Exploring the Golden Age of Gaming: Joining Bessemer as an Entrepreneur in Residence

The games industry is experiencing a renaissance. From Overwatch to Clash Royale, games today have never been more entertaining and community-driven. As gaming has matured into mainstream entertainment, we’ve entered a Golden Age of Gaming.

Just a few years ago many were heralding the death of games. While most were writing eulogies on PC gaming, Riot created a $10B company with 100M monthly active players. Shortly after console game sales were considered to be in permanent decline, EA’s market cap has grown 10x and is at an all-time high, thanks to building fewer and better games for the evergreen consoles from Microsoft and Sony. And mobile gaming continues to grow at 20% annually. The era of continuous platform shifts has ended and the landscape has settled — we have three massive and growing platforms in PC, console, and mobile games.

Given the current health of the industry, we’re looking forward to the innovation that will happen on top of this foundation:

• Riot, Blizzard, and other publishers are investing in the infrastructure needed to grow eSports. We want to support these publishers and the startups that are helping to grow games as a form of watchable entertainment.
• Games operated as services — while not new — is still in its infancy. We think there is consumer demand to support dozens of games with the multiplayer depth and scale of League of Legends, Minecraft, and Pokémon Go.
• As Steam, Twitch, and Discord have proven, billion-dollar potential companies can be created by building consumer internet applications — commerce, video, social — exclusively for the gaming community. As gaming becomes even more mainstream, we’re eager to see what’s next.
• With Facebook Messenger, Alexa, and improved VR/AR hardware, we also see emerging platforms with potential for new entrants.

These growth opportunities around online gaming are why I joined Bessemer. The team here shares my optimism and commitment, and we have confidence in the industry’s pioneers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Today may be the Golden Age, but we’re even more excited for the future.

Big thanks to Ethan and the rest of team BVP on a very warm welcome!

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