Bits of Signum Signum Growth

The value of beloved Intellectual Property has never been greater, but how to legislate, track, and benefit from its use has never been more complex. As User Generated Content continues to prosper, and platforms like Roblox and UEFN continue to break down barriers to entry for aspiring creators, the need (and opportunity) for modern Intellectual Property infrastructure grows.

In this episode of Bits of Signum, Angela is joined by guest co-host Nick Grous, Portfolio Manager at ARK Invest responsible for the gaming sector, as they welcome Founder and CEO of Spaceport, Le Zhang, to the show to discuss how Spaceport is tackling IP rights and usage across digital platforms, utilizing web3 technologies to build the infrastructure of the future. The vision of Spaceport is to become the IP licensing layer of the metaverse, not just for UGC platforms but for all gaming applications, all digital applications and even real world applications! 

Le Zhang is a serial tech entrepreneur and angel investor. He is currently Founder and CEO of Spaceport, a web3 company building scalable IP licensing infrastructure for gaming and user-generated content (UGC) economies. Previously, Le was Founder & CEO of Squadle (acquired), the AI automation platform used by major brands like McDonald’s, 7-Eleven, and Hyatt Hotels.

During their discussion, Angela, Nick, and Le go into Spaceport’s founding and how their licensing products work, before diving into how brands, creators, and consumers can all benefit from IP equally and legally, who the first adopters have and will continue to be, how digital products may soon outpace physical products, and much more.

Signum Growth Thesis: IP rights will eventually matter. Currently, we are in a period of early experimentation, and we are seeing a lot of cool AI creations! We are also in a sea of IP rights infringements. The industries of video games and entertainment depend heavily on rights, which generate a lot of value - $350 billion referenced by Le Zhang in the podcast. We believe that IP rights protection will be baked into the technology at some point in the future. Blockchain technology is uniquely suited to solve this problem facing the $350 billion IP rights market. We are deep in the Polkadot ecosystem so please ask us about this too. Bottom line: if we thought that Cambridge Analytica was scary, AI will take the level of fake news and inauthenticity to a national security threat level. Why wouldn’t we seek a cryptographic backing of truly authentic digital IP?

Learn more about Spaceport

Follow Le: LinkedIn | Twitter

Signum Growth invests and advises at the intersection of mass market culture and new economies that are bubbling up in new digital communities. We believe that emerging technologies will continue to be born in video games and that ‘gaming’ will reach an increasingly broader swath of people, until it is simply known as entertainment. The firm focuses on creators and developers who are moving to the front of the line, where they will garner a greater slice of value creation. Areas of expertise include video games, entertainment, and emerging technologies like blockchain and AI. Most recently, the firm has focused on UGC (user generated content) platforms and creators. Signum Growth is comprised of Signum Growth Capital, a FINRA-registered broker dealer, and Signum Growth Advisors, an investment advisor.

Angela Dalton, Signum Growth’s Founder/CEO, served in Tech/Media leadership roles and as a Managing Director at three firms - Guggenheim Securities, Evercore Partners, and UBS. At Evercore Partners, Angela was an initial investor and Co-Founder of Evercore Equities. Signum Growth acts as the Lead Advisor to ARK Invest, and Angela serves as the Co-Founder of the Women in Gaming Zoom (WIGZ), and recently served on the corporate board of FaZe Clan.

Follow Angela: LinkedIn | Twitter Follow Nick: LinkedIn | Twitter

Welcome to Bits of Signum, Creator Stories: a podcast that spotlights pioneers at the intersection of user generated content, AI, blockchain, and gaming. Each week, we speak to global founders, CEOs and iconic thinkers about new economies that are bubbling up online, and new business models for independent creators who are democratizing game development and content creation generally. We believe that creators and developers are moving to the front of the line.

Knowing and understanding your audience is a foundational principle to building a great game or great business. But how well do we all actually know and understand the people we are building for? How often are we straying and building games more for ourselves than our audience? And how much are we unknowingly building for the past version of our audience and not their future selves?

In this episode of Bits of Signum, Angela and Eliza are joined by Solsten Founder and CEO Joe Schaeppi to break down some of these questions and learn how he and Solsten are changing the way we analyze our audiences and better learn to build for them and what they most want. 

Joe is a visionary in human psychology who wants to fundamentally change the way brands and audiences connect. As the CEO and founder of Solsten, an AI-powered platform for human-centric experiences, Joe is pioneering the use of video games for cognitive assessment, opening up new possibilities for not only the gaming industry but for mental health diagnostics and treatment. Armed with his experience leading UX strategy for Big Fish Games and MRM // McCann and his impactful work as a startup advisor, adventure-based psychotherapist, and ski ambassador for The North Face, Joe intrinsically understands the power of a people-first approach and is ready to help companies create healthier and livelier experiences for users without leaving them overstimulated and disconnected from the real world.

During the conversation Angela, Eliza, and Joe discuss his unique skill set and background, why and how to build experiences around human resonance, what true understanding of your market (players) looks like and the benefits it brings, and much more. 

Learn more about Solsten

Follow Joe: LinkedIn | X

Chapters:

Joe’s Unique Background & Career (00:00)

Building Experiences Around Human Resonance (13:19)

Understanding Your Players as Human Beings (30:30)

Overcoming Resistance While Building a New Category of Customer Avatars (38:26)

Happiness vs Contentment (50:37)

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Signum Growth invests and advises at the intersection of mass market culture and new economies that are bubbling up in new digital communities. We believe that emerging technologies will continue to be born in video games and that ‘gaming’ will reach an increasingly broader swath of people, until it is simply known as entertainment. The firm focuses on creators and developers who are moving to the front of the line, where they will garner a greater slice of value creation. Areas of expertise include video games, entertainment, and emerging technologies like blockchain and AI. Most recently, the firm has focused on UGC (user generated content) platforms and creators. Signum Growth is comprised of Signum Growth Capital, a FINRA-registered broker dealer, and Signum Growth Advisors, an investment advisor.

Angela Dalton, Signum Growth’s Founder/CEO, served in Tech/Media leadership roles and as a Managing Director at three firms - Guggenheim Securities, Evercore Partners, and UBS. At Evercore Partners, Angela was an initial investor and Co-Founder of Evercore Equities. Signum Growth acts as the Lead Advisor to ARK Invest, and Angela serves as the Co-Founder of the Women in Gaming Zoom (WIGZ), and recently served on the corporate board of FaZe Clan. She earned an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. and B.S. from the University of Kansas, Phi Beta Kappa.

Follow Angela: LinkedIn | Twitter 

Follow Keshav Holani, Signum Growth Gaming Analyst: LinkedIn | Twitter 

Learn more about Visible Realms here.

Follow Eliza: LinkedIn | Twitter

Where people go, money follows. That is an age-old trend that we are now seeing play out with metaverse platforms, in particular Roblox. As the number of users continues to rise so too does the attention the commercial world places on these new digital landscapes. 

In this episode of Bits of Signum, Angela and Eliza are joined by Matthew Warneford, CEO of Dubit, who is one of the original pioneers of bringing 3D communal platforms to life, and has been a leading voice and innovator in the metaverse in all its incarnations ever since. During their conversation the trio go through Matthew and Dubit’s history, discuss collaborating with major brands to bring them into the metaverse, why fast fashion is the obvious entry point for commerce in these spaces, the third wave of UGC disruption, the virtual world beginning to influence the physical world, and much more!

Matthew Warneford is the Founder and CEO of Dubit, the company building the future of commerce in Roblox. Dubit has been around for over two decades with major successes all along the way. Most recently they have created Gamer Rewards, the first loyalty program for Roblox that lets players earn in-game rewards and redeem them off-platform. Dubit also created Gamer Retail to power immersive in-game retail experiences for brands. Dubit, in collaboration with Adidas, Unilever, H&M, NASCAR, and Kraft, has redefined the art of the possible in the Roblox metaverse.

Learn all about Dubit

Follow Matthew: LinkedIn | Twitter

Chapters:

Dubit’s History (00:00)

Gaining Conviction About Roblox (03:17)

Popularity and Opportunity of In Game Retail (08:00)

Using AI to Create Feedback and Item Curation (10:55)

Collaborating with Major Brands (13:56)

Fashion May Be the Wrong Word (16:36)

Holidays and Seasonality Differences in Virtual vs Physical World (18:16)

Virtual World Begins to Influence the Physical World (21:01)

Third Wave of UGC Disruption (24:58)

Platform Competition and the Movement Towards Interoperability (31:54)

Recap & Wrap Up (37:43)

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Signum Growth is a registered broker-dealer member of FINRA, headquartered in New York. The firm provides M&A advisory services and engages in placements of both private and public company securities. Focused on mass market applications underpinned by Bitcoin & other blockchain protocols, video gaming, tokenized digital art, and social networks, Signum Growth strives to be at the forefront of the emerging technologies and digital economies in the metaverse. Please reach out to us at hello@signumgrowthcapital.com.

Follow Angela: LinkedIn | Twitter 

Follow Keshav Holani, Signum Growth Gaming Analyst: LinkedIn | Twitter 

Learn more about Visible Realms here.

Follow Eliza: LinkedIn | Twitter

We are celebrating International Women’s Day by spotlighting Renee Gittins, the CEO of Stumbling Cat and former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association, to celebrate the launch of her game - Potions: A Curious Tale! It is described as an adventure and crafting game where wit is your greatest weapon and combat is not always the answer. Luna, a young witch who overcomes obstacles with the potions she brews, as she gathers items from enchanted lands and conquers devious puzzles on her quest.

We are so excited to spread the word on the game, and we encourage everyone to play- it is 8 years in the making! It was a lot of fun for Eliza and I to get to know Renee during this podcast - she is very academically oriented, and started her career as the field of biology as a GM at Phoenix Lab. So how fitting that her game is based on the idea of brewing potions! Renee is outspoken about initiatives to increase diversity both within the game industry and gaming overall to help the game industry grow and improve for everyone.

During the conversation Angela, Eliza, and Renee discuss forging their own paths as women in gaming, the mentors and life experiences that influenced Renee’s new game, how going viral on TikTok boosted Renee’s feedback loop, community building, a potential golden age of creator driven content, and much more.

Learn more about Stumbling Cat

Check out Potions: A Curious Tale on Steam

Follow Renee: TikTok | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram

Chapters:

00:00 Renee’s Journey Into and Through the Gaming Industry

06:16 Forging Own Path as a Woman in Gaming

10:12 Mentors and Life Experiences that Influenced Characters in Potions

13:12 Trials & Tribulations Faced During 10 Year Journey of Development

17:31 Viral TikTok Boosting Game Feedback

20:48 The Folklore and Stories Woven Into Potions

26:44 Building Creator Communities for Young Girls

28:24 AI Generated Content & Creator Protections

33:06 Possibility of a Creator Driven Golden Age

38:44 Community Building and Putting Yourself Forward

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Signum Growth operates at the intersection of mass market culture and new economies that are bubbling up in new digital communities. Areas of expertise include video gaming, entertainment, digital payments, blockchain protocols, AI and social media. The firm believes that emerging technologies will continue to be born in games and that ‘gaming’ will reach an increasingly broader swath of people, until it is simply known as entertainment. The firm focuses on creators and developers who are moving to the front of the line, where they will garner a greater slice of value creation. Signum Growth comprises Signum Growth Capital, a FINRA-registered broker dealer founded in 2018, licensed in M&A, capital raising, and public markets, and Signum Growth Advisors, the firm’s investment business. 

Learn more about Signum Growth Capital here.

Follow Angela: LinkedIn | Twitter 

Follow Keshav Holani, Signum Growth Gaming Analyst: LinkedIn | Twitter 

Learn more about Visible Realms here.

Follow Eliza: LinkedIn | Twitter

In this episode of Bits of Signum, Angela and Eliza are joined for the second time on the show by Yon Raz-Fridman, Founder and CEO of Supersocial. During the conversation they discuss the shifting behaviors and locations of the youngest generations, building brand experiences on the 3D internet, the difference between brands and IP and how they should operate differently on platforms like Roblox, Epic Games second party strategy and entire company flywheel, and much more!

Yon Raz-Fridman is the Founder and CEO of Supersocial, a metaverse company operating as a cutting-edge studio and next-generation agency, developing, producing, and publishing world-class games, experiences and brand worlds on Roblox and other emerging platforms. 

Yon has his own podcast and newsletter, Into the Metaverse, where he is a leading industry voice on all things metaverse, 3D gaming, and beyond. The mission of Into the Metaverse is to help you understand what the metaverse is, how it will impact your life, and what opportunities it unlocks. If you are a marketer, entrepreneur, investor or simply a curious professional, definitely check out Into the Metaverse.

Follow Yon: LinkedIn | Twitter

Chapters:

Introduction (00:00)

Welcoming Yon (01:57)

Yon and Supersocial Background (04:01)

Shifting Modalities of Behavior in Youth (07:36)

Brand Building on the 3D Internet (11:16)

Users Perception of Brands and Ads (19:56)

Difference Between Brands and IP (29:46)

Epic Games’ Second Party Building Strategy (31:51)

Too Many Strategies or Incredible Flywheel (37:56)

Maintaining a Developer Community for Decades (51:28)

Supersocial’s 2024 Plans (54:34)

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Signum Growth operates at the intersection of mass market culture and new economies that are bubbling up in new digital communities. Areas of expertise include video gaming, entertainment, digital payments, blockchain protocols, AI and social media. The firm believes that emerging technologies will continue to be born in games and that ‘gaming’ will reach an increasingly broader swath of people, until it is simply known as entertainment. The firm focuses on creators and developers who are moving to the front of the line, where they will garner a greater slice of value creation. Signum Growth comprises Signum Growth Capital, a FINRA-registered broker dealer founded in 2018, licensed in M&A, capital raising, and public markets, and Signum Growth Advisors, the firm’s investment business. 

Learn more about Signum Growth Capital here.

Follow Angela: LinkedIn | Twitter 

Follow Keshav Holani, Signum Growth Gaming Analyst: LinkedIn | Twitter 

Learn more about Visible Realms here.

Follow Eliza: LinkedIn | Twitter