aVenture is in Alpha: aVenture recently launched early public access to our research product. It's intended to illustrate capabilities and gather feedback from users. While in Alpha, you should expect the research data to be limited and may not yet meet our exacting standards. We've made the decision to temporarily present this information to showcase the product's potential, but you should not yet rely upon it for your investment decisions.
aVenture is in Alpha: aVenture recently launched early public access to our research product. It's intended to illustrate capabilities and gather feedback from users. While in Alpha, you should expect the research data to be limited and may not yet meet our exacting standards. We've made the decision to temporarily present this information to showcase the product's potential, but you should not yet rely upon it for your investment decisions.
© aVenture Investment Company, 2024. All rights reserved.
44 Tehama St, San Francisco, CA 94105
Privacy Policy
aVenture Investment Company (“aVenture”) is an independent research platform providing information and analysis about startups.
Certain metrics provided by aVenture may seek to assess the risks and opportunities associated with a company, fund, or its representatives (collectively “research”). aVenture seeks to provide this information with objectivity and fairness, and with diligence about its accuracy. Nonetheless, aVenture cannot provide assurance as to the accuracy of the information provided by our research. We strongly advise those using the research platform to seek multiple, independent sources for your research when making financial decisions.
Any links provided to other websites are offered as a matter of convenience and are not intended to imply that aVenture or its authors endorse, sponsor, promote, and/or are affiliated with the owners of or participants in those sites.
The aVenture platform also provides investment listings offered by independent investment advisers in the United States. aVenture is neither a registered investment adviser nor an exempt reporting adviser under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and no statements made by aVenture are intended to imply any financial instruments are under the counsel or advice of aVenture or its representatives.
Funds offered on the platform are generally managed by a private investment adviser that, unless stated otherwise, claims exemption from SEC or state registration. Investment funds presented on the platform are only available to investors who meet the requirements of the offering, and solicitations are not made outside those listed jurisdictions.
Additionally, each investment offered on the platform has qualifications for eligibility, including some offered only to Qualified Clients and/or Accredited Investors. Certain funds may be available to non-Qualified or Accredited investors, but only those who become personally known and identifiable to aVenture Investment Company staff, who have had an opportunity to assess the financial capacity and suitability for such an investment, and discuss its risks. Funds, when offered, are only offered following a review of a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM), subscription agreement, and other disclosures.
Investments in startups, venture capital, angel investments, private equity, real estate, stocks, and similar asset classes all involve risks, including: the risk of a decline in the value of your investments, including potentially large declines (suddenly and/or for long periods of time), the potential for illiquidity where part or all of a withdrawal request may not be honored on the date requested (even when a feature of the fund). These risks are heightened during periods of market duress.
Diversification has the possibility of reducing the magnitude of declines (either caused by market/economic factors, or by factors related to the individual company), but does not guarantee these risks have been fully or partially alleviated. Most importantly, past results are not an assurance of future outcomes. While most of these risks are shared and similarly held by other investment asset classes, we recommend investors only consider venture capital investments as part of a broader, diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, and immediately accessible cash reserves.
From Startups | TechCrunch
By Lauren Forristal
April 24, 2024
Sanlo, a fintech startup that helps gaming companies manage finances, announced Wednesday the closed beta launch of its webshop tool, giving select game developers and studios a plug-and-play solution that works alongside their existing tech stacks. Gaming companies can join the waitlist starting today.
With Google and Apple charging a 30% fee for in-app purchases, it’s more challenging than ever for small- to mid-size gaming companies to run profitable businesses. Gaming giant Epic has complained about Apple’s revenue cut for years now, accusing it of being predatory toward smaller businesses.
As a result, many mobile game developers are no longer relying on app stores for monetization and are turning to external webshops, a rising trend in gaming where companies can run stores on their own websites for a much lower fee (around 4-10%). Plus, webshops are believed to boost revenue because players buy directly from the gaming company, as opposed to buying from app stores, which take a cut of sales. In fact, Sanlo said developers can earn up to 25% more revenue with a webshop.
“A webshop is one of those super tactical steps that actually proved to show that you can implement revenue from,” Sanlo co-founder and CEO Olya Caliujnaia told TechCrunch. “The reason being that it’s usually your most engaged, loyal players who go to the webshop and they get special offers that allow them to do better in the game.”
With Sanlo’s new webshop tool, game developers get a range of promotional mechanics like exclusive digital items, bundle packs, discounted offers and loyalty programs to incentivize more players to try the game. Developers can also access player data so they can monitor profiles and purchase activity in order to target individual users with compelling offers.
Companies can test and set pricing “with no price caps,” according to Sanlo. Earnings from webshop sales are deposited into the developer’s account once a week.
One downside about webstores is that Apple and Google don’t let mobile games advertise them in-app. Sanlo offers marketing tools as a solution to this issue, such as in-game prompts to promote the webshop, sending emails to returning visitors and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) attribution tracking.
Sanlo has onboarded an undisclosed number of gaming companies to its webshop platform, including Fusebox Games, the developer behind mobile titles inspired by “Love Island” IP.
“The biggest attraction for me was the plug-and-play nature of the Sanlo tool in addition to the hands-on service they provide,” Terry Lee, COO at Fusebox, told us. “We are a small company without the internal resources to cover all the bases when it comes to supporting a whole new technical capability.”
Sanlo plans to officially launch the new product to all developers this summer.
Caliujnaia and William Liu (CTO) founded Sanlo in 2020. The company’s team touts previous experience at Capital One, Earnest, Electronic Arts, Facebook, SigFig, Sony PlayStation, Visa and more.
To date, the company has raised $13.5 million in total funding, and is backed by Initial Capital, Index Ventures, Portage Ventures, XYZ Venture Capital, London Venture Partners and Konvoy.
Webstore solutions have existed for years now, from more established companies like Xsolla to newer entrants like Appcharge. Popular games leveraging webshops include Clash of Clans, Game of Thrones: Conquest, Marvel Strike Force and Star Trek Fleet Command.
View original article on techcrunch.com
Share:
Xaira, an AI drug discovery startup, launches with a massive $1B, says it’s ‘ready’ to start developing drugs
Advances in generative AI have taken the tech world by storm. Biotech investors are making a big bet that similar computational methods could revolutionize drug discovery. On Tuesday, ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs, an affiliate of Foresite Capital, announced that they incubated Xaira Therapeutics and funded the AI biotech with $1 billion. Other investors […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Apr 25, 2024
Eric Schmidt-backed Augment, a GitHub Copilot rival, launches out of stealth with $252M
AI is supercharging coding — and developers are embracing it. In a recent StackOverflow poll, 44% of software engineers said that they use AI tools as part of their development processes now and 26% plan to soon. Gartner estimates that over half of organizations are currently piloting or have already deployed AI-driven coding assistants, and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Apr 24, 2024
Radical thinks the time has come for solar-powered, high-altitude autonomous aircraft
Though many eyes are on space as orbit develops into a thriving business ecosystem, Radical is keeping things a little closer to the ground — but not too close. Its high-altitude, solar-powered aircraft aim to succeed where Facebook’s infamous Aquila failed by refining the tech and embracing more markets. It’s hard to believe that Facebook’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Apr 24, 2024
Don't miss our latest news and updates. Subscribe to the newsletter
More from Tech Crunch: