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Despite canceled trade shows, gaming startups can still win an extra life
Dave Struzzi is the founder of Fame Arcade, a consultancy that works with innovative technology brands. His book, “App Store Fame and Fortune,” was among the first to explore best practices for mobile app marketing.
As organizers cancel events with massive attendance, like SXSW (400,000 attendees), E3 (66,000), GDC (65,000) and Mobile World Congress (100,000), mobile game developers have felt the crunch. At a show like SXSW, larger developers can spend more than $135,000 just to secure some real estate.
Despite the steep cost, if you’re a developer, these events can prove worthwhile for building awareness, buzz and customer downloads. Real-time feedback from attendees, the ability to sign up users for beta campaigns, opportunities for bolstering subsequent email marketing and the prestige of having your app live side-by-side with games produced by larger studios are unique qualities.
It remains unclear if and how developers that made investments will recover costs such as those for onsite promotion, print advertising, staff for booths and restaurant reservations. Equally, if not more important though, is the added layer of opportunity cost for developers, especially those who sought to use these events to launch something new.
How important are launch moments for game developers? During the Game Developers Conference 2019, a new port of Cuphead for Nintendo Switch was announced. Per Google Trends, web searches for the game reached their second-highest point of the year during the event (March 20th), only behind search volume of the game’s release a month later, in April 2019.
Large developers can come out unscathed from a trade show cancellation and simply kick the launch moment to their next big tentpole event. But for smaller app or game developers that can’t wait another six months for their launch moment, they need to do something.
Here are five ways to salvage a launch lost to a trade show cancellation.
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YC-backed Legionfarm lets competitive gamers pay to play with pro coaches
Legionfarm, a YC-backed company, is looking to bring coaches to the competitive gaming world. Esports teams at the very top often have coaches, but the rest of the massive competitive gaming scene has to find a way to improve on their own, either via sheer time played or with creative new training platforms.
There is a huge demand for skilled teammates that can help you hone your skills, while at the same time, there is a broad community of near-pro gamers who haven’t landed a spot on an esports team and want to earn a living with their skills.
Legionfarm is a platform built to solve both problems.
The company was founded by Alex Belyankin, who is a former pro gamer and was once in the top .01 percent of World of Warcraft players.
Competitive gamers can sign up to become a coach on the platform, going through a process that looks at their stats within a particular title. Less than the top 0.1 percent are accepted as coaches and told how to manage sessions, including asking the customer’s goal at the beginning of the session.
On the other side, gamers can pay to play with one (or two) of these coaches in hour-long increments. Legionfarm allows users to specify if they want to play with two coaches, one coach and a friend, or one coach and another customer.
Users can also determine what kind of lobby they want to enter, such as a public or a ranked lobby.
Here’s how it works.
When a user buys a session on the website, they are given instructions to join a Discord bot, which puts them in game chat with the coaches and asks for their gamertag for that specific title. The coaches then invite the customer to a lobby, and fire up the match.
To be clear, Legionfarm coaches are not coming from the same pool of streamers and pro gamers we’ve come to know and cheer on in the esports world. Rather, Legionfarm seeks out the very best and most skilled amateur players based on the publisher’s rankings and stats to become coaches. These are people who otherwise aren’t making money via Twitch or a salary via an esports organization, but are still in the top 0.1 percent of gamers by skill.
In other words, Legionfarm is creating pro gamers, rather than hiring them.
The average cost of a session is $16/hour, with Legionfarm taking half of the revenue and the rest going to the coach.
Legionfarm currently offers nine titles to choose from, including Apex Legends, Fortnite, CoD: Modern Warfare 2019, League of Legends, and Destiny 2. The company has run more than 300,000 gaming sessions with its 7,000 coaches.
Legionfarm is currently available via the web and through a Facebook Messenger bot, with plans to launch an app soon. Founder and CEO Alex Belyankin also teased new functionality that would allow Twitch viewers to request a session with the streamer directly from the chat.
Legionfarm has raised a total of $1.7 million from TMT Investments and Y Combinator, and will present at Y Combinator’s upcoming demo day.
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Twitch to top 40 million US viewers next year, forecast says
Twitch, the Amazon-owned streaming service for gamers, is poised to surpass 40 million monthly active viewers in the U.S. as of next year, according to a new forecast from eMarketer out on Thursday. By 2023, it will reach 47 million viewers. Currently, the analyst firm estimates Twitch has 37.5 million viewers in the U.S. who tune in to watch at least once per month.
Officially, Twitch reports it has more than 3 million active monthly creators and over 15 million average daily streamers, per its own website. But it focuses on metrics like minutes watched and concurrent viewers to paint a picture of its size and growth.
While Twitch continues to gain new viewers in the U.S., the new forecast indicates Twitch’s growth is slowing due to increased competition from YouTube, Microsoft’s Mixer and Facebook Gaming. This backs up findings from a separate report released last month, which found that Twitch’s loss of top streaming talent began to impact hours watched and streamed on its site in Q4 2019.
While none of the defections knocked out Twitch from its No. 1 position, it is starting to slow down its growth across a number of key metrics.
Last year, for example, Twitch lost top streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek to Mixer, plus Jack “CouRage” Dunlop to YouTube, and Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang and Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios to Facebook Gaming. Corinna Kopf, a member of David Dobrik’s “Vlog Squad,” also left Twitch for Facebook at the very end of December.
The defections continued in Q1 2020, with Ronda Rousey moving exclusively to Facebook Gaming earlier this month.
Despite these losses, eMarketer says Twitch will still see double-digit growth in the U.S. this year, up 14.3% from 2019. However, that’s down from 23.5% growth last year. And in the following years, growth will continue to slow, dropping to 6.3% by 2023.
The report stresses that Twitch needs to find ways to retain its gaming talent going forward, instead of losing them to better deals offered by rivals. It will also likely continue to invest in its expansion beyond gaming, as non-gaming traffic drove significant viewership in 2019. Twitch’s “Just Chatting” category, for instance, was watched more than any game on the site in December and was No. 2 in January, according to StreamElements.
“[Twitch’s] platform is designed for live streaming video and streamer/viewer interaction; these features are certainly intriguing to content creators outside of gaming,” noted eMarketer forecasting analyst Peter Vahle.
This is the first time the analyst firm has estimated the number of people watching Twitch on a regular basis — a decision it likely made because of how large Twitch has become.
“Twitch,” said Vahle, “…is now too big for the internet giants to ignore. The big platforms, owned by the likes of Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, are competing to sign big deals with popular streamers and esports leagues. Twitch will have to find ways to encourage streamers — and viewers and advertisers — to stay on its platform now that other attractive options exist,” he added.
Another possible way for Twitch to boost viewership — and one not mentioned in eMarketer’s report — is to lean on its ties to parent company Amazon.
“Last year was actually our biggest year ever in terms of growth of Twitch on Fire TV,” Amazon’s Fire TV head Marc Whitten told TechCrunch in January, when talking about Fire TV’s 2020 plans.
Amazon is now thinking about how to better integrate Twitch and Fire TV — especially since Fire TV supports the integration of live content right on its homepage, and Twitch is a live-streaming service. With Fire TV’s now over 40 million monthly users, Amazon could easily send more viewers to Twitch if it just turned the dials a little.
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Justin Kan opens up (Part 2)
Greg M. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of The New York Times bestselling book “Good Without God.” Described as a “godfather to the [humanist] movement” by The New York Times Magazine in recognition of his efforts to build inclusive, inspiring and ethical communities for the nonreligious and allies, Greg was also named “one of the top faith and moral leaders in the United States” by Faithful Internet, a project of the United Church of Christ and the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society.
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Justin Kan was talking about the systems in his life. The serial entrepreneur/founder, who recently announced a pivot and significant layoffs at Atrium, his latest venture, came to speak at last fall’s TechCrunch Disrupt in high-fashion black sweats and an extremely colorful pair of Nikes.
After Kan wrapped up his panel, we sat down for a wide-ranging and philosophical interview. And as we left off in part one of our conversation, Kan was explaining his self-described Buddhist philosophy of life.
But in the second part of our interview, I wanted to focus more on Kan’s thoughts about systems in society as a whole. There’s a difference, after all, between working mindfully to change oneself and doing so to change society. As we’ve seen with Adam Neumann, among others, there is a certain class of “spiritual” Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who use their platform in tech to assuage their own inner suffering — and perhaps gain influence by helping similarly influential people alleviate their own. WeWork, for example, cultivated associations with everything from Kabbalah to Deepak Chopra to mindful eating before the company melted under the heat of its own ethical challenges.
I don’t know that there is evidence to place Kan in the above category; maybe he is better understood as a legitimate, if unconventional, Big Thinker. But either way, it would be important to ask: What good is it when tech leaders like Kan seek a Buddhist alleviation of suffering, if the industries that sustain them are, at scale, currently creating enormous and very tangible suffering for countless millions of less fortunate people?
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Where FaZe Clan sees the future of gaming and entertainment
Lee Trink has spent nearly his entire career in the entertainment business. The former president of Capitol Records is now the head of FaZe Clan, an esports juggernaut that is one of the most recognizable names in the wildly popular phenomenon of competitive gaming.
Trink sees FaZe Clan as the voice of a new generation of consumers who are finding their voice and their identity through gaming — and it’s a voice that’s increasingly speaking volumes in the entertainment industry through a clutch of competitive esports teams, a clothing and lifestyle brand and a network of creators who feed the appetites of millions of young gamers.
As the company struggles with a lawsuit brought by one of its most famous players, Trink is looking to the future — and setting his sights on new markets and new games as he consolidates FaZe Clan’s role as the voice of a new generation.
“The teams and social media output that we create is all marketing,” he says. “It’s not that we have an overall marketing strategy that we then populate with all of these opportunities. We’re not maximizing all of our brands.”
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Twitch’s loss of top streamers impacts hours watched and streamed in Q4 2019, report says
The loss of several big-name streamers is finally taking its toll on Twitch, according to a new report from StreamLabs and Newzoo out today. In August 2019, top streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, announced his intention to leave Twitch for Microsoft Mixer. Several others have since defected as well, including competitive gamer Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, who went to Mixer in October, Jack “CouRage” Dunlop, who left in November for YouTube Live, and Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang, who also left in November, but went to Facebook Gaming.
The loss of Ninja hadn’t impacted the amount of time Twitch users spent watching content on the platform as of Q3 2019, but the total hours streamed had slightly dipped. As of Q4 2019, however, Twitch’s momentum began to slow.
While the Amazon-owned streaming site is still by far the leader in terms of hours of content both watched and streamed compared with rivals, with a market share of 75.1%, the number of hours watched on Twitch declined from Q3 to Q4 2019 by 9.8%.
This resulted in the lowest number of hours watched on the platform (2,299.6 million) since Q3 2018 (2,283.9 million).
That being said, Twitch overall is still growing, with a 12% increase in total hours watched on the platform in 2019 compared with 2018.
The high-profile losses are also now impacting the hours streamed on Twitch, the report found.
The platform in Q4 2019 saw the lowest number of hours streamed (82.7 million) since Q2 2018 (86 million). Again, the trend on a year-over-year basis is still climbing upwards, with a 16.1% increase in total hours streamed in 2019 versus 2018.
Twitch saw declines in the number of unique channels streaming over the course of 2019, too, dropping from 5.6 million in Q1 2019 — the highest ever — to 3.7 million by Q4.
Concurrent viewers declined on a quarterly basis by 9.4%. This is the lowest average concurrent viewership figure since Q3 2018. On an annual basis, however, concurrent viewership was still up by 12.3%. The average number of viewers per channel was stable and has increased by 12.5% since Q1 2018.
YouTube Gaming Live, meanwhile, became the only platform to see increases in hours watched, streamed and concurrent viewership in Q4 2019.
CourageJD’s move to YouTube Gaming Live has helped to boost Google’s platform, but the increases can also be attributed to YouTube’s broadcast of top esports events and influencer moments.
The total number of hours watched on YouTube Gaming Live grew 46% from Q1 to Q4 2019 to reach 909.1 million — making that the largest percentage increase among gaming sites. Hours streamed remained stable, closing the year at 12.3 million. Unique channels increased 4.8% on a quarterly basis, but declined 24.6% from Q1 2019.
YouTube Gaming Live’s biggest jump was in concurrent viewers, which grew by a sizable 33.8% in Q4 — making it the only platform to see an increase in average concurrent viewership in the quarter. Average viewers per channel also increased by 21% quarter-over-quarter — even though the number of unique streaming channels grew by 4.8%, which usually means a drop in average viewers per channel would occur.
YouTube Gaming Live closed the year with 22.1% market share.
Ninja’s move to Mixer has encouraged other streamers to start broadcasting on the platform, but despite that deal and the one with Shroud, the number of hours watched declined 8.5% quarter-over-quarter, from 90.2 million in Q3 2019 to 82.5 million in Q4 2019. But year-over-year, Mixer’s hours watched have more than doubled.
Ninja and Shroud have helped boost the number of hours streamed on Mixer, more than doubling the number of hours in Q3. But in Q4, the number of hours streamed dropped 12.9%, from 32.6 million to 28.4 million.
However, 80.3 million hours of content was streamed in 2019 versus just 35.2 million hours in 2018.
There also was a 7.5% decrease in the number of Mixer channels in Q4 (3.9 million to 3.6 million), but a 78% increased in 2019 compared with 2018. Mixer now has triple the number of unique channels streaming, compared with YouTube Gaming Live.
Average concurrent viewership on Mixer declined 8% from Q3 to Q4, but was up 55.1% year-over-year. Average viewers per channel remained stable.
Mixer closed the year with a 2.7% market share.
The report doesn’t include Facebook Gaming live streaming data. But it does note there was a 400% increase in the number of live streams in 2019, from 504,173 live streams in Q1 to 2,525,863 in Q4, based on Facebook Gaming streamers who used the Streamlabs’ OBS product. Additionally, the number of total hours streamed increased by 275%, from 438,835 in Q1 to 1,648,557 in Q4.
Also in Q4, several live streamers made the switch to Facebook, including Disguised Toast, as noted above, as well as Zero and Corinna Kopf. This also could have contributed to the momentum in the quarter, as well as launches of charity live streaming tools, and the arrival of the Facebook Gaming app in Thailand and Latin America.
For the year, the most-watched publisher was Riot Games, due to League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics. Epic Games (Fortnite) trailed by only 25.1 million hours. The latter saw a 29% decline, year-over-year, in terms of hours watched, while the former grew just 3.6%.
Similarly, League of Legends was the No. 1 game streamed on Twitch in 2019, followed by Fornite then Grand Theft Auto V. Fornite topped YouTube Gaming Live and Mixer.
While none of the streamers’ defections from Twitch have been significant enough to force the platform from its No. 1 position, it has created a healthier competitive landscape among streaming services. But in reality, it’s still too soon to see what long-term impacts the moves will have on Twitch and whether or not its rivals can continue their momentum in 2020.
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Twitch hires former Zynga exec Doug Scott as chief marketing officer
Amazon-owned game streaming service Twitch has snagged Zynga’s chief marketing officer, Doug Scott, to join as its own CMO, the company announced today. At Zynga, Scott led global marketing for just over three years. Prior to that, he was CMO at the music startup BandPage and the VP, Marketing and Revenue at mobile game publisher, DeNA.
He has additionally served on the board for Matrixx Initiatives and as an advisor to YouTube Music.
Scott’s background spanning gaming, entertainment and streaming make him a good fit to join Twitch at a time when it’s trying to stretch beyond its roots.
In more recent years, Twitch’s creators have expanded into areas like personal vlogs, creative arts, entertainment and more. One Twitch streamer’s efforts in interactive media even won the site its first Emmy this year.
And now, Twitch is trying out “Watch Parties,” where streamers can screen Amazon Prime Video shows and movies to their fans as a shared experience.
Meanwhile, Twitch itself has driven the expansion beyond video games in its own way. It has made deals with sports leagues, including the NBA and NFL, to stream some games, and more recently announced deals with wrestling and women’s hockey, The NYT reported.
Twitch also makes its own content. In April, for example, it launched its first game — Twitch Sings, a karaoke-style experience designed for live streaming.
Last month, the company underwent a huge makeover, from a marketing and branding perspective, with the introduction of a new Twitch logo and other branding changes.
While purple remains the Twitch logo’s iconic color, it’s now supported by a range of complementary colors that streamers can adopt for themselves. Via a new “Creator Color” tool, Twitch streamers can pick a color that better represents their own personal brand — even if it’s not Twitch’s classic purple. The updated style also includes a new Glitch logo, new font and larger plans for Twitch’s unique “emotes.”
Twitch presented the platform’s makeover at this year’s TwitchCon event in San Diego, where it unveiled a new ad campaign that highlights how Twitch can be more than just a place to stream games. (Its tagline: “You’re already one of us.”)
With all these shifts underway, it was high time for Twitch to fill its vacated CMO position, which was previously held by Kate Jhaveri, who left for the NBA this summer.
Other recent hires at Twitch have included Sarah Iooss, previously of Mic, as head of North America Sales, and ex-Googler Dan Clancy as executive VP of Creator and Community Experience.
“Twitch is revolutionizing entertainment through its massive and highly engaged community of creators and fans,” said Scott, in a statement. “I could not be more excited to join this incredible team and help to bring Twitch’s unique culture, brand and its passionate community to new audiences and global markets.”
“We’re thrilled to welcome Doug Scott to Twitch as our chief marketing officer,” added Sara Clemens, COO, Twitch. “Doug has deep experience extending brands into new markets across games and entertainment industries, making him the ideal fit to lead Twitch’s marketing strategy. As Twitch continues to grow, Doug will play an integral role in extending the brand beyond endemic audiences, supporting our incredible creators and expanding our presence in global markets,” she said.
Twitch today claims more than 15 million average daily users and over 3 million unique creators streaming each month. At any given time, the site has an average of 1.3 million viewers, the company says.
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Amazon Prime adds free mobile game content to its perks, starting with PUBG Mobile
Amazon today is introducing a new perk for Prime members: free mobile game content. The company, which already offers Twitch Prime benefits through its subsidiary, will now give its Prime members various in-game items for PUBG Mobile, the popular battle royale title from Tencent.
The items launching today include an exclusive Infiltrator Mask, Infiltrator Jacket, Infiltrator Pants, and Infiltrator Shoes to complete a Prime-exclusive set, plus the brand-new Blood Oath – Karabiner 98K and Black Magma Parachute.
These exclusive game items aren’t just a one-off as part of a special deal between the retailer and Tencent, however.
Amazon says it will roll out new mobile gaming content on an ongoing basis, going forward, as part of the Prime membership program.
Upcoming partners will include the likes of EA, Moonton, Netmarble, Wargaming Mobile, and others, Amazon tells us.
“Now, no matter what platform you play on—whether console, PC, or mobile—there are Prime game benefits for you,” said Ethan Evans, VP, Twitch Prime, in a statement. “We’re starting with exclusive content for PUBG Mobile, one of the biggest mobile games in the world, and in the coming months, we’ll roll out benefits for some of the most popular mobile games across many favorite genres.”
Amazon’s Twitch already offers a Prime benefit called Twitch Prime which offers a range of perks, like bonuses like channel subscriptions, access to select games and in-game loot, exclusive emoticons, Prime chat badges and more. And as of yesterday, it now includes the option to share select Twitch Prime loot with other non-Prime members on Twitch. However, its focus is more on PC and console gaming, not mobile.
This isn’t the first time Amazon has pitched gaming perks to its Prime members. Several years ago, it ran a program called “Underground Actually Free” which offered customers free versions of Android apps that would typically cost money. That program, however, was more about luring Prime members to Amazon’s Fire tablets. It shut down in 2017.
Today’s mobile gaming perks instead seem to be just a better way for Amazon to leverage the relationships Twitch already has with PC and console game makers who have cross-platform titles that extend to mobile.
To claim the new perks, Prime members can visit www.amazon.com/pubgm.
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Twitch acquires gaming database site IGDB to improve its search and discovery features
Amazon-owned Twitch has made a small but strategic acquisition designed to improve its search capabilities and better direct viewers to exactly the right content. The company is acquiring IGDB, the Internet Games Database (no relation to Amazon’s IMDb), a website dedicated to combining all the relevant information about games into a comprehensive resource for gamers everywhere. As a result of the acquisition, IGDB’s database will now feed into Twitch’s search and discovery feature set. However, the IGDB website itself will not be shut down.
Founded in 2015 by Christian Frithiof and a small team based in Gothenburg, Sweden, IGDB sources its gaming content both through community contributions and automation.
The site includes useful information for every game, like the genre, platforms supported, description, member and critic ratings and reviews, storyline, game modes, publisher, release dates, characters and more. You could also find less-common details, like how long it would take to play the game in question, or the player perspectives the game offered, among other things.
And similar to IMDb’s mission of organizing everything associated with the entertainment industry, IGDB allowed voice talent to claim their profile on its site, in addition to listing the full credits associated with a given title.
To generate revenue, IGDB provided a developer API that’s been free to use for smaller shops or $99 per month for up to 50K requests. Interested partners, (e.g. ASUS), could reach out to request special pricing. To date, IGDB was working with several thousand API users, we understand.
Twitch confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch in a statement.
“Millions of people come to Twitch every day to find and connect with their favorite streamers and communities, and we want to make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for,” a spokesperson said. “IGDB has developed a comprehensive gaming database, and we’re excited to bring them on to help us more quickly improve and scale search and discovery on Twitch.”
Deal terms were not disclosed, but it was likely a small deal, from a financial standpoint. IGDB is only a 10-person team and had raised just $1.5 million to date, according to data from Crunchbase.
From a strategic standpoint, however, the acquisition is much more impactful.
Twitch CEO Emmett Shear has spoken publicly about the issues surrounding Twitch’s search functionality and how it needs to improve on that front.
“We want every place on Twitch to help you get discovered. Today, nearly one in three people who come to Twitch use Search to find what they’re looking for. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that our search function hasn’t always been the best experience,” Shear had said earlier this year, speaking at TwitchCon Berlin. “One wrong letter and your search results may come back empty, or direct you to a very different streamer than the one you were looking for. So we’re going to fix search so it actually works,” he promised.
In recent weeks, there were hints that something was going on at IGDB.
In a blog post dated August 19, 2019, IGDB announced it was starting a “large scale migration of our backend, database, and hosting” and said that the service was “about to undergo some changes, some temporary and others more permanent.” As a part of its changes, it shut off the ability for users to sign-up or update their profiles, and it shut down its pulse news, feed and recommendations features.
Now a part of Twitch, IGDB will merge its free and premium APIs into one free tier, will clean up other features and migrate infrastructure. Its IGDB website will continue to remain online.
“Our mission has always been to build the most comprehensive gaming database in the world. Such a monumental undertaking can be quite challenging when you are a small startup team,” reads an IGDB blog post. “By joining Twitch, we will be able to tap into their experience, resources, and skills, which will enable us to accelerate our progress and deliver the version of IGDB we all always dreamed about. Not only that, our companies share the same culture, core values, and passion for gaming – making this the perfect fit,” the post said.
It was common industry knowledge Twitch previously used competing data provider Giant Bomb. As is often the case, the company may have been in discussions with IGDB about making a switch, which led to the acquisition. (The company declined to say how it came about.) What had made IGDB different from other API providers, like MobyGames, is that it allowed its API to be used commercially, including by competing projects, and it allowed caching and storing data on local databases.
The entire 10-person team from IGDB will remain based in Sweden, but will report into Twitch through its Viewer Experience organization.
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Work Life Ventures raises $5M for debut enterprise SaaS seed fund
Brianne Kimmel had no trouble transitioning from angel investor to general partner.
Initially setting out to garner $3 million in capital commitments, Kimmel, in just two weeks’ time, closed on $5 million for her debut venture capital fund Work Life Ventures. The enterprise SaaS-focused vehicle boasts an impressive roster of limited partners, too, including the likes of Zoom chief executive officer Eric Yuan, InVision CEO Clark Valberg, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Cameo CEO Steven Galanis, Andreessen Horowitz general partners Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, Initialized Capital GP Garry Tan and fund-of-funds Slow Ventures, Felicis Ventures and NFX.
At the helm of the new fund, Kimmel joins a small group of solo female general partners: Dream Machine’s Alexia Bonatsos is targeting $25 million for her first fund; Day One Ventures’ Masha Drokova raised $20 million for her debut effort last year; and Sarah Cone launched Social Impact Capital, a fund specializing in impact investing, in 2016, among others.
Meanwhile, venture capital fundraising is poised to reach all-time highs in 2019. In the first half of the year, a total of $20.6 billion in new capital was introduced to the startup market across more than 100 funds.
For most, the process of raising a successful venture fund can be daunting and difficult. For well-connected and established investors in the Bay Area, like Kimmel, raising a fund can be relatively seamless. Given the speed and ease of fund one in Kimmel’s case, she plans to raise her second fund with a $25 million target in as little as 12 months.
“The desire for the fund is to take a step back and imagine how do we build great consumer experiences in the workplace,” Kimmel tells TechCrunch.
Kimmel has been an active angel investor for years, sourcing top enterprise deals via SaaS School, an invite-only workshop she created to educate early-stage SaaS founders on SaaS growth, monetization, sales and customer success. Prior to launching SaaS School, which will continue to run twice a year, Kimmel led go-to-market strategy at Zendesk, where she built the Zendesk for Startups program.
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“You start by advising, then you start with very small angel checks,” Kimmel explains. “I reached this inflection point and it felt like a great moment to raise my own fund. I had friends like Ryan Hoover, who started Weekend Fund focused on consumer, and Alexia is one of my friends as well and I saw what she was doing with Dream Machine, which is also consumer. It felt like it was the right time to come out with a SaaS-focused fund.”
Emerging from stealth today, Work Life Ventures will invest up to $150,000 per company. To date, Kimmel has backed three companies with capital from the fund: Tandem, Dover and Command E. The first, Tandem, was amongst the most coveted deals in Y Combinator’s latest batch of companies. The startup graduated from the accelerator with millions from Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation north of $30 million.
Dover, another recent YC alum, provides recruitment software and is said to be backed by Founders Fund in addition to Work Life. Command E, currently in beta, is a tool that facilities search across multiple desktop applications. Kimmel is also an angel investor in Webflow, Girlboss, TechCrunch Disrupt 2018 Startup Battlefield winner Forethought, Voyage and others.
Work Life is betting on the consumerization of the enterprise, or the idea that the next best companies for modern workers will be consumer-friendly tools. In her pitch deck to LPs, she cites the success of Superhuman and Notion, a well-designed email tool and a note-taking app, respectively, as examples of the heightened demand for digestible, easy-to-use B2B products.
“The next generation of applications for the workplace sees people spinning out of Uber, Coinbase and Airbnb,” Kimmel said. “They’ve faced these challenges inside their highly efficient tech company so we are seeing more consumer product builders deeply passionate about the enterprise space.”
But Kimmel doesn’t want to bury her thesis in jargon, she says, so you won’t find any B2B lingo on Work Life’s website or Instagram.
She’s focusing her efforts on a more important issue often vacant from conversations surrounding investment in the future of work: diversity & inclusion.
Kimmel meets with every new female hire of her portfolio companies. Though it’s “increasingly non-scalable,” she admits, it’s part of a greater effort to ensure her companies are thoughtful about D&I from the beginning: “Because I have a very focused fund, it’s about maintaining this community and ensuring that people feel like their voices are heard,” she said.
“I want to be mindful that I am a female GP and I feel [proud] to have that title.”
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