Video games investment exit returns

When an industry is in its infancy, smart investors hedge their bets. But their decision to invest in a later round with Lending Club provides a model for how a thesis-driven firm must sometimes rewrite their own rulebook. Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri, who was also a senior partner at Greylock, had noticed a huge transformation emerging in consumer technology. Yamada came up with the idea for the Mercari flea market app after traveling the world and realizing that even the poorest people carried cell phones. They are just made-up numbers.

Games also yielded a 9.9x return on every dollar invested in the last three years, well above the 3.5x average for mobile internet

Exit is a action — puzzle video game that was developed and published by Taito for the PlayStation Portable. A version for Xbox Live Arcade was released on October 24, The basic premise is to lead the main character Mr. ESC, an escapologistout of hospitals, underground facilities, offices and other buildings within a time limit. Along the way, the player gets hindered by obstacles such as fires, earthquakesfloods, or even meteor showers.

Games also yielded a 9.9x return on every dollar invested in the last three years, well above the 3.5x average for mobile internet

Renewal Funds , which evolved out of Renewal Partners in , is a venture capital firm investing in early growth stage companies in Canada and the United States. Renewal Funds is game-changing in part because of their investment thesis and portfolio company management strategies, and perhaps most of all because of the quality of the partnerships that Renewal Funds secures for its portfolio companies upon exit. Last year alone, Renewal Funds helped secure four high-impact acquisitions for four of its portfolio companies. A sale transaction for that type of company requires consideration of a broader set of stakeholders. How does Renewal find the right investors for your fund? Richardson: It’s been a good time to try and find partners because more people are becoming interested in aligning their money with their values.

1. WhatsApp

Renewal Fundswhich evolved out of Renewal Partners inis a venture capital firm investing in early growth stage companies in Canada and the United States. Renewal Funds is game-changing in part because of their investment thesis and portfolio company management strategies, and perhaps most of all because of the quality of the partnerships that Renewal Funds secures for its portfolio companies upon exit. Last year alone, Renewal Funds helped secure four high-impact acquisitions for vide of its portfolio companies.

A sale transaction for that type of company requires consideration of a broader set of stakeholders. How does Renewal find the right investors for your fund? Richardson: It’s been a good time to try and find partners because more people are becoming interested in aligning their money with ivestment values.

We start all of our conversations with our investors around the fact that we are a mission-focused venture fund and the mission side of what we do is as important as the financial. We don’t talk about short-term IRRs; we talk about goals over the life of the fund.

I think this helps to align people to the idea that we’re going to be patient with their capital, and they should be patient with us to see how things transpire. And, by having such a large network of investors, we have this incredible source of intellectual capital and experience that we can bring to bear to help our companies, if necessary. What does it mean to think about mission-aligned exits, and how does that show up in your fund management and relationship with your portfolio companies?

If we work with a invedtment where mission shows up throughout everything they do — their product is a mission-oriented product and the people are a mission-oriented group — there is a high chance that the group interested in supporting that company after Renewal will be mission-aligned.

But, it’s not necessarily a foregone conclusion. We are not a private-equity company that owns and controls a company that we invest in; we are generally a minority investor.

We can’t fully control how the exit goes, but in most companies we work with, we develop a level of understanding and involvement that aligns us with the employees and co-investors and allows us to help make sure that we do have a mission exit. So when we look at selling a company, we ask four main questions: Will the employees, the people who have truly built the company, be treated fairly? Will the product or service that we have been trying to support with our dollars be further supported by the buyer?

Does this buyer have the capacity to take the company to a new height beyond the level that an early-stage investor like Renewal can? And, how likely is it that the community and mission of the company will continue to be supported? How returnd that play out in the real world?

Can you describe one of your exits from last year? Richardson: We made our first investment in organic, fair-trade foods company Alter Eco back inand the company has grown its revenues approximately 10 times over the time that we’ve been invested. I was chair of that company for the last three or four years, and we’ve had a board seat. Alter Eco is a B Corp and represents exactly what a B Corp should be — started by people who were smart, mission-first people who care about building a product that matters.

All of us felt aligned in the idea that there was a next step that the company could take, and a larger source of capital would be helpful. We started the process by making it clear to the investment bankers that that mission was going to be a key element, and that any bid that was just financial would be very difficult to consider. We as company and board went out to look for people who were aligned that way.

We found a buyer, NextWorld, who has created an Evergreen fund. NextWorld Evergreen is a large fund with a lot of capacity to build the brand. The company is staying in the premises that it was occupying, and is expanding its offerings within the organic and fair trade space. Richardson: Aquatic Informatics, a B Corp whose platform allows researchers and policy makers to make informed decisions regarding scarce surface fresh-water resources for effective conservation and use, was also an early investment of Renewal2.

At the time, Aquatic was a small, water-data management company and we became involved as the only institutional investor, and supported the company through invesment substantial growth over the years. Mike Cormack, our venture partner, was on the board, and I was in close contact with the management. Rerurns ultimately started a process with a group who are the largest water investors that we know of, XPV Water Partners. They have a fund in the U. Aquatic being a B Corp came into play in a helpful way as we determined how certain details would be treated; the certification helped focus some of the conversation through the process.

The third B Corp exit in was Better Bean. The founder of Better Bean believes that the world would be a better place if we ate more beans, which as a crop are better for the planet and as a food are better for our health than animal proteins.

So his company Better Bean makes a fresh, refrigerated bean product — a convenient alternative to dried or canned beans that we tried and loved. We invested early, as the main outside institutional investor.

One lesson that we collectively learned in Better Bean was that when you are creating a new category, it may take more marketing and retail heft than a typical small food company has, so we worked hard with the company to help develop their product and to help get them into the right places. Ultimately we decided, collectively with management, that having a large partner with significant distribution reach would be the best way of expanding Better Bean and realize our collective returne of getting the world to eat more beans.

We landed on a deal with the venture arm of Hain Celestial. They were interested in the bean product, and as a relatively new venture initiative, they were absolutely committed to working with a small company like this retutns showing that it could be built up.

Part of the team got to stay in Portland, and the founder and the other employees kept their jobs, and Hain brought in new people to help grow rehurns brand. How did you manage a mission-aligned sale to a company like Nestle, that isn’t necessarily known as a leader on these issues? Richardson: We initially became involved with Sweet Earth because we loved the entrepreneurs, Brian and Kelly Swette, and we loved the product. Ivdeo co-founders have had very successful backgrounds with very large companies, and decided to put their own money to grow the plant-based protein world.

They bought a facility in California, built it out, and exif to build Sweet Earth Foods. Everything was plant-based, with seitan being the basis for most of their product. We got involved fairly early on, as investent a company innovating in plant proteins and growing consumer acceptance of them was aligned with what our investors cared. The company did extremely well during the time that we were with them, and grew much more rapidly than almost any other food company I’ve seen.

So, Brian and Kelly built a large team, and a large facility. Because of their growth, all sorts of people, from private equity to other strategics, were interested in talking to Hames Earth. In ultimately doing a deal with Nestle, although we were the second largest investor in Sweet Earth, the bus was definitely driven by Brian and Kelly.

The chief considerations were a commitment from Nestle to keep the plant operating, with eligible employees and management team in place, and to amplify the mission of sustainable, plant-based foods. Of more than employees, I know only one of the senior employee who has left.

And Nestle committed to keep the brand as a plant-based protein brand. And the co-founders saw Nestle as the right partner to do. With the commitments on the facility, people and product in place, we collectively believed that Nestle as a buyer can take this brand to become a really important and impactful gakes, worldwide, over the next five to 10 years.

A framework developed by Renewal Funds that guided four mission-aligned exits to strategic partners If you were to summarize how to invest and exit with impact, how would you sum it up? Richardson: You xeit to be clear from the beginning what is important to you, because everyone has different gamee about mission. We have a very particular idea about mission at Renewal, and we’re clear in our minds what that means.

Mission-alignment has to exist in every aspect of a company for us to be involved in the company. Second, you have to be able to wait and do a deal at the right time. You can’t expect to be able to find a mission-aligned exit instantly when you’re in trouble, so the time to think about your exit—and start discussions invesment your partners about who the right people might be to exit with—must come earlier rather than later.

And you have to take the time to learn about the people you may deal. The final thing is that you should not be afraid to ask for what’s important to you on vdeo exit. In a number of these exits that we’ve discussed today, the sellers were able to ask for assurances from people that you wouldn’t think you would be able to get in writing, and we did. You should not be afraid to ask for what is right, and ask for it fairly early on, because it really helps flush out who’s just talk and who’s real, in terms of their further commitment to mission.

As more funds market themselves as impact investors, how does Renewal continue to differentiate itself? Richardson: We benefit from long-term participation in the space. Ten years ago, when we went out to raise Renewal2, we were able to show people investmrnt the companies that Renewal Partners had participated in and talk about what that participation meant.

At that time, when impact investing wasn’t quite where it is now, we had an ability for people to see how we had actually dealt with people over time, rather than just talk about what we would. And I think the fact that we now have had two successful funds and another 10 years of involvement in this space is proof of how we act upon our mission commitments, in almost any situation.

This exit conversation is just part of that larger, long-term commitment that is hard to get without a long-term presence. One of the things that is critical to continuing to grow the sector is to have certifications like Certified B Corporation and GIIRS, both of which we earned early and have supported. It’s absolutely relevant to our investors that we participate, and we work hard to get as many of our companies to participate as well, because it’s a fantastic way of measuring impact.

Some of the companies who’ve never even heard of B Corp come back to us after we’ve introduced them to it, and their employees are super-excited about it unvestment thinking about how they can continue to improve their impact metrics. For us, the certifications have been wonderful in terms of something that our investors care about, but it’s been even more exciting to see the impact that they have had on the companies that we invest in.

I am co-founder of B Lab, which serves a global movement of people using business as a force for good. Our vision is that one day all companies will compete to be best f Photo courtesy Renewal Funds.

Graphic by Callie Rojewski. Jay Coen Gilbert. Read More.

Napster fell afoul of the music industry over copyright issues and was shuttered in Presidential candidate John Edwards was tweeting from the campaign trail, and there were fake Bill Clinton and Darth Vader accounts. It also opened the door for real growth for Lending Club. Flipkart has remained the top e-commerce site, despite numerous management changes and the eventual departure of both founders. Meituan Dianping has grown into a broad-based services provider, dealing in everything from movie tickets to restaurant reservations. This is when other companies and investors started paying attention. But major improvements in software proved out this way of working. But their decision to invest in a later round with Lending Club provides a model for how a thesis-driven firm must sometimes rewrite their own rulebook. The resulting deal happened at a premium to the price at which King had been trading. They need to check their benefits at the end of video games investment exit returns year. Likewise, VCs swing hard, and occasionally hit a home run. Suddenly, there were real network effects to Lending Club. After JD. Entrepreneur Magazine named it as one of the top 5 places outside Silicon Valley to start a company in It took real conviction in the potential of Google to get Kleiner and Sequoia through the market turmoil that came between initial investment and IPO. It has a highly-skilled immigration population from Russia and elsewhere, which gave Mobileye a natural pool of talented engineers to pull early employees. With Ele.