Easy Mode Game Fund
Easy Mode.
The world's first pre-seed game fund
Games can be hard. We help make the game business and the first check to be like playing on Easy Mode
We are a hybrid of a typical venture fund and the traditional publisher model with a strong preference for supporting game founders building in SE Asia and the cheaper geographies of Europe. You don't have to be building a game, "Game adjacent" companies i.e. platforms, services, game tech, VR/AR/XR are all welcome to apply. However we prefer not to invest in eSports.
We are currently fundraisng/setting up but hope to start deploying in Q2 2021
Why Easy Mode?
The game industry is largely no longer part of tech and is something more like "tech adjacent". It's become something that tech investors and VC's no longer pay attention to and even when they do, it's only at fairly late stages and focusing only on the metrics i.e. Roblox . When later stage investments do get made, they are often by people with no game industry background even lacking experience as a consumer.
The game industry is now a $176b industry in 2021 having grown $26b from 2020 with only $700-800m of game specialized capital across 17 or so funds to serve it outside of publisher capital. From this capital there are no funds at the pre-seed level and 98.7% of our own startup responses when fundraising with stage appropriate investors was overwhelmingly that they either didn't understand the industry or lacked enough interest to evaluate it despite the market size being multiple times larger than many trendier and better understood tech verticals combined.
We had no choice to become the solution and also do it in a way that is structured to both accommodate the venture backed and scalable model along with traditional publishers which is also unique to us. For game founders we are also doing this to try to make game funding sustainable and repeatable. We are not doing this for opportunistic reasons but to support and build the game industry as long time "lifers" to even greater heights. We won't be running off to chase NFT's or any other primarily investor-driven hype bubble.
Our Team
The folks writing the checks and doing the work
Munly Leong
General Partner. Operator/Investor
Munly has been a former AAA game developer (as programmer) with Midway Games starting out while still in high school back in '96 as a game journalist for the Official Australian Playstation Magazine, PC Powerplay and other print magazines. He is also active in the startup world since 2011 and more recently active with the global startup community Hackers/Founders and as a startup community organizer for his adopted home base in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
His own struggle in raising and the founding of Balance Gaming Network was arguably better preparation for setting up this fund and highlighted the potential greater need for one. Gaming is not the only funding gap that Munly is trying to solve. As the founder of ASEAN Nomad Capital, and other fund concepts such as Remote Giants (for founders leveraging geoarbitrage similarly to build in digital nomad hotspots), he has been studying venture capital extensively long before an opportunity came up to pursue the startup journey himself.
Our Partners
Indietopia.org (Netherlands)
Hub, Incubator, Publisher
Indietopia is a non-profit incubator supported by the city of Groenigen that has supported over 25 game teams with both access to govt grants as well as facilities such as a video and VR studio, 3d printing. We share the same mission of being passionate about game development and trying to enable as many as possible to become self-supporting. They are also a Netherlands registered Startup Visa facilitator and we encourage as many as possible building out of Europe to base in Groenigen and leverage the soft landing space that Indietopia can provide.
CAMT @ Chiang Mai University (Thailand)
College of Arts, Media and Technology (pending)
CAMT is Thailand's best game development program while Chiang Mai University is one of Thailand's top universities and regular host of the Chiang Mai Game Jam . As a program that often graduates competent students into an ecosystem with few places to go, we hope we can offer a win/win early stage studio opportunities to the students and cost effective talent for our portfolio companies. With language being the primarily barrier that holds their students back, we hope our support and continued presence will encourage the students to level up enough to become globally investable themselves.
Level Ventures (USA)
Building successful venture capitalists.
Level Ventures has developed an effective process to help emerging managers start their own fund. This includes advise on creating a differentiable investment thesis, building the right team of partners and advisors, and creating an effective process to raise capital. They also have a network of family offices and institutional investors who are fund investors.
Level Ventures also supports and recognizes the gaming funding gap we're looking to address and is excited that gaming at least is relatively unique among a growing sea of emerging funds. Despite our own feelings on the matter, they still consider gaming to be part of tech!
- EssaysWhy us, our thoughts on the game industry, how we think and more4 de maio de 2022A quick update to say that we probably won't open till end of Q2 and delays on both fundraising...25 de julho de 2021The argument was originally even more valid in the first year of the pandemic. Our thesis was win...16 de julho de 2021The short answer - Less needs to be invested and risked, the money goes further and founders can...10 de julho de 2021This is the most important question to ask both as a game investor and for game developers before...10 de julho de 2021ESports has taken the better part of the last decade to become worth over/under $1b as a global...9 de julho de 2021Are games still part of tech ? some of our partners and advisors still think so and the answer...9 de julho de 2021Groenigen is a small student city in the Netherlands that may be the best place in the world for...
Game Industry News
News relevant to the growth and business side of the game industry. Check out gameindustry.biz for a deeper dive if you're coming from outside of games
2021 turns out to have been the year of gaming capital after all
Over $71b invested according to investment bank Drake Star Partners
Accenture shockingly values the game industry at $300b!
$100b more than other industry analysts! Do we believe this?
Finnish Game industry is now worth $2.4b EUR annually
High costs and even bigger bets on great talent got them there.
Gaming is set to become Poland's national brand
Gaming is set to become Poland's national brand and as the leading sector (worth $500m EUR) that has catapulted Poland into becoming Europe's fastest growing tech region that now outperforms all of their wealthier counterparts in Western Europe. The Polish success story of low costs, western talent along with tremendous leverage and capital efficient arbitrage validates the formula which we want to execute in SE Asia and other regions.
https://emerging-europe.com/news/why-gaming-is-set-to-become-polands-national-brand/
Contact Us
We are currently fundraising and not yet investing. We'd still love to know what you're working on!
Easy Mode © 2021