um, I think focusing on early revenue versus growth is a bit of a controversial topic. If you have growth, um, and maybe you just have like early metrics, but no revenue, you can always say, hey, at some point we can turn on monetization. And then again, whereas you're raising, you're still selling a dream. But then if you have revenue, and your revenue is like 2 and they're like, uh, okay, I guess. Since you started monetizing and you only have two dollars like you're screwed, right? Um, I'm gonna value you based on that two dollars. So once you turn on revenue, you need to be very confident that you're actually going to be making money. Otherwise, the other thing you can say is look, this is just a test. I wouldn't hold anything. Um, I wouldn't hold, uh, this revenue with a lot of weight. It's a couple of things with all these other monetization things in the, in the, in the pipeline. We haven't heard any of them on yet. We're ready to go. We just need the money to do. So something like that. And if we turn on all of these, we can then get like, you know, X percent conversion and blah, blah, blah, and monetization everything. And then you can again, spin it back to selling the dream. Yeah, I mean, again, I think it's just like, it really is an art. And maybe art is like one of those things you, you can't get better at until you. Yeah. Make a whole bunch of terrible art And then one day You make something not as as terrible. Yeah I'd say that you should go with your gut whatever it is whether it's telling you to focus on revenue or growth um as a Founder going with your gut is quite underrated. A lot of people are like, Hey, I want to think about my investors and my team members and all of that. If you don't believe in what you're doing and you're going against your gut, you are not going to be a successful and effective leader. So of course you take the advice of other people and consider it. Don't. You know be a horse with blinders on but you should always still believe and trust your gut right on Um, all right folks, so we we got about let's say 10 more minutes left here Any last back of pocket questions you haven't asked yet. Feel free to pop them in here see hangers typing um when it comes to the When it comes to tokens in particular, uh, i've heard that having the same vesting and cliff schedule aligned from the advisor or from the advisors, the angels, the seed investors, and the team is a smart way to go. That way everybody's like in alignment and you don't have to worry about like who's going to rug who. Um, but I also heard that like maybe two years ago during the bull. And so maybe that Has changed, I guess, any any insights on, you know, how to structure those things. So your partners and investors aren't the one, uh, kind of tanking your project. Um, I think we have kind of learned now that you shouldn't have, like, a massive unlock date. Uh, kind of saw that with immutable, right, or there was a massive unlock and it would have basically tanked the entire token. Um, but they got saved in the end. So that's fine. Um, I think to have everybody on the same vesting schedule is also for simplicity sake, because you don't have to deal with so much, although there are platforms now that kind of automate all that for you. So that's hopeful. I would say you should structure it based off of what your goals are. If you think that your investors are most likely to dump at a specific point, like, you need to optimize for correcting that behavior. Similarly, if you think, like, your community doesn't have, uh. Uh, are more likely to be holders or whatever, then you can maybe incentivize them a bit more. Like, it's, it's all very subjective. And the key question to how you structure all of it is what is everybody's motivation and what are the expected, um, course of action at each point of vesting? And, uh, what do you have to do in order to prevent that from a structural perspective? Especially if the, you know, incentive is to dump. Gotcha. Okay. So just like most things, it sounds like just having like a strategy and a plan, um, for how each of these things are structured and how they could likely fall. So you're prepared. And you can come up with like small little like marketing campaigns where, you know, Hey, if at this potential unlock date, you like, uh, do something special with it, you might get a bonus with it. Everybody's like incentivized to go like lock it in for yet another year or whatever it is. Like it can be little things like that, but you have to be prepared for it. Do not let at any point the project go out of control. Um, because sometimes you can't get it back. And that's happened to a lot of people. But sometimes again, it's out of your control that it even happens. So that's tough. For sure. Yeah, it's easier said than done though. So don't be too hard on yourself there. Um, I want to answer Hangry's question. Unless there's anything else I should answer ahead of that. Yeah, let me, if you don't mind, let me read it out. And then, because I kind of cut up the best parts of these into little short snippets. Um, so let's see here, so Hangry. Uh, Butter Royale is a big inspiration for us, nice one. Uh, removal from the Apple Arcade, opting to go to Web 3. What was the transition like for your team in terms of narrative for future investments? Uh, I hope I have that right obviously won't be offended if this is off topic No, no, nothing's off topic I think um, so We were working on mobile games and we were working with apple arcade There was two games butter royale and another one called disney melee mania but we wanted to go out on our own and build um a game that was A little less constricted by Apple's, um, restrictions. So the thing about Apple Arcade is that, you know, everything goes through them. They, you know, even the, the data that you get is limited. And at the end of the day, you don't control your, your end, not control, but you don't, you're not in touch with your end client, customer and player. And so. Um, you know, for example, like they don't even allow you to have links to like a discord or whatever I don't know if that's changed today But you know people just have to like go find it on their own Uh, we did try to build some other free to play games, but the cost of user acquisition was just so high and at that same time Going to web Three we the team has been in web three for a while before that, but it was just more on the sidelines, right? we saw xe and how successful it was in terms of Um, building awareness, um, you know, all the economy balancing stuff aside, um, it showed that there was really potential in Web 3, right? And there's a sizable crowd of people who want to play Web 3 games. Um, for us, the transition was not easy because the studio was a Web 2 studio. And so there are a bunch of people who didn't agree with the vision to go into Web 3. They thought, you know, Web 3. The usual, right? Either it's a scam, it's like not sustainable, or maybe it's just not the right direction. Also, the pace of Web3 is like so fast that sometimes people can't keep up and, you know, there was a bit of a natural attrition there. There was one thing that Simon, our CEO did, which I thought was like really smart, is that he forced everybody to go learn about Web3. And it's easy to just say, hey, everybody go learn about Web3, right? He dedicated A certain amount of money in the budget and said, everybody, here's my go create a wallet and have an NFT in your wallet by the end of the week. So, they have absolutely no reason not to have an NFT in the wallet because it was already sponsored by the company. Right? And buying an NFT is so painful as everybody knows, you have to go do so many things just to get an NFT in your wallet. But that is the Web3 experience. It's broken. But it's, it is what it is, right? And so you have to go through it. People always say that, or I always say, that Web3 is like sports. You can't just talk about it, you gotta go do it. And so, um, yeah, we forced everybody to do it. Um, yeah, in terms of narrative for future investments, I think the, the big thing we talk about is, uh, we talk about the trends of gaming. And how, back in the day, you played games out of your, your video, your video games out of a box, right? You have your consoles, and then there was a move to, uh, like, PC games, and then you have, uh, and you have, uh, your free to play games, your free to play mobile games, and we see the wave moving towards Web 3. We might, we are probably too early, uh, but the bigger story we're trying to tell is, Look, we are going to move with the waves of gaming as we have seen, and we will never be able to time it right, but it's better to be too early than too late. And, you know, now is the best time to go learn what the right way is. Nobody has really cracked the Web3 gaming market. And so we're all just figuring it out and this is the best time to do it. And so if you want to bet on a team, you would bet on a team who, number one, knows how to make games, because that's a big pain point for a lot of people in general about Web3 games. Um, and secondly, we have Web3 native people who can then Navigate the Web3 market, right? They hired, uh, a Web3 lead is somebody who's worked in a bunch of different Web3 games before, um, and also was like, designing the token for YGG was part of Blackpool. And then there's also me who spent, uh, 5 years professionally at a crypto merchant bank. So making these like crypto native hires, and so if you're going to bet on a team, you're betting on a team who knows games and who knows crypto. And so that is our narrative, uh, moving forward. And we're very honest, we don't have the answer, right? But we are probably best positioned to go figure that out. So yeah, that's the pitch. Um Uh, thank you for that. Really appreciate your, your honesty and your insight. Much, much appreciated. Thank you for the opportunity. So I had Grassl, we Go ahead, go ahead. No, go ahead. No, I was just going to react to grass, though, because, you know, our team actually got rugged, uh, somebody got their wallet drained and all that, it was quite funny, but, I don't know if you met the investor. Hey, no better learning experience than to have all your money stolen. Yeah, I'm telling people, I'm like, that's literally the Brad Ware 3 experience. Getting, they clicked on some like phishing link or whatever. And then they will go dream. Like this is part of the experience too. All right. So, so what I was going to say is I guess two things. Number one, it's really, um, it's an amazing snapshot into your company's leadership on how they approached that pivotal moment going from web two to web three, and the strategy that you guys had to, to get the employees who are going to continue with the company on board. Um, And, you know, I think it's easy to think, oh, you know, you guys were in a position of strength, you already kind of had a company that was structured, like all these things. But at the end of the day, it's more about how you guys think about and think through problems. And I think it's just really quite inspirational how you guys handled that. Um, and then my second point, I have forgotten. Because I was talking too long about the first point. Oh, I remember what it is. Okay, so this is not fundraising related, but I'm going to try and steal it from you anyhow. Um, your team's doing a lot of innovative things. A lot of things that haven't been proven. So I'm curious to know, what is your team's process for saying, hey, we're going to try this new thing, we don't know if it's going to work, but we're going to like, try and figure it out. Like, what does that process look like for your team today? Uh, it depends on what it is. If it is a lift that can be done by one or two people, we just do it. If it is something that requires more death effort We have a weekly like meeting a leadership meeting and then we throw it in there. Uh, we get a plan out Okay, you know We can scope this on wednesday scope it on wednesday And then the product lead just decides like hey, do we have time to budget this in and if the answer is yes And let's do it. We are not afraid to try different ideas and so if you Honestly see our social media Sometimes you'll see a whole bunch of like random stuff that you're like, oh, it doesn't really gel But that's because we're trying new things out to see what sticks Um You can't really be afraid to try things out. And as Simon always says, um, we don't have the luxury of, um, uh, of being too cautious. We have to be shameless, as shameless as possible. So just go do it. Right. Boom. What a great way to wrap this up. Um, all right, folks, any last questions, comments, thank yous, before we get Ziddy back to his, uh, his evening, his day. A lot of thank yous, Ziddy. That's a good sign, man. I think that means you did well. Well, I uh, I really appreciate it. Well, if you guys um, have any other questions, I'm sure there are random things that will come up right outside of this hour. Feel free to, feel free to ping me. I'm uh, I'm not super active on Discord, um, but you know, I'm happy to, I will still check my message sometimes, so it might be a bit delayed. But yeah, if you guys ever want to ping me, I can also share with you my email, something that's probably a little bit better. If you guys want, yeah, drop it in the, uh, drop it in the chat. I hesitate to share my telegram because it gets like super clogged up and I'll never see it. And then I also share my Twitter. I would say so. Um, so for sessions to keep an eye out for, uh, we're going to have fluke from treasure Dow coming in later this month to talk about best practices for submitting a grant. request for your game, um, not specific to Arbitrum, but just any type of grant proposal. Um, we should have a rescheduling of Miko from, uh, Gumi Cryptos, uh, for likely the first week of December. Um, I think we have One or two more that might kind of trickle in with the holiday. It's kind of tough because I don't know if folks are going to be around, but, uh, but yeah, if you have any other suggestions for guests, you'd like me to reach out to or voices you'd like to be heard. Just, uh, just ping me in chat and I'll, I'll bring them on in easy peasy. Cool, make it, make it a thousand. We're gonna get you a thousand followers right here, man. Got you sorted. Oh man, I really underutilized my Twitter. I should do it a lot more, but you know, I'd rather spend time talking to you guys than to uh In any case, you guys have been awesome. Thank you so much for inviting me. I am always, uh, available to be helpful. Um, and if I don't reply, please just ping me again. It's, it's not malicious. I just sometimes have too much going on. For sure, man. And thank you again for, for coming in and sharing this conversation with us. Really appreciate it. All right. Thank you all so much. All right, everyone. Take it easy. Peace.