Earlier today, LiquidX, a Web3 venture capital studio for the metaverse, announced its acquisition of Anime Metaverse, a publishing and licensing company focused on building anime, manga, and dorama in Web3. This announcement has drawn our attention not only to the acquisition but also to LiquidX itself.
In its approach to investing in the Web3 sector, the company describes itself as the world’s first NFT projects aggregator that operates as both investor and operator.
It was founded under the awareness that an estimated 90 per cent of NFT projects fail before their first mint. This is why, to ensure the economic viability of its portfolio companies, LiquidX takes over entire departments and flows with its team of experts from blockchain development, tokenomics, and treasury management to even legal counsel and metaverse development.
As one of the players in the nascent Web3 sector, LiquidX says that it is the first in the market to implement this approach.
To understand more about LiquidX and the works that they are doing, e27 reaches out to Kendrick Wong, Co-Founder and Chairman of the company.
Having been featured on Forbes’ 30 under 30 lists, Wong is a prominent founder of companies that include N.Fungible, a launchpad and marketplace for fashion brands in the metaverse. He is also Managing Partner of Alpha CW, a US$200 million fund focused on blockchain, NFTs, and Southeast Asian startups.
In this interview, he speaks about what sets LiquidX apart from other organisations and what other big plans they have in store for the remaining of the year.
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This is an edited excerpt of the interview.
I would like to understand more about the model that LiquidX is implementing. It seems to require you to be fully involved in a project. Can you explain why this is a better model? How did you come up with the models that work?
LiquidX places an M&A engine in front of infrastructure development for Web3.
We take direct execution positions in our portfolio companies, with the entire operational departments managed by our support teams. This includes blockchain development, tokenomics, treasury management, art, game, and human resources.
Currently, Web3 gaming companies and accelerators take minority stakes and offer portfolio companies consulting and operational light support. Conversely, some funds take large passive stakes.
But we take prominent positions and handle all the backend operations and admin work from our portfolio companies, enabling our founders to focus on growing the company’s core assets.
What challenges do you aim to solve with this concept? How will your solution solve these challenges?
From a business perspective, we see LiquidX as a superscalar for retail adoption into Web3.
Often, the founders of high-potential blockchain and NFT projects lack the resources and experience to achieve the ambitious roadmaps projected. This is where LiquidX bridges the gap from a commercial, operational, and economic standpoint.
These founders have the vision, and we help them achieve it.
Can you tell us how you review a potential investment? What is your investment strategy?
We make fundamental bets in the three directions mentioned above – gaming, infrastructure, and intellectual property.
Each of them is evaluated differently. For Anime Metaverse, the decision criteria came down to the team and their access to existing anime IP.
In addition, Anime Metaverse is relatively new but made several million US dollars in revenue. They had to build a team fast, and LiquidX could fill that gap instantly, making this transaction a simple decision.
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What milestones have you made so far in solving this challenge?
Our treasury team already manages over US$50 million in funds across different yield platforms, currencies, and cryptocurrencies. Currently, LiquidX handles five fiat pools (EUR, USD, SGD, MYR, NZD) and three different crypto pools (USDC, Bitcoin, Ethereum).
Anime Metaverse and LiquidX are in the process of closing a joint transaction in the anime intellectual property industry to grow the brand further.
What is your big plan this year?
Anime Metaverse marks LiquidX’s first large acquisition, and we are processing a second within the coming weeks. In parallel, we are discussing acquiring an additional two or three seed-stage investments by the end of the year.
Despite the overall economic outlook, LiquidX will continue to invest and acquire in this space, particularly high-potential projects that will enable us to grow a portfolio across our focal pillars in the industry – Infrastructure, IP, and GameFi.
Beyond that, LiquidX is constantly looking to bring our exceptional capabilities to our acquisitions, accelerating their roadmaps with quality and speed to demonstrate our value proposition to more founders in the space.
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The post How LiquidX aims to help Web3 founders make their visions come true appeared first on e27.