Investor Discussion Series: Tae Hea Nahm of Storm Ventures

I recently had a chance to speak to Enterprise investor Tae Hea Nahm of Storm Ventures.  Tae is a successful entrepreneur and longtime venture capitalist with decades of experience.

What Trends are you currently investing in, especially any that are more under the radar?

Currently, I am interested in the intersection of AI and SaaS.  SaaS is just automating working flow in the cloud.  If you combine that with vertically focused AI you get intelligent workflow where the user takes an action and the AI makes a recommendation – the user can decide to follow the recommendation or not.  Through this the AI gets smarter.  This combination improves SaaS applications dramatically.  An example of a company I have invested in that follows this theme is BlueShift which is marketing automation with intelligence.   SaaS built on top of the AI is the next major disruption in the Enterprise space.

Can you talk about your new book Survival to Thrival?

Survival to Thrival is an Enterprise startup guide.  It will be split in two books, one that focuses on the company and one that focuses on the people.  The major stages of an Enterprise company are:

1) Founding the Company

2) Getting Product Market Fit  - at $1M in revenue

3) Go to Market Fit – adding $1M in revenue per quarter

4) Accelerating a Category Leader

5) Industry Leader - $500-$1B in sales

Each stage requires unique strategies and execution.  The key stage for enterprise startups is finding go to market fit which is when you unlock growth

As a key distinction from enterprise firms, for consumer companies product market fit is key and it doesn’t matter if the company is losing money.  In consumer companies product market fit isn’t correlated with money so the investing strategy is different.  However, getting product market fit in Enterprise is not enough to be successful. B2B key inflection is go to market. 

What do you think of AI these days - is it mostly hype with VCs crowded in and startups pitching to the hype?

AI is an extremely disruptive technology.  It’s not so much AI itself but AI integrated with the application to make user’s better.       

You have a lot of experience - how has the venture investing industry changed since you started it compared to today?

More startups are succeeding outside of silicon valley.  In B2B specifically what’s changed is customers more willing to buy things over the internet without having a face to face relationship.  You still need the sales team to close big deals but not early on. 

Any advice to young venture capitalists and angel investors out there?

For Angel investing do at least 20 deals. Try to do same dollar amount per deal with no follow ons.  Also be sure to follow someone you trust who is on the board.  This could be the Founder, a VC, another angel investor, etc.  They will act as your proxy. 

Any predictions for 2018?

The biggest transformation in Enterprise is the rise of the three cloud companies with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and the migration to the cloud.  The next compute platform is the cloud.  With the cloud you get big data + AI for free.   

Emerging Trend: The Rise of eSports

Probably one of the most prescient acquisitions of the last several years was Amazon's purchase of Twitch, the online video game streaming site, for what now looks like a bargain of $970M.  At the time many analysts were puzzled by what was then Amazon's largest acquisition.  By all reports, today Twitch is booming on every metric and is perfectly positioned to ride the eSports wave.

eSports (electronic sports) or competitive video game playing in front of spectators, has become one of the most engaging and watched forms of entertainment for the Millennial generation and Generation Z, not just in the US but globally.  Some of the biggest followed eSports include games such as Fortnite, League of Legends, Dota, and Overwatch.  eSports is a trend I've been following for the last 4-5 years and one that is rapidly growing but currently under-reported in the tech, entertainment, and mainstream media.  This is likely due to the fact that it initially really started catching on in Asia, most notably South Korea and has since become a global phenomenon.

More than a dozen countries now show eSports on regular cable television with large consumer brands such as Nike and Adidas giving eSport teams and players large endorsement deals.  Brands spent more than $500M on eSport advertising, media rights, and sponsorships in 2017 with consumers shelling out another $60M on tickets and merchandise.  Each year fans pack stadiums with more than 50,000 people to see tournaments live.  Professional leagues and teams have arisen along with full time players whose training regimes are as grueling as any pro athlete with as rabid of fanbases. 

Some fun facts about the eSports industry:

• More viewers watched the world finals for League of Legends than any game of the NBA Finals for the last 2 years.

• Analysts forecast a CAGR of 35% over the next 5 years with the expectation of eSports becoming a billion dollar industry in the next year - a high growth market indeed.

• Gaming and eSports is rapidly becoming pop culture with A list celebrities broadcasting their video game playing live to fans, furthering interest.

• There are currently estimated to be 400M eSports fans globally, almost exclusively under the age of 35.

• There is a huge amount of monetization opportunity here compared to traditional sports with the average basketball fan spending $15 a year while eSport fans spend less than $3 a year.

Little known is that most traditional live sports are actually seeing a declining fanbase with many Millennials/Generation Z not interested in watching the sports their parents did.  Even the once untouchable American pastime of football has seen declining ratings.  The theory behind this trend goes that shorter attention spans and cord cutting by younger generations means they are just not that interested in the format of traditional physical sports.  Some interesting facts about traditional sports:

• The average age of a Major League Baseball viewer is 57 with less than 50M fans in the US.

• The average age of a National Football league viewer is 50 with about 250M fans globally.

• ESPN in the last 5 years has watched viewership drop from 100M to 85M and it continues to plummet.

Am I predicting the imminent demise of traditional sports - certainly not!  But I do foresee traditional sports becoming a much smaller percent of the entertainment market in the coming decade as eSports rises as a global mainstream form of entertainment.  eSports as an industry has exponential growth ahead of it and is likely to remain a ripe area for investors and founders for years to come.  A second order effect the growing mainstream visibility of eSports will have is to boost the growth of the $100B global video game industry.

Investor Discussion Series: Clay Collins of Nomics

In an effort to better understand cryptocurrency investing, I had the chance for a conversation with serial entrepreneur and very active crypto investor Clay Collins.  Clay is extremely active in the blockchain and crypto community as an investor, host of the excellent podcast The Flippening, and co-founder of startup Nomics.

How did you first discover cryptocurrency and become fascinated enough by it to devote your career to it?

I first got into cryptocurrency in 2013.  At the time I was CEO of a marketing startup called Leadpages.  I found the crypto world to be the intersection of a number of my passions - game theory, computers, money and economics.  I immediately put a large amount of my personal net worth into the space as I was a firm believer in the technology changing the world.  I certainly foresee the world becoming tokenized. I was fortunate enough to get involved with Ethereum right after its initial crowd sale.

Do you invest solely in crypto tokens today?

I have a barbell shaped investment approach.  One one hand I have a large percentage of assets in relatively safe investments such as cash, precious metals and real estate.  The remainder of my assets are on the extremely high risk end of the spectrum invested in direct crypto currencies crypto hedge funds, and crypto index funds.

Buy, Sell, or Hold Bitcoin/Ethereum?

Buy Bitcoin.  Buy Ethereum.

Do you think fiat money be replaced by cryptocurrencies in the next 10-30 years?

It could happen but that would be the last aspect of money that would be disrupted.  Store of value is the first use case of cryptocurrency that is real today (i.e. gold substitute).  Another use case you see emerging is court judgement resistance. Remittances aren’t there yet but will be coming when the infrastructure is in place.  

I foresee various use cases gradually eating away at and supplementing fiat currencies.  For example, there is an uptick in Bitcoin every time a local government currency collapses such as you saw with Venezuela and Zimbabwe.  Ironically, it will most likely be the poor and middle class in developed countries like the US that will be the last adapters and therefore benefit the least from crypto.  It’s easy for people in Venezuela to understand the use case behind something like Bitcoin.

What are some under the radar coins you think people should be watching?

I’m a big believer in Monero as it develops network effects over time.  Monero doesn’t allow anyone to opt out of the anonymity unlike any other anonymous crypto.  A great use case you see is in some countries purchasing certain books over the internet is a high risk activity.  Also the Monero team is very strong technically and they don’t promote marketing. I see it as presently undervalued.

Others include 0x (pronounced Zero X) which is a protocol for a decentralized exchange.  There is a growing network effect around it that could be very powerful.

Also the Dharma protocol which is a protocol for debt instruments as crypto tokens.

What are your thoughts on investing in ICOs?

I’m not comfortable doing as it requires a very different skillset.  You need to be incredibly networked in the space and be able to buy in during the SAFT phase (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens).  Networking and access to deal flow requires you to spend full time doing this and travelling to meet the teams. Crypto hedge funds do this better.

What are your thoughts around Bitcoin and its scaling challenges?

I am still a big believer in bitcoin.  There is so much capital and capital allocation around the bitcoin network that scaling is bound to happen one way or another.  For the next 1-2 years it will be slightly behind the curve but will catch up.

Another way to think about Bitcoin is the fact that it hasn’t been hacked is a huge value indicator.  Every single month that goes by without Bitcoin being hacked increases its proof as a store of value despite daily hack attempts.

Can you speak about how you invest your own crypto portfolio?

I am highly diversified across the whole of the asset class via direct investments, index holdings and crypto hedge funds.

Best resources to stay up to date on what’s happening in Crypto?

• Eric Meltzer over at INBlockchain has a good newsletter called Proof of Work

• Token Economy newsletter

• My Crypto List that is public on my Twitter account @ClayCollins.  Twitter is probably the best place to really monitor the space in real time

Predictions for 2018-2019 crypto?

Obviously this is not investing advice and for entertainment purposes only but I think crypto will rally toward the end of 2018 and we will see Bitcoin back around $20k a coin in the next couple of years.  

Anything else you think crypto investors, new and experienced, should know?

• I am a big believer in index funds such as the Bitwise Hold 10 and Coventures index fund.

• Also just a 50-50 split between bitcoin and ethereum isn’t a bad way to invest.

• In general when considering a crypto token the most important indicator is quote currency dominance.  For example you see Ethereum inching up there with 2nd order network effects being built on the token.

BlockFi

Overview

BlockFi is a fintech startup offering personal loans backed by cryptoassets.  The company's flagship product is a standardized loan at a flat interest rate for up to 12 months, at a 35% LTV ratio.  As collateral for the loan BlockFi holds a customer's Bitcoin or Ether at a registered custodian.  To manage the risk of such a volatile asset class, the firm has triggers at cryptocurrency price drops where the borrower has to put up more collateral or they begin selling the borrowers cryptoasset.

Unlike a traditional lender, BlockFi does not look at FICO or credit scores.  They generate revenue via loan interest as well as servicing the loan when they sell it off to other investors.  They are growing fast expecting to originate $100M worth of cryptoasset backed loans by end of the year, with more customer demand than they can currently support.

The team is based in New York City and has under 10 employees.

Why I like Them

Blockchain technology and the cryptoasset class it has given rise to, continues to grow as a part of the global financial system.  No matter if cryptoassets are a bubble or not, it seems unlikely they will ever go away, with a real possibility they will be part of any well balanced portfolio in the future.  BlockFi is helping build out a modern financial system around an emerging asset class.  They have huge amounts of growth ahead with their current offering as just a first step, with the team one day hoping to offer lines of credit and a credit card backed by crypto.  

Disclosure:  I have spoken to members of the team.

Loft Orbital

Overview

Loft Orbital is a spacetech startup with the ambitious goal of enabling any organization, company, government or group to access space simply, reliability, and affordably.  They do this by offering a turnkey service and interface for leasing space on satellites and getting a customer's desired sensor systems onboard.  Loft Orbital takes care of purchasing the satellite, operations, launch logistics, licensing, and everything else involved in getting a sensor suite into space and maintaining it.  The analogy here is a rideshare company such as Lyft where the customer just wants to quickly and easily get from point A to point B and not have to worry about buying a car, maintenance, navigation, getting a license, etc.  In the same vein as a rideshare organization, Loft Orbital also provides a cloud based software solutions so customers can operate their satellite sensor suites.

Previously space was restricted to large governments and corporations but Loft Orbital aims to provide space as a service to groups that previously have not had access. This includes smaller emerging space nations, startups or smaller companies (there is strong interest from data analytics firms), and R & D centers including research labs and universities. 

In terms of business model customers are charged a yearly fee while their sensors are in orbit for a pre-agreed number of years.  Loft Orbital itself owns the satellites.

The team is currently about 10 people and based in San Francisco, California.

Why I like Them

Bold.  Loft Orbital is extremely bold in pioneering a new business model.  With the recent success of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch, space travel and access is about to become a whole lot cheaper (estimates currently say around 10x cheaper) and more accessible.  The big breakthrough here is that SpaceX's launch vehicles are reusable bringing down the cost and even more importantly drastically reducing the time between launches.  Currently it takes 1 - 2.5 years booking in advance to launch a payload into space and this timeline often gets extended due to unexpected delays.  Organizations are required to pay millions of dollars in advance with no certainty on when they will get their payload into orbit.   Loft Orbital is perfectly poised with a strong offering to take advantage in the new, emerging space race that I expect to become mainstream in the next decade.

They also have no direct competition at this point in time and will be on the cusp of new business offerings around space giving them room to pivot to faster growing space industries in the coming years (one area likely being space tourism).

Disclosure:  I have spoken to members of the team.