What we’re looking for in 2022:

“Multiverse, not Metaverse”

Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) is a VC firm which invests in software start-ups that are developing innovations designed to disrupt industries and which exhibit the exciting potential to become one of the unicorns of tomorrow.

We have identified three emerging market segments which we intend to focus our investment on throughout 2022. These are:

· Metaverse and Immersive Technologies

· Software Security

· Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

In the first of our series on what we are looking for in 2022, we outline why we believe that Metaverse represents a compelling investment opportunity and what areas of this exciting market we will be focusing on.

So why Metaverse?

Current investments include: Volograms, Virtex, VividQ, Admix, WarDucks, Artomatix and Engage XR.

SVV’s view is that science fiction’s grand vision of the Metaverse is somewhat limiting[1]. This is because it is primarily focused on virtual reality and gaming. But in fact, it is becoming clear that a range of transformational Metaverse environments will take shape over the next few years.

Our conversations with start-ups support our vision that the Metaverse will be comprised of a multiverse of different types of online environments, such as a future version of Roblox (a VR and three-dimensional Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO), a corporate VR world, a consumer AR metaverse overlay through AR smart glasses, or a decentralised blockchain Play To Earn MMO.

We believe that the further development and convergence of enabling technologies, along with social and digital trends — which have gathered speed post-Covid — will drive the Metaverse and multiple, online multiverses to a $8 trillion industry by the end of this decade.

Advancing the Metaverse

With this in mind, over the next few years, SVV will invest in the following enabling technologies which will make the Metaverse, or multiverses, a reality:

· Security technologies — just as the internet was not developed with security in mind, neither has the metaverse. We believe that security technologies for the Metaverse will boom over the next few years for everything from identity fraud to cyber to data security. In particular blockchain and crypto metaverses will require even more security that traditional metaverses due to the incentives for criminals to hack users out of their valuable NFTs or Metaverse crypto currency.

· Blockchain and decentralised technologies — in particular Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions, Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs), decentralised blockchain metaverse platforms and new types of Play2Earn games and underpinning technologies for them. During 2021, decentralised Web 3 technologies, such as NFTs, advanced significantly and we saw token economies with new crypto-first, game-based metaverses such as Star Atlas being launched to compete with existing game-based MMOs, such as Fortnite. During 2022, we believe that, as long as there is not a significant shock to crypto markets, we will see an acceleration of this trend.

· Game development technologies — such as Game Engines, Online Worlds, 3D Content Development Tech and Mapping Technologies. We see continued opportunity in this space for game development middleware, particularly mapping platforms for blockchain metaverses and 3D spatial technologies for AR metaverses.

· IoT sensor technologies — integration of physical senses into VR environments has been developing for some time with novel technologies, beyond game style controllers, now starting to become practicable and economic. In addition, sensor technologies can be used to create fixed immersive installations. Companies such as Immotion had just started to popularise these prior to Covid but then had to shut them down due to restrictions. These types of products should re-emerge in 2022 bigger and better than ever.

· AR and VR software technologies and applications — in the near term, we expect a number of headsets to come to market, such as Meta and Apple’s mixed reality headset.

About Sure Valley Ventures:

Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) is a VC firm which invests in software start-ups that are developing innovations designed to disrupt industries and which exhibit the exciting potential to become one of the unicorns of tomorrow.

In doing so, we aim to deliver robust returns to the founders and their teams, our investors, and society and the economy at large.

We have a great track record of accelerating start-ups from Seed to Scale-up in key high growth tech market sectors, at the frontiers of innovation. As well as equity, we provide entrepreneurs with access to a flexible, value add Platform, drawing on the team’s experience as founders to develop a programme which is tailored to each company’s individual needs. SVV’s platform also features a global network of advisors, based in leading innovation hubs across the globe, including San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and other key innovation centres in the USA as well as leading European and Asian hubs.

[1] The term metaverse was originally conceptualised in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, and later in Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel “Ready Player One”, and subsequent movie by Stephen Spielberg in 2018, where users are represented by programmable avatars, and interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) persistent, open (and often virtual) worlds (that may be interconnected). Both Stephenson and Cline used the term to describe a Virtual Reality (VR) based successor to the internet.