Hiro Capital

Congrats to Noodle Cat Games on announcing their upcoming title Cloudheim! We're extremely proud to partner with David Hunt, Michael Noland, and Adam Ford on their journey.

Founding and Managing Partner Luke Alvarez was quoted broadly across the British media this week on his response and challenges to the government on their AI Opportunities Action Plan.

?? After a brief stint with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Luke Alvarez set up a gaming company and eventually founded Hiro Capital. He talks to Sam Shead for VC Wednesdays, a weekly series featuring a Q&A interview with a venture capitalist. ??? Hiro invests in video games, digital sports and spatial computing. What’s the connection between these industries? The connection is the fifth era of computing. Humanity is entering this new era now, where computing, for the first time, is moving from 2D desktop and smartphone screens and into the world around us. For instance, 3D social worlds started in video games such as Second Life, Fortnite and Roblox, but are now fully 3D in mixed reality (MR) games including Gorilla Tag. In FitXR, one of our portfolio companies, these MR experiences become intense workouts which make you fitter and stronger. These are games or game-like experiences which understand the spatial physical world and wrap playful entertainment around human movement. This era of computing is going to be huge. ??? What is digital sports, and why should I be excited about it? Digital sports is the intersection of real-world physical sports with the miniaturisation of processors which can be placed on the body – allowing movement and biometric data to be captured at scale and turned into useful, actionable information. For instance, Carv has created a tiny computer which is strapped to your ski boots and measures ski technique 100x per second as you speed down the mountain while the artificial intelligence tells you how to improve. We like businesses that capture that biometric data and use it to deliver personalised, gamified coaching which makes us work harder and perform better. ??? What do you think video games will look like by the end of the decade? While digital sports are turning into video games, with the body as the controller, video games are becoming increasingly immersive, 3D and movement-based. By 2030 we’ll be playing games by moving our bodies and our interactions will feel increasingly real, human, social and live. ??? What innovation are you most excited about for the future? We are excited by many things but most of all by augmented reality (AR) and the merger of AR with AI. Fully immersive, closed-world VR is finally getting really good and affordable – Meta’s Quest 3S is a breakthrough in this respect and Apple, Google, Samsung Electronics etc are now all entering the market as well. But VR is only the warm-up for the main event. True AR is delivered in wearable spectacles weighing 50-75g, with a genius-level AI seeing everything you see and able to do what you ask on demand. This will change the way we do business, sports, work out, socialise, make friends, date, shop, consume media, wage war and play games. The opportunity will be not just to recreate the experiences we have today, but to imagine entirely new use cases for this new medium. #VCWednesdays #vc #venturecapital #startups #TechonLinkedIn

“The acquisition of Garden advances our goal of taking the pain out of long development cycles – particularly at build-time,” said Tami Mazel Shachar, CEO of Incredibuild, in a statement. “Customers have long complained that CI pipelines are slow, complicated, and hard to manage, so we are excited to now accelerate the entire CI process. Garden’s expertise streamlining CI pipelines and environments aligns perfectly with our mission: Accelerating every aspect of software development.” Great news Incredibuild. https://lnkd.in/eN5UNQCx

Hiro Capital is thrilled to announce its latest investment, leading a Series A funding round into Sidero Labs with Sony Innovation Fund investing alongside us. We're excited to work with Steve Francis, Andrew Rynhard, and the rest of the Sidero team on your journey to revolutionize Kubernetes management. We believe Sidero Labs has the potential to become a leader in the Kubernetes ecosystem, and we look forward to supporting your continued growth and success. https://lnkd.in/dmrpZ_NW Joseph Tou Aadit Parikh Scott Shane Samuel Costello Joe Yuan Luke Alvarez Cherry Freeman

Calling all game studios. Hiro Capital's Dark Star returns on July 24th. Aimed at game studio founders who are thinking about raising money. The event brings together experienced investors, industry experts, and successful game studio founders to share their knowledge and insights on the fundraising process. Discover how: To position your studio for a successful fundraising Investors will view you and your studio Current market conditions are impacting the fundraising landscape Ian Livingstone and the Hiro Capital team will be joined by: Jan Joeckel, co-founder and CEO of Keen Games to talk about the leap from working with games publishers to becoming self published and launching Enshrouded Andy Gore, co-founder and CEO of Soccerverse to talk about raising ￡2.5m from Square Enix and Hiro Capital, his expectations and reality Brian Johnson, co-founder of Loric Games to talk about his experience launching his studio with VC funding and the difference between pitching publishers and investors Register at https://hiro.capital/