Investing in early stage startups, especially in creative content business such as gaming, entails risks for both investors and founders. There are a lot of misunderstanding or not a good knowledge-base among the gaming community about VC funding or what VC roles, responsibilities and strategic values are. However, it's often perceived as either "free cash", or "expensive shark". As a result, there are many misalignment; and the process to bring the two parties together and strike a deal becomes inevitably harder in the gaming space. Meanwhile, gaming as a business does impose different characteristics and business and financial cycle, so it's also important to adjust the general regular VC funding and evaluation model and apply a hybrid funding structure to better align interests of all parties and generate maximum return on investment (ROI).
Take-away: This talk will outline the general overview of the VC industry, process and the nature of gaming business to map out how best to provide valuation for gaming startups, scale and grow the business; and in most cases to turn a non-fundable gaming studio to a fundable gaming startup.