Who better to learn how to analize VR investment decisions from than Virtual Reality Investors & Founders pioneering the industry? The following VR experts are nice enough to volunteer their time, thoughts and experiences to help educate the next wave of VR investors.
Gavin Teo
Larry Braitman
Anarghya Vardhana
Partner, B Captial Group
Senior Associate, Maveron
Marco DeMiroz
Don Stein
Don Stein is a founder of Virtual Reality Investment LLC. He has made seven investments this year including: @UploadVR, @AdsOptimal, @SVRF, @VicariousVR, @Visby, @Wonder, and @Nitero.
Moderators
Panelists
General Partner & Founder
The VR Fund
Partner
Virtual Reality Investment
Orange Silicon Valley (OSV) is the Bay Area division of Orange, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, serving 236 million customers across 28 countries. Through research, development, and strategic analysis, we actively participate in the disruptive innovations that are changing the way we communicate. OSV contributes to and engages with the regional Silicon Valley ecosystem through numerous programs, such as our Orange Fab startup accelerator, Orange Institute, and ongoing collaborations with our partners.
Our featured sponsor:
Panelist Member Details
Greg Castle
Angel Investor
Jeff Wasson
Partner & VRAR Investor
Boost.VC
Tony Parisi
VR Pioneer since 1990's
Vicky Shum
Venture Partner/ EIR World Innovation Lab
Special Thanks:
Always passionate about mathematics, Anarghya published a math theorem at the age of 17 which set her on a lifelong path in STEM. Prior to entering the world of venture capital, Anarghya worked for several startups in the product manager and head of product capacity, including the early founding teams of fintech and healthtech companies. She also expanded her product experience to the non-profit and developing world through her work for Ushahidi, where she was a product manager and led user experience research across South America and East Africa. Before entering the startup world, Anarghya held various roles at Google, leading operational teams and focusing on international expansion of the AdWords Express product. Prior to joining Maveron, Anarghya was an investor at Rothenberg Ventures where she focused on consumer and media investments while also spending significant time focusing on frontier technology. At Maveron, she brings her passion for the intersection of cutting edge technologies like artificial intelligence to existing mass consumer experiences, identifying these opportunities in the Bay Area and beyond. Within the portfolio, Anarghya is a board observer for Booster Fuels Anarghya is a proud Oregonian, and attended Stanford university where she studied Science, Technology, and Society, focusing on math and computer science. She is deeply passionate about investing, diversity in tech, marathon training, eating paleo, and her lifelong mission to get more women involved in technology and to increase diversity in both thought and practice in the field.
Anarghya Vardhana
Senior Associate @
Maveron
Greg is the Founder and GP of Anorak Ventures, a seed stage fund focused on frontier technology. Anorak invests in highly specialized teams, solving tough problems in the areas of VR, AR, computer vision, robotics, IOT and autonomous vehicles. Prior to Anorak, Greg was an active angel investor with 26 investments counting two exits including Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook for $2bln. With strong ties to the VR/AR community, Greg focuses much of his time investing in and mentoring startups in this sector. Previously, Greg led marketing for the widely popular game development tool Scaleform (acq. 2011) and for Autodesk's Game Technology Group. Greg has a dual degree in International Business & Marketing from the University of Maryland.
Greg Castle
Angel Investor
Jeff Wasson
Partner @ Boost.VC
Jeff Wasson is Partner at Boost VC. Jeff is a 3X entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. Jeff was a founder of TravelNow.com, which as CEO he took public then sold to Hotels.com for $50 Million in cash when he was 27. After exiting the travel technology world in 2010, and taking a two and half year hiatus to travel the world with his wife and two daughters, he remerged ready to find the next big thing. An early investor in Boost VC, Jeff is now a General Partner with the firm that is chasing the two most disruptive technologies of our time, blockchain and virtual reality. With 15+ years of operational experience from startup to sale, Jeff has seen if not all of it, most of it, having raised millions in capital and having employed hundreds during his tenure. An overlapping 15+ years of personally investing in early stage companies has given Jeff the startup experience from another lens. Jeff has worked on every continent except Antarctica, and brings to bear the global perspective needed in today's world. At Boost VC, Jeff leads the VR efforts and is responsible for deal sourcing across all segments, investment decisions, working with portfolio CEOs, and expanding the Boost VC brand.
Gavin Teo
Partner @ B Captial Group
Gavin Teo is a Partner at B Capital Group and leads the fund's San Francisco office, where he invests in emerging consumer technology. Prior to joining B Capital, Gavin led investments in AR/VR, digital healthcare and IoT at Comcast Ventures. His prior investments include AltSpace, August Home, Automatic Labs, Baobab Studios, BodyMedia, CreativeLive, Felix & Paul Studios, Meta, NextVR, SPACES and Twitch. Before joining the venture industry, Gavin managed product for FarmVille at Zynga and served as a management consultant at Bain & Company.
Larry Braitman
Partner @ Virtual Reality Investments LLC
Lawrence (“Larry”) Braitman has been investing, advising, and accelerating the growth of early-stage companies since 1997. With Rick Thompson, he co-founded Flycast Communications, where Braitman served as EVP of Business Development. Flycast created the first-ever banner advertising network targeting direct-response buyers. Flycast went public in 1999 raising $75 Million and then sold in 2000 in a deal ultimately worth $2.2 Billion. After Flycast, Braitman co-founded Adify with Rick Thompson and Russ Fradin. At Adify, Braitman served as Chairman of the Board from 2006 – 2008. Adify provided the technology and back office services enabling media companies to build and manage custom online ad networks. Adify sold in 2008 to Cox Enterprises in a transaction valued at $350 Million. Prior to moving to Silicon Valley, Larry was a business law partner at a major Philadelphia law firm. Larry holds a BA from Franklin & Marshall College, and a JD (cum laude) from Georgetown University.
Richard Tapalaga
Senior Investment Manager @ Qualcomm Ventures
Richard is a Senior Investment Manager for Qualcomm Ventures and is responsible for overseeing investments in the augmented reality / virtual reality, mobile gaming, internet-of-things (IoT) and connected device ecosystems. Richard joined Qualcomm Ventures in 2008 and led the group’s investments in 21, Embee Mobile, Magic Leap, (an unannounced VR game development studio), Playdek, Sotera Wireless and ThatGameCompany. Prior investment (exits) include HeyZap (acquired by RNTS Media) and Livescribe (acquired by Anoto).
Prior to joining Qualcomm Ventures, Richard was a Vice President at Société Générale, leading leveraged finance deal teams in the Gaming, Lodging & Leisure and Media & Telecom sectors. Richard holds an M.B.A. from Cornell University and a B.S. from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Vicky is Venture Partner/ EIR at World Innovation Lab (WiL), a venture and advisory firm that works with corporate partners such as Sony, All Nippon Airways, and Nissan on investments in the US and Japan, incubation of new ventures, as well as corporate innovation programs. She drives VR/ AR within the firm, a key focus area for WiL and a number of their corporate partners.
Prior to joining WiL, Vicky headed up Global Retail Products at Sling Media (now part of Echostar), overseeing all software and Slingbox hardware products. Previously, she cofounded eHow (now part of Demand Media). Vicky has also led product planning and business development at Sony PlayStation, and was a management consultant at Accenture. Vicky graduated with Highest Honors from UC Berkeley, and earned her MBA from Stanford Business School.
Vicky Shum
Venture Partner/EIR @ World Innovation Lab
Don Stein
Host & Organier,
VR AcceleratED
Don Stein is the founder of Virtual Reality Investments, LLC. An angel fund that invests in VR startups. VRI has made six investments this year including: @AdsOptimal, @SVRF, @UploadVR, @VicariousVR, @Visby and @Wonder. Don's mission is to accelerate the overall amount of funding going into the virtual reality industry by helping educate investors that currently do not invest actively into VR.
Ed Ruth is a Director at Verizon Ventures and is responsible for strategic investments and venture development activities. Ed has been with Verizon for nearly a decade and has been leading Verizon’s business presence in Silicon Valley for the past five years. In addition to designing and opening the Verizon Innovation Center in San Francisco, Ed identified strategic partnerships in the startup community focusing on new technologies, developer platforms and API’s. He has experience in mobile content, previously leading all negotiations, programming and partnership activities with artists, music labels, gaming publishers and app developers for Verizon Wireless. He began his career at Verizon in retail sales and then moved on to head up youth marketing for the West Area Marketing Organization.
Ed Ruth
Director @ Verizon Ventures
Marc Jackson is managing partner of Seahorn Capital Group. He founded Seahorn in 2008 to provide early-stage capital, fundraising advice and C-level mentoring in the area of business formation in interactive games and technology. Since 2014, Seahorn’s primary focus is on augmented and virtual reality software and mobile consumer applications. Marc is building a VR hub and production co-financing platform in Los Angeles to help bring the highest quality interactive content to the consumer market. Seahorn is currently invested in apelab (VR/AR story-driven games and toolsets) and Innerspace (interactive CG/cinematic VR experiences), and Marc acts as CFO and board director for both companies. Seahorn presently advises several other AR/VR technology and content companies. Prior to focusing on VR/AR, Seahorn invested in and advised several leading game companies: Big Red Button (Sonic Boom for Sega and Nintendo), Fearless Studios (sold to Kabam), Royal Cactus (mobile gaming), Tequila Works (indie console gaming), Rebellion Studios, Climax Studios, Rocksteady Studios, Eidos Interactive and Atari. Marc has also pioneered use of film financing structures in video gaming, arranging more than $150M in production financing for independently developed projects over the last decade. Before entering the interactive entertainment industry, Marc worked for Walt Disney Imagineering on the design and build of the EuroDisneyland theme park in Paris. Marc holds an MBA from HEC Paris and a BA from the University of Michigan.
Marc Jackson
Managing Partner @ Seahorn Capital Group
Mark has spent the last three years as an Associate at Technicolor Ventures and has covered future media consumption habits. Mark was brought on by the co-founders and General Partners as part of the founding team to establish Technicolor’s presence in the startup ecosystem, generate deal flow, and develop the ventures team operating model. Mark was involved with building a venture fund from the ground up.
Mark has established himself as a player extremely well known entity in the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality space. Mark’s involvement in the VR/AR space involves being focused on meeting and helping VR/AR founders with capital raising, business and product strategy, and customer development.
Mark holds a BS and MS degree in Materials Engineering from UCLA, and MBA from The University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Mark has worked at Raytheon as an engineer, Amazon in Last Mile Logistics, and venture capital and corporate development at Technicolor.
