London Venture Partners (LVP) has raised an $80 million seed fund to invest in a new generation of game industry startups.
The seed fund is the third investment fund for LVP, which has had a stellar record of investing in high-profile game companies like Supercell, the Helsinki-based maker of Clash Royale and Clash of Clans; Unity Technologies, maker of the Unity game engine; and NaturalMotion, which was acquired by Zynga for $527 million. LVP’s portfolio of companies have been valued above $18 billion.
The new London-based fund will target game companies in North America and Europe. And it is out to prove yet again that investors can be unafraid when it comes to putting money into the “hit-driven games business.”
David Gardner and David Lau-Kee started the fund some years ago. And the new fund has a new partner, Are Mack Growen.
“We are incredibly proud that an LVP investment has come to signify a stamp of approval for games startups,” said Gardner, the general partner at LVP, in a statement. “Our Fund III will allow us to continue to bring our deep backgrounds as game entrepreneurs and executives with large scale product and operational expertise to identify and help founders and teams with great potential.”
He added, ” While we have incredibly high standards and invest in only 1.5% of companies we evaluate, we are set apart from most VCs who wait for metrics to guide their investments because our own games careers have given us the ability to recognize patterns, trends and disruptive ideas very early on.”
LVP helps founders from the earliest days with not only investment but by significant involvement, leveraging its vast network to strengthen efforts across recruitment, partnerships, fundraising and acquisitions, and facilitating sharing and networking across its portfolio through introductions as well as its well regarded annual Summit.
“At LVP, we have built a unique platform, which brings targeted, sector-specific value to entrepreneurs on topics like leadership, distribution, organizational scaling and development, forecasting tools and models, resulting in an incredible environment for game startup entrepreneurs given our specialized and large portfolio,” Gardner added. “Our strategy is to nurture a network and community of games companies, leverage our experience and connections and hedge the hits driven nature of games by mixing game genres, platforms and a wider technology/ecosystem investment approach to ensure stronger coverage of the high growth games sector.”
LVP also invested in Playfish, which was acquired by Electronic Arts; Radiant, acquired by Riot Games; Brainbow, acquired by Hachette; Boomlagoon acquired by Wargaming; and Sensible Object, acquired by Niantic Labs.