Hello friends and welcome to Week in Review.
Last week I talked a little bit about NFTs and their impact on artists. If you're inundated with NFT speeches, take a quick look at this story I wrote this week about the $ 69 million sale of Beeple's photo collage. This cycle of hype is likely all the result of crypto people talking to each other and buying each other things, but that doesn't mean there won't be any lasting impacts. That said, I guess we're pretty close to the peak of this wave, with a bigger one along the way after things have cooled down a bit. I was wrong before though ...
This week, I'm interested in taking a quick look at what your kids have been talking about all these years. Yes, Roblox.
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The big thing
Roblox went public on the New York Stock Exchange this week, marking a market capitalization of $ 38 billion after its first two trading days.
Investors have mobilized around the idea that Roblox is one of the most valuable gaming companies in existence. More than Unity, Zynga, Take-Two, even the video game giant Electronic Arts. It still has a long way to go to bring down Microsoft, Sony or Apple though ... The company now public is so huge because investors believe the company has tapped into something that none of the others have, a truly interconnected creative market in which the players can evolve alongside an ever-changing library of experiences that all share the same DNA (and in-game currency).
The gaming industry has entered a very democratic phase as cross-play breaks down some of the walls of gaming platform dynamics. Each hardware platform that runs its own app store still has the keys to a kingdom, but it's an evolving world with uncertainty ahead. While huge publishers have leveraged cloud gaming as the trend that will unite their successful franchises, they all wish they were in the Roblox position. The gaming industry has seen a lot of Goliaths in its day, but for every big MMO that makes it rich, it's still just another winner in a field of disparate hits without connective tissue.
Roblox is different, and while many of us still have the aged view of the image above: a bunch of rudimentary looking Minecraft / Playmobile minigames, Roblox's game creation tools are advancing rapidly and developers are building photorealistic games. with wider ambitions. and range than before. As the company levels up the age group it appeals to, both by holding its grip on aging gamers on its platform and by using rigged titles to appeal to a new generation, there is a platform opportunity altogether. unique here: the possibility of having the longevity of an app store but with that level of social base that the cacophony of today's titles has never shared.
Whether or not Roblox is the "metaverse" that people in the gaming world have been advocating, it certainly looks more like that of any other modern game company.
Other things
Apple releases some important security patches
Honestly, it's been a pretty decent week of tech news, I admit, but people in the security world may not fully understand this characterization. This week, Apple released some critical updates for its devices, fixing a Safari vulnerability that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on a user's unpatched devices. Upgrade your stuff, all of you.
TikTok becomes proactive about online bullying
The new social media platforms have had the advantage of seeing the easy L's that Facebook has prepared for. For TikTok, its connection to China means there is less room for error when it comes to easily avoidable losses. The team announced some new anti-bullying features aimed at reducing toxicity in the comment feeds.
Dropbox buys DocSend
The cloud storage giants are likely in need of some reinvention, the pandemic's business software boom seemed to create mind-boggling amounts of value for every SaaS company except these players. This week, Dropbox made a relatively large bet on starting DocSend document sharing. Apparently it's a natural enough choice for them, but can they turn into a bigger opportunity?
Epic Games buys a photogrammetry studio
As graphics cards and consoles have reached new levels of power, games have had to satisfy the desire for more detail and complexity. It takes an enormous amount of time to create 3D assets with that complexity, so many game developers have leaned on photogrammetry which transforms a series of photos or scans of a real-world object or environment into a 3D model. This week, Epic Games bought one of the best-known software makers in this space, called Capturing reality, with the aim of integrating the technology into future versions of their game engine.
Twitter Spaces will be launched publicly next month
I spent some more time with Twitter Spaces this week and am growing convinced that it has a substantial chance of beating Clubhouse's growth. Twitter is notoriously slow to launch products, but it looks like they are doing their best on Spaces, announcing this week that it will be widely available within the next month.
Seth Rogen starts a cannabis company
There is a lot of money in startups, there has really never been a better time to raise capital for a project ... if you know the right people and have the right kind of experience. Seth Rogen and weed are a pretty solid mental combination and his starting a cannabis business shouldn't come as a big shock.
Extra things
Some of my favorite reads from our Extra Crunch subscription service this week:
Coupang follows Roblox for a great first day of trading
"Another day brings another public debut of a multibillion-dollar company that has done well. This time it's Coupang, whose shares are currently up just over 46% to more than $ 51 after pricing at $ 35. $ 1 above the South Korean and trading giant's IPO price range. Increasing one's range and then pricing above just to see public markets take the new share higher is somewhat normal when it comes to of the most successful recent debuts, to which we can add Coupang ". More
How non-technical talent can penetrate deep technology
"Startup hiring processes can be opaque and breaking into the world of deep tech as a non-technical person seems daunting. Being someone with no initial research background who wishes to work in the biotech industry, I have personally felt this challenge. In the last one. year, I have gained several opportunities working for and with deep tech companies." More
Does your VC have an investment thesis or hypothesis?
"Venture capitalists love to talk about investment theses: on Twitter, Medium, Clubhouse, at conferences. Yet, when you look closer, the theses are often meaningless and / or misleading ... " M.orre
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