On Dec. 1, Singapore – AAG Ventures (AAGV) is pleased to announce the successful raise of over $12 million in its Private Round that concluded this week.
The round was led by Shima Capital, Tribe Capital and Tess Ventures and includes HashKey Capital, Everest Ventures Group, Republic Realm, Portico Ventures, Genblock Capital, Kosmos Capital, Muses Builder, GDP Venture, Slayton Capital, Synergis Capital, ViaBTC Capital, Sanctor Capital, YellowBlocks, Oyster Ventures and Fomocraft Ventures.
Notable angel investors include Dave Wang & Partners (SoftBank LatAm Fund), Sandeep Nailwal (co-founder of Polygon), Nguyen Trung Tin (founder and CEO of Sipher), Antonny Liem (investment partner of GDP Venture, one of Indonesia’s most prominent Internet investors and venture builders), Alan Seid (adviser to the President of Palau), George Chu (founder and CEO of FiO.one), Kimiko Doan (founder of YellowBlocks), Chris Gonsalves (CEO of Community Gaming), Ken Berger (CEO of Lorem Labs), Armando Aguilar (digital assets strategist at Fundstrat), Carmen Feliciano (managing director of Access Ventures), Angels from Hustle Fund’s Angel Squad, Founders of CUKIES.world, Chavamon Vinijtrongjit (EVP, head of retail partnership business products at TMBThanachart Bank PCL), Parinya Narkprasert, CFA (team head, corporate banking at TMBThanachart Bank PCL), Willow Li (founder and CEO of AyiConnect) and Steven Bryson-Haynes (vice president of business development, NFT and gaming at Polygon)
Game studio backers include Vulcan Forged, Sipher, Cukies.world, Immortal Game and Community Gaming.
What is AAGV?
AAGV is a project that combines three components. The first component is a play-to-earn (P2E) guild that enables players (a.k.a. scholars) to earn crypto while playing blockchain games. The second component is a P2E platform that helps other guilds engage players at scale and serves as the “backbone” for P2E ecosystem participants (e.g., guilds, players, NFT owners and game developers). The last component is a learn-to-earn (L2E) platform that will enable future learn-to-earn applications, which are applications that allow players to earn crypto while learning transferable skills (e.g., math or programming) through educational games or educational platforms.
“I’ve had the pleasure to see AAG Ventures grow from a standard P2E guild to a category-defining powerhouse, creating new industries like a scholar’s microservices platform to help other guilds maximize their resources to developing the world’s first learn-to-earn ecosystem. We are excited and honored to back Nelly, Jack, David and the entire AAG Ventures family on their quest to be a category king in the blockchain industry, ” said Yida Gao, lead investor and founder and general partner at Shima Capital.
What will the funding go toward?
In its first four months of existence, AAGV has built a guild called Achip & Achair Guild of two thousand scholars in the Philippines and six other developing countries. It has also designed a vision for and started development on the P2E and L2E platforms. The company plans to release beta versions of both platforms in 22H1. This funding will allow AAGV to realize those plans as well as its future vision of onboarding 100 million people onto the metaverse economy by 2030.
Going forward, AAGV has a three-pillar strategy:
First, launch the P2E Platform – The platform will be software infrastructure that automates processes needed by nearly all guilds and serves as the backbone for P2E ecosystem participants. “We think the best chance for us to get to 100 million scholars is by cooperating and enabling other guilds rather than competing with them,” said co-founder and CEO Jack Vinijtrongjit. “The platform model is aligned with our deep software expertise and how we can best do that. We imagine that in 5-10 years, there are 10 thousand guilds with at least 10 thousand players each and a software platform will be foundational to that happening.” Han Kao, founder of Sanctor Capital also added that:
“The shift from free-to-play to play-to-earn will give rise to the guild model and foster the growth of hundreds of guild startups. AAG Ventures takes this fundamental evolution one step further by providing the tools and infrastructure for these such guilds to operate and serve their scholars.”
AAGV has a 3 pillar strategy for Creating Economic Freedom and beginning 100M people onto the Metaverse by 2030
Second, expand its P2E Guild – In conjunction with building the new platform, AAGV will continue to expand its guild. “While the path to 100M will likely be achieved through other guilds and the platform pillar, expanding our existing guild of 2K scholars will allow us to help more people achieve economic sufficiency immediately, expand across the globe, diversify across games and most importantly gain insights on guilds’ pain points to inform our platform roadmap,” said David Liu, Co-Founder and Chief of Product and Operations.
Third, launch the first Learn-To-Earn (L2E) Platform – AAG also aims to create a new concept that takes the best of P2E but redirects its focus directly on education. Like P2E, L2E participants will be able to earn crypto from engaging in a game or gamified activity. Unlike P2E, however, players will be learning transferable skills that can make them employable and self-sufficient. AAGV and Republic Realm have formed a joint venture to build the first Learn-To-Earn platform in 2022. Vladimir Velmeshev, Partner at Kosmos Ventures says “, We are also excited about AAGV’s exploration of future use cases for P2E and the potential shift from in-game tasks to more useful tasks, such as programming, learning, or general problem-solving.”
Funding will be crucial for accelerating product development, marketing and NFT acquisition as well as educating the public and regulatory bodies.
“We are proud to be an investor of AAG Ventures. As P2E games play a key role in pushing massive adoption of blockchain, gaming guilds serve as a critical bridge that connects the community and applications, especially in the developing countries, ” said Deng Chao, CEO of HashKey Capital, “The great value we see in AAG is not only an intelligent guild as a platform system, but also a team that equips with strategic vision and industry expertise. More importantly, AAG has given thousands of people an opportunity to participate in the Metaverse economy and we believe with the right execution, AAG will become the industry leader as their slogan states ‘Doing Well by Doing Good’.”
About AAG Ventures
AAG Ventures is the creator of AAG (Achip & Achair Guild), one of the fastest-growing gaming guilds in the Play-To-Earn blockchain game industry with more than 2,000 scholars participating in seven countries: Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, India, Nigeria, and Russia. AAG Venture’s mission is to Create Economic Freedom Worldwide Through the Metaverse Economy.
Team and Advisors include:
- Co-Founders from Harmony Protocol, Co-Founder of Formation.FI, Co-Founder of Lympo.io and Founder of YellowBlocks
- Experience from Google, JPMorgan Chase, McKinsey, Facebook, Amazon, Salesforce, Intel, IBM, TIBCO, Samsung, Vodafone, and Citibank
- Alumni from Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Yale, Claremont McKenna College and UCLA
- Global Coverage (17 Countries)
Find more information at: https://aag.ventures/
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