Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that engages in consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets. It focuses on seed, early-stage, later-stage, expansion-stage, start-ups, growth companies, and incubation, and specializes in debt financing for start-ups and growth companies. Lightspeed Venture Partners invests in various sectors that include enterprise, consumer, big data, bitcoin, enterprise technology, cleantech, mobile, internet, financial technology, cloud solutions, e-commerce, storage, media, networking, energy, and software, software-as-a-service, information technology, biotechnology, and social.

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Alumni Ventures Group provides high-quality, diversified venture portfolios to individual investors who previously haven't had access to VC. It helps accredited alums from top entrepreneurial schools invest together in the ventures of fellow alums. The firm backs companies with an alumni connection and an institutional lead investor with expertise in the space. AVG also offers focused funds that allow any accredited investor access to a venture portfolio, diversified by type, sector, stage, and geography. Beth Obermiller, Michael Madden, and Mike Collins co-founded the firm in Manchester, New Hampshire in 2013.

Alumni Ventures

The Tornante Company is a principal investment firm specializing in incubation. The firm seeks to invest and incubate companies in the media and entertainment sectors. The Tornante Company was founded in 2005 and is based in Beverly Hills, Califronia.

The Tornante Company

Riot Games is a global company that develops online games. The company was founded by a couple of entrepreneurial gamers who believe player-focused game development can result in better quality games. In 2009, Riot Games released its debut title, League of Legends, a game played by over 67 million users every month.  Riot Games was placed third on the Great Place to Work’s 2013 Best Medium Workplaces list and ranked fourth place in the ''25 Best Companies to Work for in Technology'' list, an accolade based on Glassdoor reviews of Riot by Rioters.  Riot Games was founded by Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck in March 2007 and is headquartered in Culver City, California.

Riot Games

Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm specializing in investing in seed, start-ups, early, mid-stage, growth, and late-stage. It prefers to invest in the social media business and technology sector with a focus on software, back-end infrastructure, the infrastructure of the Internet, cloud computing, enterprise software and services, consumer, business Internet, mobile-Internet, consumer Internet, cloud computing, data storage, social network browsers data-storage, consumer electronics, networking functions, software related biology, biotech, and medicine companies at the intersection of computer science and life sciences with a focus on digital therapeutics, cloud technology in biology, and computational medicine.

Andreessen Horowitz

BITKRAFT Ventures was founded in 2015 by german serial entrepreneur, Jens Hilgers. BITKRAFT’s team is located in Berlin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, Madrid and Lisbon covering videogames and esports investments not only digitally but in the most relevant and busy metropoles for digital entertainment in the Western world.

BITKRAFT Ventures

Cleveland Avenue invests in seed-stage, early-stage, later-stage, and growth-stage deals focused on food and beverage companies, lifestyle consumer brands, AgTech, and technology companies.

Cleveland Avenue

1Up Ventures is an investment firm that specializes in game developers. The company is based in 	Kirkland, Washington.

1Up Ventures

Green D Ventures is a community of accredited Dartmouth alums who pool money into a VC fund to invest in Dartmouth-connected companies. Simply put, they believe they can invest better together than they can alone. They create a diverse portfolio for their investors, co-investing with leading VC funds across industry, stage, and geography. Their goal is to raise a new fund each year that benefits entrepreneurs, the school's ecosystem, and their investors.

Green D Ventures

The Believer Company

The Believer Company is a game development studio dedicated to putting the player at the center of their games. It has game developers from all over the world who have created games ranging from Words With Friends to League of Legends, Destiny to PvZ.

<div>Believer, founded by former Riot Games executives Michael Chow and Steven Snow, aims to create large multiplayer &quot;open world&quot; games that focus on player choices. Believer plans to initially focus on building original IP and stories playable across platforms, with a technology play, which is an effort to provide players with more innovative ways to consume games (e.g., connected TVs, AR/VR, etc.) As of March 2023, the company was in stealth mode and did not have any launch plans for the next 3&ndash;5 years.</div>

A foundational component to the next generation of digital entertainment.

Esports

Believer

The Believer Company’s Post

<div>
 
 Believer, founded by former Riot Games executives Michael Chow and Steven Snow, aims to create large multiplayer &quot;open world&quot; games that focus on player choices. Believer plans to initially focus on building original IP and stories playable across platforms, with a technology play, which is an effort to provide players with more innovative ways to consume games (e.g., connected TVs, AR/VR, etc.) As of March 2023, the company was in stealth mode and did not have any launch plans for the next 3&ndash;5 years.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16924">
 March 2023
 </a>
 , the company raised USD 55 million in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The fresh funds were used to increase headcount and develop original IP and content.
 
</div>

Stakester is a platform for gamers to compete against one another for cash prizes. The platform was launched in May 2020 and is currently available in 38 US states, the UK, and Singapore. As of November 2020, the platform has more than 15,000 users. Stakester has also established partnerships with ESL (Electronic Sports League) and GameByte (competitive gaming community).Stakester’s management includes Gary J. Foreman (co-founder of Rockstar Games) and Alan Patmore (former EVP and GM at Humble Bundle, GM of Mafia Wars and CityVille at Zynga), who joined as a strategic advisor and board member in June 2020.In November 2020, the company raised USD 2.7 million in seed funding led by RTP Global with participation from angel investors Jens Lapinski (CEO of Angel Invest and former MD of Techstars) and Chris Adelsbach (founding partner at Outrun Ventures and venture partner at Techstars). The funds will be used to grow its community by increasing the value of prizes on the platform. In addition, the company plans to expand its platform to Australia and Germany in the near future.

Stakester

Peru-based ESGPlay operates an esports platform that creates competitive esports tournaments.

ESGPlay

eMasters is a Brazilian esports platform that facilitates the creation of esports competitions with cash prizes. The platform supports games including League of Legends, Dota 2, and FIFA 19.

eMasters

Gaming Frog is a console based online esports tournament platform. The platform offers single player and multiplayer competitive matchups for cash prizes in FIFA.The platform officially launched in August 2019 and since has seen over 1,500 matches being played on the platform.Since launch, the platform claims to have attracted 3,500 users. The company has raised USD 150,000 from friends and family and is in the process of raising a USD 400,000 seed round. The company outlined plans to launch on Android, expand its development team, integrate artificial intelligence (AI), introduce a membership model and bring in NBA and Madden games into the platform.

Gaming Frog

NAG Studios is a Swedish startup focused on creating esports games and platforms. It was founded by esports and gaming industry veterans Peter Stahl (former head of development at Resolution Games, a game studio focused on augmented and virtual reality) and Johan Skott (former esports product owner at Tobii Tech, a unit of technology company Tobii AB). NAG’s vision entails building an esports game and platform which will incorporate the community (i.e., professional players, streamers, broadcasters, and viewers) from the beginning of the development process.The company raised USD 1 million in an extended pre-seed funding round led by London Venture Partners in October 2020. The company aims to use the funds to build its development team.

NAG Studios

Companies facilitating communication among esports players or between players and esports communities during gameplay.

Companies operating esports arenas and providing technical expertise for hosting and broadcasting competitive leagues and tournaments. 

Companies facilitating competitive online and in-person esports tournaments.

Companies producing and broadcasting esports related content.

Companies recruiting players to form professional teams and rosters for esports tournaments and leagues.

Companies developing esports related titles.

Commonly used in the tournament platforms segment to match players of equal skill

Believer

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