• Screening Pitches

    Screening Pitches

    There are five straight-forward questions with which you can quickly evaluate a startup pitch, combining the strength of a proposition with its delivery.

    These questions bear some some resemblance to the Scorecard Method of startup valuation, which focuses on qualitative measures for early-stage companies, but with an additional focus on quantifying the market need.

    I have applied this approach to screening accelerator applications, but it can be used as the first step of evaluation in any pitch process.

    For the sake of simplicity we can score each of these on a scale of 1 to 5.

    1) Severity of Problem

    This is a question that can vary significantly based on the market you are looking at. Emerging economies tend to have more of a focus on the (high scoring) primary problems, which is why they’ve been able to better resist economic downturns.

    1 – Micromobility, dating apps, rapid delivery (esp. red ocean)

    5 – Access to water, energy, core financial services (esp. blue ocean)

    2) Strength of Solution

    Simply, are you providing a way for people to better cope with a particular pain, or have you managed to cure it in a complete and lasting manner?

    1 – Solution alleviates the problem

    5 – Solution eliminates the problem

    3) Scalability

    There’s almost always a focus on the size of market. TAM, SAM and SOM will feature in virtually every startup pitch deck. What’s often overlooked is how easy it is to scale into that market. Regulatory barriers, poor infrastructure, or corporate customers who move slowly are always a threat.

    1 – Infrastructure or regulatory requirements, long sales cycles and onboarding (esp. in small markets)

    5 – Web or mobile based product that is available on-demand to the entire target market (esp. in large markets)

    4) Profitability

    In many markets a poor product will win if it is just slightly cheaper than a better product. This kind of price suppression can be a killer for otherwise solid businesses. Similarly, some problems require costly solutions like agent networks, physical touchpoints, or a highly involved sales and customer service capability.

    1 – Low margins (high CAC/CRC/COGS, low LTV)

    5 – High margins (low CAC/CRC/COGS, high LTV)

    5) Team

    This is the hardest part of a pitch deck to quickly evaluate, and requires the most additional research. LinkedIn, interviews, papers, Glassdoor… the number of potential resources extends as far as your willingness to do the research.

    1 – No obvious fit for the problem being solved, by education, experience, or personal background.

    5 – Exactly who you imagine should be tackling this problem, with a combination of both motivation and ability.

    Conclusion

    At the end of this fairly rudimentary process you have a score out of 25 which should give you a very broad overview of the potential of this business. It is intended to quickly take a list of some hundreds of pitches down to the 20-30 you think are worth a closer look.

    At that point you can then start looking at some of the more granular data:

    1. Existing partners, strategic relationships, etc
    2. Industry and regional context
    3. Traction and development of competitors
    4. Revenue forecasts and unit economics
    5. IP considerations
  • Metaverse – the hunger for digital industry

    Metaverse – the hunger for digital industry

    What is a metaverse? Is it a metaverse, or the Metaverse?

    Ask most people these questions and they’ll picture ‘Lawnmower Man’ style scenes of people strapped into virtual reality rigs, flying through digital 3D environments.1

    That has very little to do with what a metaverse is.

    The term metaverse simply applies to the digital mirror of our non-digital lives. Our digital social networks, our digital assets, digital communities we participate in, etc. Right now this reprsents a fairly heavily fragmented set of services, but one of the goals of metaverse is to tie these together with a unified and decentralised approach to identity (and, through the associated wallet, finance).

    This is where we start to look at what a metaverse could be, and the direction that is likely to take. The first phase of this is the intense competition that is beginning to emerge around who provides that identity service.

    Mark Zuckerberg expects 1 billion users on his metaverse offering, each spending hundreds of dollars a year on virtual goods.

    But what are these virtual goods that he projects will be making hundreds of billions in gross revenue for Meta? What is it that has driven such interest in this space from VCs?

    This is the bottom line:

    The metaverse, as we go deeper into digital identity, digital communities, and digital spaces, has an ever-incresing potential to host digital representations of existing industries.

    Metaverse fashion brands. Metaverse real estate. Metaverse banking. Metaverse celebrities. Metaverse tourism. Metaverse consumer goods. Metaverse employment. Some of these exist in some form already. Many more will exist soon.

    On its own, that is very obviously a MASSIVE opportunity for industrial growth beyond current parameters and understanding.

    Then you consider that in this world, where everything is digital, there is a cost of goods which is close to zero. There are not the normal forces at work which influence price. In fact, indications are (from our primitive experiments in Web3) that price is even more closely connected with status than it is in the real world. Even then, the cost of a product failing due to being overpriced will be negligable.

    It could well become a sea of gamified microtransactions which would make something like the Diablo Immortal controversy seem utterly benign.

    This is what is at stake: the future of our digital economy. The digital mirror of the real world, which has its hooks in us through every I/O in our envionment – which are already countless, and increasing.

    It is incredibly easy to imagine this as a paper-thin veneer of decentralisation and ‘creator economy’ hype over the top of a behemoth of corporate ownership and private interests.

    The only way to avoid this is for Web3 to stop obsessing about the price of monkey jpgs, and to start building decentralised products and services which are resistent to the powerful gravity of centralisation.

    To revisit Moxie Marlinspike’s widely circulated essay:

    Given the history of why web1 became web2, what seems strange to me about web3 is that technologies like ethereum have been built with many of the same implicit trappings as web1. To make these technologies usable, the space is consolidating around… platforms. Again. People who will run servers for you, and iterate on the new functionality that emerges. Infura, OpenSea, Coinbase, Etherscan.

    Moxie Marlinspike
    1. I suspect VR headsets will go the way of the 3D television: it’s just not a user-friendly technology. [↩]
  • Yuga Labs vs Bungie – finding the Web3 delta

    Yuga Labs vs Bungie – finding the Web3 delta

    If the endgame for Yuga Labs (creators of the notorious Bored Ape Yacht Club) is essentially a Web3 videogame, and that does appear to be what signs point towards, it seems like an opportunity to examine the closest Web2 equivalent and see what can be learned.

    Bungie, who were acquired by Sony at a $3.6B valuation in February, seem like a reasonable comparison; not too far off Yuga’s $4B valuation from their Andreessen Horowitz-led raise in March.

    Bungie are responsible for building a few monster IPs. The most well known is Halo, established in 2001 and owned until 2010.

    Halo: Reach, their last title in the series – and not even their best seller, sold roughly 10 million units. However, while Halo helps illustrate the great legacy of Bungie, and the depth of their portfolio, it’s not that title that provides the interesting comparison. 

    Their more recent IP, Destiny, is a better example – as a ‘virtual world’ online role-playing game.

    Destiny 1 had around 30 million account holders. Destiny 2 has around 38 million, and the annual revenue from that title alone is estimated at $100-500 million.

    Yuga Labs has…

    • BAYC: 10,000
    • MAYC: 20,000
    • BAKC: 10,000
    • Otherland: 200,000

    That’s a theoretical maximum of 240 thousand account holders (people who own NFTs, though some may own multiple) producing a gross revenue of $138 million in 2021.

    You have to be incredibly bullish about Web3 to believe that Yuga Labs has earned a higher valuation than Bungie – based on those numbers. Or perhaps that Yuga is capable of doing something, thanks to NFTs, which Bungie is not?

    Where can we look for an answer to this? 

    Is it the fact that Yuga Labs is able to ‘leverage their Web3 brand’ to build a ‘transmedia IP’ spanning games, TV series and movies, etc?

    Unlikely. Bungie is also doing that with the Destiny IP.

    So what is it that drives the Yuga Labs valuation to such lofty heights, in such short a time? They have certainly yet to prove that they can provide value beyond their core audience of NFT holders. In fact, most of that value is stored in the theoretical value of those NFTs. 

    Beyond that, what is Yuga Labs offering? A wealth-gated community of crypto bros?

    I’m sure it’s a valuable network, and the events they host are wild, but does it indicate a scalable business model? Not so much.

    So is Otherside a virtual world designed exclusively for Yuga Lab’s community of NFT holders? Or is it for everyone? 

    If it’s for everyone they are competing on Bungie’s terms as a more traditional video game experience, and it seems like might struggle to be competitive there – even with the vast treasury.

    If it’s just for NFT holders, even if that pool grows in future, it isn’t clear how well that idea scales or what kind of further monetisation it will allow.

    Puzzling. 

  • Web3 – learning from science fiction

    Web3 – learning from science fiction

    You cannot call yourself a futurist if you aren’t also a student of other great futurists. The best of them, in my opinion, are science fiction writers.

    The inspiration for much of my writing lies in science fiction, and how it connects back from the future to today’s innovation. It is a thread which connects my professional and personal interests in how technology and capital interact.

    credstick1

    A credstick is a small pen-like device which can be inserted into various machines to transfer funds, much like a credit card. In 2070, credsticks are a primary method of transferring funds with no paper trail.

    Shadowrun Wiki

    Shadowrun is a video game franchise that dates back to 1989. An original science fiction IP set in 2050 and beyond.

    Credsticks are used as the primary economic tool in the game, storing and tranferring digital currency. There are certified (tradeable) and non-certified (personal use) credsticks. There are grades which reflect the maximum credit level. There is detail about how they are used in a spectrum of cases and transaction types.2

    The way these devices fit into the world, the role the play in the economy, and the manner in which they influence behaviour, is fascinating. It’s a fleshed-out, believable and practical vision for what money might look like in the future.

    I’ve spent a lot of time listening to people in the financial technology industry (former bankers, consultants, cryptocurrency enthusiasts) talk about their vision for the future of money. It’s not usually quite as thought-provoking, or perhaps even as realistic, as the alternatives presented in fictional worlds like Shadowrun.

    Their vision tends to be constrained by the idea that today’s conditions (financial regulation, technical limitations, human preferences) will persist. Or that today’s agendas (promoting blockchain, disintermediation, globalism) will be tomorrow’s.

    We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.

    Bill Gates

    Sometimes you need to wipe the board clean and reimagine these systems and structures from scratch, to see what the future may hold. Change your context entirely.

    Start from somewhere else, with a different perspective.

    This is where science fiction comes in.

    It isn’t obvious if you look around at the moment, but the important conceptual work on what a metaverse might be, and how it may function, has been quietly going on for more than fifty years.

    If you read Tad William’s Otherland series, first published in 1996, you are likely to find the ideas profound, if not prophetic. Particularly on the cultural, social and personal influence of virtual worlds.

    The technology involved in Tad’s vision may seem a bit far-fetched, but ultimately that doesn’t really matter.

    In the end, if [science fiction] is any good, it’s never about the machine. It’s always about the human relationship with it.

    Simon Ings

    What matters is the people. What does their life look like? What’s the cost of this future to them personally, and to society, in contrast with our here-and-now?

    That focus on the human consequence over the specifics of the technology is precisely why there is so much we can learn from science fiction. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blockchain or a computer powered by ants3, what matters is the impact on people.

    Good science fiction is an incredibly powerful tool for making bets on what the future could look like4, by allowing you to step into the mind of a person whose day-job is to focus their creative energies on exactly that question. Free of agendas and preconceptions.

    It was of great interest to me when the Web3 and metaverse enthusiasm started to spin up. It’s a topic with mind-bending potential, and likely represents the next great technological leap we will take. Fertile ground for science fiction.

    Looking around at how people in adjacent industries were conceiving this new virtual world potential, two things became clear:

    1. There is very little familiarity with the history of the games industry. MUDs, MMOs, virtual worlds, etc. People are taking fairly routine ideas and presenting them as ‘the next big thing’.
    2. There is even less familiarity with what has been written about these ideas before. Virtual worlds, “metaverses”, have starred in science fiction IPs since around 1964.

    Both of these points are frustrating.

    The first represents the reality of the technology behind virtual worlds today, and our capability in the near future.5 It also covers the history, and the most sophsticated examples of online communities. Most of the great case-studies, and much of the learning about human behaviour online.

    The second represents the potential, and the consequences. The fully thought-through visions for what a virtual world might look like, how people might interact with it, the dangers, the opportunities, the broader consequences for society… everything. How people are likely to respond, long term, to the emergence of a genuine metaverse.

    In my previous entry I talked about the need for Web3 to find product-market fit. 90% of that work is understanding the human component. The needs and the priorities.

    The disregard of science fiction and the games industry feels like another example of Web3 enthusiasm bypassing the crucial human factors in the fervor for technological advance.

    What better way to design the internet of the future, and everything it entails, than to use great works of science fiction to look back on the present?

    Don’t forget that humans are at the centre of it. Not technology.

    1. If you’ve been wondering about the name of this blog, this is the connection – at the intersection of fintech, web3 and science fiction. [↩]
    2. There is even a comical difference, in this fictional world, between US credsticks and the European implementation, the Europäisches Bargeldloses Zahlungsmittel. [↩]
    3. I’ll give Sir Terry a nod wherever I can [↩]
    4. I have a long-term investment thesis which is basically ‘which of these companies would thrive in Otherland‘s vision of the 2080s’, which boils down to Meta, Apple, NVIDIA and Disney. [↩]
    5. Whether or not it exists on a blockchain is irrelevant, and any immersive, 3D virtual world certainly wont. [↩]

  • Making the case for Web3

    The Web3 market seems to move in waves of enthusiasm. A surge of ideas and optimism, followed by a slowdown, and then the cynics and skeptics beat it back.

    This happened first in fintech, where blockchain cut its teeth on DLT and cryptocurrencies. Decentralisation would sink the banks, smart contracts would make regulation irrelevant, and crypto would displace fiat.

    Except it didn’t, it isn’t, and it wont.

    Fintech moved on from decentralised finance to embedded finance. The new unicorns on the block were utterly dull consumer lending propositions. Life returned to normal.

    Left in the sand, as the water washed back out, were a few companies who had figured out how to apply this technology to a real problem: cross-border transactions in low-infrastructure environments like Africa. Eversend, Kotani Pay, Chipper Cash, and AZA Finance are a few examples.

    To this day, those companies are my go-to example when someone asks that all-too-easy question: “So, what’s a real world application of blockchain technology which actually makes sense?”

    Fortunately, not many people ask me for a second example, because that seems tricky.

    Those companies were left on the retreating edge of the fintech wave, and we’re now deep in yet another wave with NFTs.

    Again the sand is starting to slip out beneath our feet.

    The question is, which way is the tide heading? Which companies will survive the cycle? What’s left when it’s over?

    the tide is coming in

    Provided more progress is made than is lost, as long as the surviving companies have more impact than the lost capital, we can say that the tide still appears to be coming in. The momentum will sustain, and there will be another wave – even if it’s a little slower, and goes a little less far.

    Anh-Tho Chuong Degroote thinks that the next place to look is infrastructure. The ‘AWS and Microsofts’ of Web3, the Polygons and Alechemys. These are, theoritically, the platforms which may make Web3 a more accessible and fruitful environment for future entrepreneurs.

    I suspect she’s right, but it’s a bit of a ‘double or nothing’ bet.

    Do we pump capital into infrastructure in the hope that it solves the issues holding Web3 back? Or do we just discover that there were no problems to be solved in the first place?

    Is Web3 a land of solutions in search of problems?

    Let’s presume that the next wave for Web3 is infrastructure. It would unfortunate timing for NFTs, which would have benefitted from the infrastructure existing, but also they’ve helped to spur a significant amount innovation and new capital.

    In the most likely scenario, we end this wave with a few well-funded technology companies who have made building and operating on blockchain technology much easier. That’s not a bad outcome, but I don’t think it’s going to drive much energy back into the market either.

    There’s still the sword of Damoclese hanging over Web 3.

    the tide goes out again

    The more you pay attention to this ecosystem through the lens of value for end users, the clearer the problem seems: It is the macrocosm of a startup which has neglected product-market fit in favour of building exciting technology. The pursuit of traction through features and performance, with the blind-refusal of nay-sayers and false prophets.

    Each new major advance produces that dopamine hit. Companies are born, funded, and die. Millions are made and lost. But each time, the water goes back out, and takes all but a few with it.

    The truth is simple: Web3 needs to make sure that the tide keeps rising, and the only way to do that is to look at the lasting success stories – and produce more of them. The companies with sustainable, growing revenue, who are building their audience outside of the Web3 tent.

    Those companies all have one thing in common: they have adequetely identified and addressed a real-world customer need. The promotion and sale of their solution had everything to do with the outcome for the user, and nothing to do with the underlying technology.

    Something to consider, when evaluating Web3 projects: if you strip out all mentions of the technology, does it still seem attractive? Does it solve a problem?

    Through answering this question more often, with better answers, the case can start to be made for Web3.

    Eliminate the hype.

    Lucrative ideas are not always good ideas.

  • NFTs – The Web3 startup investment vehicle

    Consider NFT/Web3 projects as startup investments, except the only fundraising mechanism is equity crowdfunding and we’re ALSO the customers.

    It incentivises piling into the biggest project, as investors, users and advocates, because ‘making money’ beats ‘better ideas’.

     Of course in typical startup investment, incentives are better aligned to the point that seeking out smaller, more innovative companies can be more profitable than backing the obvious picks.

    That is not the case in Web3, yet. Smaller, better projects are dying of starvation. The giants in Web3 are all promising that they will generate money for their investors, yet their only source of capital is those investors.

    If you’re scratching your head right now, don’t feel bad.

    @swombat explained it brilliantly:

    So what’s the solution?

    Fairly simple. Web3 projects need to consider two things:

    1) Providing a way for investors to eventually cash out which doesn’t kill the project.

    2) A way to replace those investors with customers which offer the project sustainable growth. This creates and recycles capital in the ecosystem which can then be deployed elsewhere, supporting other projects.

    Investors would be more likely to take smaller bets, rather than piling all of their capital into the frontrunner.

    A virtuous cycle that supports innovation. There aren’t many Web3 projects I can find which have this « investors ♻️ customers » conversion figured out.

    @fringedrifters is a frontrunner – I’m excited about what they are working on, and the use-case for NFTs they are building.