• Lantern Finance

  Participated · Seed · Mar 2025

  Lantern Finance is a US financial services and technology company built for crypto investors. Its primary offering is a crypto-backed loan product that lets clients safely access loans against their crypto holdings. The company emphasizes security, product, and customer support as core strengths. Co-founded by Jung Won Kim and Prince Jindal, Lantern aims to empower crypto finance by enabling users to do more with their crypto assets. The company intends to use the new funding to expand its offerings, explore new product capabilities, and build on its core strengths. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article.

• Basketball Forever

  Participated · Series A · Mar 2024

  Basketball Forever is a digital media platform focused on global basketball coverage that pairs its editorial content with integrated gaming products. Established in 2015 and originating in Australia, the company reports a monthly audience exceeding 110 million unique visitors worldwide and 45 million in the United States, with 4 billion social impressions in 2023. Its gaming portfolio includes Hot Hands, V.O.A.T., and Streaker, and the Hot Hands live-action free-to-play launch attracted over 10,000 participants who claimed more than 35,000 squares. The company leverages its site and social channels to create a second‑screen experience that drives engagement and community. Management says the business is on a profitable trajectory and plans to expand into sports betting, daily fantasy sports, and additional sectors beyond basketball. Proceeds from the recent funding will be used to grow the North American team, expand product offerings (including real‑money games), and refine the user experience.

• Theia Studios

  Participated · Equity · Nov 2022

  Theia Studios is an Oakland, CA-based independent game studio focused on a web3 creator platform for turn-based strategy games. Its toolkit includes a map editor, asset pipeline, scripting framework, economy builder, and other creator tools that enable building and monetizing strategy games. The studio will also develop the first games in the Theia ecosystem, beginning with Icons of Theia, whose closed beta is scheduled to start on November 10th. Led by CEO Dylan Sena, CTO Kaustubh Garimella, and CRO Guilherme Arten-Meyer, the team said it will use fresh capital to accelerate growth and expand operations. The company raised $2.4M in funding from a syndicate of investors.

• Dorian

  Participated · Seed · Aug 2020

  Dorian provides a no-code mobile platform (iOS and Android) that converts written fiction into interactive, free-to-play choose-your-own-adventure games where readers can spend in-app currency to unlock alternate routes. The app splits in-app purchase revenue 50/50 with authors and pays creators via Tipalti, enabling continuous monetization rather than one-time fees. The company reports around 250 monetizing creators, with top creators making roughly $15,000 in annualized revenue and a few treating Dorian as a full-time job. Dorian supports fan works within its ecosystem via creator agreements that let original authors retain IP and set royalty splits for derivative works; it has also run licensed events with partners like Lionsgate. The product includes livestreaming so creators can play or showcase stories to build audiences, and the company employs human moderation plus host/reporting tools to manage content. With plans to grow the team and license more IP for in-app events, Dorian is also prioritizing hiring and support for Ukrainians affected by the war. Dorian offers a no-code engine and flowchart-style interface that enables fiction writers to design characters and scenes from visual assets, connect story branches, and create player choices without programming. The platform supports real-time collaboration between writers and provides detailed analytics to track reader responses and optimize monetization. Writers publish directly through the Dorian app and retain ownership of their resulting intellectual property. In early tests with about 50,000 players, writers were able to improve monetization by roughly 70% after one or two iterations. The company is currently invite-only and plans a broader launch later this year. Dorian is led by co-founder and CEO Julia Palatovska, who previously headed business development at G5 Entertainment. Dorian is building an "immersive fiction" mobile app inspired by experimental choose-your-own-adventure storytelling such as Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. The product lets users make decisions that shape nonlinear narratives and supports social collaboration so players can make choices together. The company plans to deliver multiple stories aimed initially at millennial and Gen Z women and to create a platform combining fiction with social gameplay. Dorian emphasizes female leadership and diverse, authentic female role models; CEO Julia Palatovska leads a team including Jordan Lee and Heather Logas, all with mobile games backgrounds. The San Francisco-based startup has raised $2 million in seed funding to support content development. Investors are primarily game-focused firms and industry angels, reflecting interest from the gaming investment community.

No current team members are available.