Patron

It’s been an incredible past 12 months working alongside Jason Yeh & Brian Cho everyday, to build Patron, lead seed rounds for brilliant founders, and raise this fresh set of funds. $100M Patron FUND 2! Thank you to our earliest supporters, and welcome to our new LPs including sovereign wealth funds, family offices and university endowments. I spent my childhood playing Rollercoaster Tycoon and building mini clip games & later saw first hand at Discord how the next generation see these platforms not just as a place to play, but as social networks. Gamers have always been at the forefront of consumer tech & we’re excited to lead seed rounds for founders who use this gaming lens to build venture-scale businesses across all verticals. If you’re a founder who shares this vision, we’d love to connect. DM me! Big thanks to Caroline Hyde Edward Ludlow & Paayal Zaveri at Bloomberg! #founders #venturecapital #seedcapital #seedfunds

Huge thanks to Paayal Zaveri for covering the launch of Patron Fund II in Bloomberg and to Edward Ludlow and Caroline Hyde for having me on to chat about our new fund on Bloomberg Television this morning. Re-posting the note shared by my co-founder Brian Cho this morning: We’re excited to announce Patron Fund II, a $100M seed-stage fund dedicated to supporting founders building for the next generation of consumers. This new fund is shaped by our experience as early builders and investors at Andreessen Horowitz, Riot Games, and Discord, along with insights from the past three years since launching our first fund. Our journey has made it clear that tomorrow’s most transformative companies will serve the hundreds of millions growing up on platforms like Roblox and Discord. Games have always been at the forefront of consumer tech adoption, and we’re dedicated to supporting visionary founders who use this gaming lens to build venture-scale businesses across all verticals. The name "Patron" reflects the kind of firm we strive to be—one that offers unwavering support to founders. With our experience scaling category-defining companies, we bring unique expertise in designing products that engage people for thousands of hours, while guiding founders through every step of their journey. We exclusively lead seed rounds to stay deeply involved from the start through to scale. As patrons, we empower builders to create something lasting. If you’re a founder who shares this vision, we’d love to connect. Amber Atherton, Brian Cho & Jason Yeh

?? We’re excited to announce Patron Fund II, a $100M seed-stage fund dedicated to supporting founders building for the next generation of consumers. This new fund is shaped by our experience as early builders and investors at Andreessen Horowitz, Riot Games, and Discord, along with insights from the past three years since launching our first fund. Our journey has made it clear that tomorrow’s most transformative companies will serve the hundreds of millions growing up on platforms like Roblox and Discord. Games have always been at the forefront of consumer tech adoption, and we’re dedicated to supporting visionary founders who use this gaming lens to build venture-scale businesses across all verticals. The name "Patron" reflects the kind of firm we strive to be—one that offers unwavering support to founders. With our experience scaling category-defining companies, we bring unique expertise in designing products that engage people for thousands of hours, while guiding founders through every step of their journey. We exclusively lead seed rounds to stay deeply involved from the start through to scale. As patrons, we empower builders to create something lasting. If you’re a founder who shares this vision, we’d love to connect. Amber, Brian, & Jason

“I would say gaming was pretty under the radar the last 10-20 years, as it relates to a venture category. It actually hasn’t been until the last five years that it’s really become the mindshare of people in terms of interesting places to invest in.” We’re excited to see our co-founder and general partner?Brian Cho's?episode of the Sand Hill Road podcast is out now! In this discussion, Brian and host?Scott McGrew?talk about the future of gaming and what could lie ahead as the new gaming-native generation continues to develop. Listen to the full discussion:?https://lnkd.in/ghGb-B6S #gaming?#tech?#VC?#podcasts?

?? We are thrilled to announce that we've raised an oversubscribed Kudos Series A ($10.2m) led by QED Investors! ?? We're excited to welcome Amias Gerety to our board and we are extremely fortunate to have the continued support of investors who believed in our vision pre-product over two years ago, including Patron, SV Angel, Precursor Ventures, the mini fund, Newtype Ventures, and the Four Cities Capital. We're also thrilled to welcome new investors like Brian Kelly (The Points Guy founder) and Samsung Next. When Ahmad Ismail and I started Kudos, our vision was to unlock “self-driving money,” starting with automatically helping our members unlock more earnings and rewards from all their credit card spend. This milestone accelerates our execution towards that vision. Special thanks to the incredible team that makes everything we do at Kudos possible: Nana Kwesi Peprah, Marc Jimenez, Yale Work, Brandon Kleiman, Camille Carandang, Meara Algama, Maria Schriber, Brian Yip, Evan Li, Samantha Lopez, Jesse Street, and Katherine W.. We're excited to show you all the amazing launches we have coming in the next few weeks! ?? Thanks to Christine Hall for the coverage. TechCrunch Article:

Exciting day for me to announce QED Investors' investment in Kudos. We led the Series A along with a set of great of firms: Patron, SciFi VC, and SV Angel. Naturally, I'm pretty excited about an AI-powered wallet that will tell me the best cards to have and the best cards to use at all times (surprisingly, my JetBlue Card is the best card for me for groceries!) Tikue Anazodo and Ahmad Ismail have been fantastic partners, disciplined operators, and creatively resilient founders. So here's why we're excited to be investing in Kudos:

Nearly a decade ago, I helped source and made the case for a16z to invest in Oculus when it was a startup. Today I want to share my perspective on where Apple Vision Pro is now and where it could be headed:

Consumer Technology in 2024 When Brian Cho and I started Patron in 2021, we had spent 10+ years helping to grow Riot Games from a single title game developer into one of the largest consumer outcomes spanning games, sports, and entertainment. We also both have 2 young daughters each, and it’s been eye-opening to witness what it means for kids to grow up in this era where products like Roblox and Discord don’t just represent games, but rather the primary way kids connect and interact with their friends. The future of consumer technology is exciting, and it’s an area where we’ve been focused since Patron’s inception. There will be exciting venture scale outcomes built in this space because of shifts in consumer behaviors and expectations, especially around younger audiences who expect their products to be more immersive, interactive, and community-driven. The 4 areas I am most excited to dig into include: 1. The future of entertainment and fandom I helped to build one of the largest gaming communities in the world around League of Legends. We expanded that community to encompass sports, music, and entertainment as League fandom took over all facets of our players’ interests and identity. As an angel I helped to build fandoms around music (88RISING) and culture (Highsnobiety). I am excited for founders to better connect creative talent and their audiences, to build and evolve culture and identity, and to form strong global communities of users bound by shared passions. 2. The future of education Having two young girls, I'm experiencing in real-time what it means for kids to grow up as gaming-native consumers. I’m most excited about companies looking to create more fun and accessible ways for people to learn the skills and information which can lead to healthy, happy, and productive lives. 3. The future of shopping Tech is finally here which makes it easier for people to discover, find, and buy the best products. Shopping online will be more based on curation and personalization. As an angel I backed founders innovating around how we discover and buy food (Deliveroo), fashion (Highsnobiety), art (Avant Arte), and consumer goods (Italic). This new way to shop online will be more clearly tied to helping people to buy what they want. 4. The future of self-improvement For too long, doing things good for you has equated to doing things not fun. This made it difficult to help people build good habits around mental/physical health, financial health, and relationships. Designing and delivering a stronger game loop around these products, and connecting users to a more meaningful multiplayer experience are keys to building sustainable engaging products. If you are a founder building in any of the areas outlined above, or innovating around how consumers can better use the internet, I’d love to connect and chat. Patron strives to back founders building category-creating and defining consumer businesses that will reshape how we use the internet.

With the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, we’re excited to drop the fourth episode of /all chat, our roundtable podcast where we discuss some of the most interesting and current topics within the gaming industry, startups more broadly, and venture capital. In this episode, Brian Cho and I are joined by our good friends Thomas Vu (Former Head of Creative at Riot Games) and Stephen Lim (Former Executive Producer of VALORANT and Founder Raid Base Inc) as we dive into the topic of: Games on Emerging Platforms We discuss: ? IMAX ON YOUR FACE ?? ?? ?? ? Evolution of virtual reality ? Challenges around virtual reality and augmented reality ? Generational gap in game development ? Predicting how future tech will shape games ? Much more! Links to the full episode in the comments below

Wow... Roblox continues to crush, and it's not even live yet on the Switch. In 2020, Roblox publically stated, "Over half of US kids and teens under the age of 16 play the game." I wonder what the % is now? It's becoming increasingly clear that the future version of the internet (and the most exciting consumer startups) is going to look closer to experiences like Roblox than the news feeds and short-form videos. The next big wave of internet users (teens/kids today) will want something more immersive, interactive, virtual assets-driven, and 3D akin to Roblox. Thoughts?