About our seed investment round
Today we announced our $1.3 million seed round led by SeedPlus and joined by SG Innovate, Hustle Fund, Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd. and our alma maters Entrepreneur First. BlockPunk is on a mission to bring creators and fans closer together through p2p tech and we feel humbled to have found such powerful partners who feel as passionately as we do. When we started fundraising we had 3 criteria:
1. Investors who understood deep tech and had actual operator experience building product and companies.
2. Partners who understood media and entertainment.
3. A strong partner for Japan.
SeedPlus has strong media experience from video (WB/Sony/Singtel venture Hooq) and music streaming (Spotify) in addition to expertise in scaling products and businesses across Asia. Hustle Fund brings Silicon Valley insight and expertise in building product at companies like 500Startups and Instagram. Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) founded in 1867 is one of the most trusted brands in corporate Japan and a giant in the printing and technology industry that works with all major Japanese content companies. We are honoured to be their first ever early stage investment. In addition, Entrepreneur First where we were incubated continued to place their faith in us with a follow-on investment.
The round was completed by SGInnovate (SGI), the innovation fund of the Singapore government. It’s worth saying something about how special Singapore is as a place to start companies. BlockPunk simply would not exist without Singapore. SGInnovate is an investor in Entrepreneur First where I met my co-founder/CTO Jatin. SGI places great emphasis on nurturing innovation and deep tech and backs it up with real incentives. We have been inspired by not only the support for new ventures in general but also the vibrant blockchain tech community. Singapore is also a hub for amazing talent both local and global. As a newcomer to Singapore, I’m seriously impressed.
This fundraise allows us to scale our engineering team and extend the capabilities of our platform. While we do try and celebrate all our wins, we know that this funding does not mean we have won anything. We have been given an amazing ticket to the races and now we have to win the race. We will be hustling hard over the next 12 months to repay the trust and faith our partners have placed in us. That means building a world-class product and leading in our space. While we have a big vision, our next goal will be to extend proof of authenticity to not only digital products but also physical products, working closely with DNP. Watch this space for some exciting content deals coming in this area. As ever we welcome any/all feedback at hello@blockpunk.net
Thanks for joining us on our journey.
Dozo Yoroshiku Onegai Shimasu!
Julian
Originally published at https://medium.com on February 19, 2019.
