Our Investment in Powder — the Camera of the Metaverse
Today, Powder announced a $14M Series-A led by Serena. We are proud to have participated in this round, together with General Catalyst, Slow Ventures, Alven Capital, Bpifrance, Turner Novak and Kevin Hartz.
For those who haven’t downloaded Powder yet: the app is the camera of the metaverse; it allows gamers to capture in-game highlights, create fantastic content with them, and share their creations with their friends and broader community.
At Secocha, we are extremely focused on identifying emerging social behavior with the goal of investing in the category-defining companies that will take the behavior from the early-adopters to the mainstream.
Stanislas, Barthélémy, Yannis, and Christian’s unique vision and world-class capabilities aligned perfectly with what we aim for. Here is why:
Clipping was an existing behavior without tools or outlet 🤳🎨🔊
When we think about opportunities, the identification of non-obvious emerging behaviors is absolutely essential. With Powder, we found a team that identified that clipping (i.e., the act of selecting and saving in-game highlights) was a behavior that a majority of gamers performed consistently — across platforms and games. Gamers clip highlights for a very simple reason: clips showcase skills on which they’ve been working over time, but also parts of who they are as gamers and individuals; clips are tools of self-expression.
Even casual gamers will be familiar with this behavior. For others, I’ll just share the reaction of one of our “cultural consultants” (I discuss their roles in our evaluation process here) when we shared the app with him. Within a split second of opening the app, with the largest smile on his face, he screamed: “THIS IS DOPE!”. Product-Market Fit doesn’t get any clearer than that.
Extremely importantly, Stanislas and his team realized very quickly that clipping is a behavior that rests on a deep desire for sociability. It can exist independently of socialization, but takes a vastly more powerful form when provided a social outlet: social dynamics incentivize more and better creation; more and higher quality content justifies clipping; and the flywheel starts spinning fast.
More broadly, the team’s approach recognizes that gamers are power users of the internet — the internet and the games that they play are the essential canvas of their socialization. It is where they make new friends and nurture existing relationships, largely by sharing experiences. But, until Powder, sharing gaming experiences would mainly happen synchronously (playing a game or watching a live stream together) or asynchronously with a relatively poor quality/time density ratio (e.g., game recordings on Youtube) and little to no native creator tools. Powder fills a critical gap.
One of Powder’s most-subbed creator @Xavasity explains why he loves Powder:
Powder is a Community-First Product 🧑🤝🧑🧑🤝🧑🧑🤝🧑
With its understanding of the social potential of clipping, the history of Powder became intractable with that of its own community. The product started just over twelve months ago with a Discord community. In Stanislas’ words:
“The community literally blew up and rapidly reached over 50,000 members […] we knew we were onto something that could impact millions of gamers across all gaming platforms”
This early focus on community has translated throughout the year in high engagement in the app, but also allowed the team to iterate quickly towards features that empower community dynamics in the product (ie., truly bidirectional dynamics). Users can chat with, and send game invites to each other. They can also join weekly challenges.
More recently, the team launched Powder Clans — users are now able to create their own clans, recruit players and meet friends all in one place.
We deeply believe that this strategy, which will progressively run deeper and deeper in the product, will make Powder the essential and dominating playground for gamers. It will be the place to gather pre-, during and post-game; it will be the place where gamers build their virtual identities and express themselves.
Powder is Mobile-First but Platform Agnostic 📱🎮🖥️
Another key part of our investment thesis was Powder’s cross-platform but mobile-first approach. Users can import game clips in the mobile app that they have recorded on mobile (iOS and Android) but also PC and consoles.
Mobile-based creation and distribution matches the behavior of users who consume, create and socialize on mobile consistently (whether it be on Snap, Tiktok, or other social platforms), but platform and game agnosticism allows the product to cater to a wide range of users and to benefit immediately from the emergence of new games, regardless of the platform on which they rise.
Today, clips of all the most popular games are created on Powder — from FPS to open worlds to sports games — uploaded in equal proportions from all platforms. It is a strong validation of one of the team’s key product hypothesis.
It’s Only the Beginning!
This Series-A is a fantastic achievement for the team and a recognition of their immense talent. We know that 2021 will be the most exciting year in the Company’s history and can’t wait to see Powder transform even more deeply the way that we play games!
On a more personal note, I’m also thrilled to see Secocha continue to invest in one of the most promising mobile consumer ecosystems in the world — my home town of Paris. Powder is the fifth mobile consumer startup with which we’ve partnered in Paris (👋 to Jour, Opal, Bling, and Ritually), and we aim to build even more bridges between the US and Paris this year. 🥖🍔
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PS — Want to chat more about Powder and mobile apps? Join Homescreen on Bunches!
