1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How big is Courtside Ventures?

Deepen Parikh: Our first fund is $35 million. We were scrambling non-stop. It was just me and my partner. Our job is to find the best entrepreneurs, companies, and ideas across our main verticals. As a first-time fund, it was about building relationships with other VCs, sports leagues, and founders.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Deepen Parikh was recorded in May 2019.

Deepen Parikh is Partner at Courtside Ventures, a firm focused on investing in sports-related ventures. He provides a fascinating window into a little-discussed sector.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you introduce yourself and Courtside Ventures to our audience.

Thought Leaders in Online Gaming: Martin Rosinski, Chief Technical Officer Palringo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I would like to spend the next segment of the interview double-clicking on those two areas. Tell us what you see happening in the casual gaming world. What does the lay of the land look like? What are the trends of the casual gaming space? We should talk both about web and mobile and separately. Then we’ll do the same thing for the in-chat gaming industry.

Martin Rosinski: In the case of the casual gaming industry, we’re seeing a wide array of game releases that are being made with beautifully executed visual concepts. It’s only matured as a result of the advent of higher-powered portable mobile devices that are relatively inexpensive. There’s an explosion of titles across genres and things are looking exciting and promising for the industry. One of the gaps that we noticed in what’s happening at the moment is there is this landscape of disparate games that users play but often felt relatively lonely in that gameplay. For the type of casual gaming genre that we operate in, we >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Gaming: Martin Rosinski, Chief Technical Officer Palringo (Part 1)

Have you heard of in-chat gaming? Read on…

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some introduction about yourself as well as Palringo.

Martin Rosinski: To give Palringo’s quick story, I founded Palringo close to 10 years ago. In August, Palringo will be celebrating its 10th birthday. It started out back when mobile apps and the idea of installing software on your phone was in its infancy and beginning to develop and take off. Back then, users would have to use clunky serial cables to install software. Nonetheless, it was quite evident that the potential for third-party apps that go over-the-top of network operators and unlock a lot more potential in mobile devices was there.

When Palringo started, its initial mission statement was to create a product that emulated a walkie talkie or an opportunity for users to communicate using short voice messages but with no limits regarding distance and allow these users to hold global conversations by voice across continents. We raised an initial seed round. It was £650,000 to explore that concept. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Qstream CEO Duncan Lennox (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of games are they playing when you talk about gamification. I think what you’re saying is the concept of games as a method of sales training, yes?

Duncan Lennox: I think it’s a lot more than that, but that’s certainly a key part. When you talk about gamification, it’s important to drill into it a little bit. Because there’s a lot of people talking about gamification, but they don’t really know what they’re talking about. It’s a marketing exercise because it’s a hot topic. When we talk about it, we mean using proven scientific techniques to engage people and get them to participate in your application. It’s not meant to be cutesy or novel. It’s not meant to be a trick. How do we make the process of engaging in our application fun and interesting for them to participate? If they then participate, with the science and the way our methodology works, we will get the long-term retention and behavior change. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Steve Wadsworth, CEO of Tapjoy (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: I don’t agree with that at all. We cover e-commerce extensively. I think there’s going to be tons of new brands being built. It’s like how retail and specialty retail have evolved for decades and decades. There are always new brands and user experiences. I think e-commerce will continue to build interesting businesses and there will be new brands and businesses being built. Your point though is true that people who were interacting more through web channels are going to move to mobile devices, that’s correct. But I think the statement that you made about there not being as many opportunities for businesses being built, I don’t agree with that.

Steve Wadsworth: I don’t disagree with anything you just said. I’d be crazy to imply that there’s not opportunity. There’s always opportunities for new businesses particularly when there’s a shift in the paradigm to something like mobile. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Steve Wadsworth, CEO of Tapjoy (Part 6)

Steve Wadsworth: There are two reasons why some of the other apps may not get the same level of traction. One is user interest. Games are universal. You get much more user engagement there. Secondly, I think a number of app publishers are leaving money on the table because of the model they’ve chosen. Let us look at the magazine business. Historically, their offline model has been advertising and subscriptions. They’ve moved online and to mobile with the same model. While subscriptions is a form of freemium model for monetization, it’s a highly limited model because you’re asking the user to make a very large decision. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Steve Wadsworth, CEO of Tapjoy (Part 5)

Steve Wadsworth: What our analytics is able to do is watch the user behavior in the app, and based on that behavior assess very quickly which bucket a user falls into. We then use predictive analytics to classify users. We also have engagement tools in that same solution that will provide the publisher the opportunity to further engage any given segment and drive them to monetization either through advertising or in-app purchase. That’s where this ends up going. It’s sophisticated but the freemium model requires that as each user is going to behave slightly differently. You need a sophisticated modeling and analytics capability to understand the behavior of your users, put them >>>