Unstoppable Domains, the leading platform for Web3 digital identity with more than 2.5 million registered NFT domains, today announced it has closed $65 million in Series A funding at a $1 billion valuation. The round was led by new investor Pantera Capital with participation from Mayfield, Gaingels, Alchemy Ventures, Redbeard Ventures, Spartan Group, OKG Investments, Polygon, CoinDCX, CoinGecko, We3 syndicate, Rainfall Capital, Broadhaven, EI Ventures, Hardyaka, and Sound Media Ventures, along with previous investors Boost VC and Draper Associates. Unstoppable Domains will use the funding to fuel product innovation and grow our partnerships in the web3 space as we continue to build a platform for user-owned and portable digital identity.

“Unstoppable Domains is rapidly defining a new category of decentralized identity that will change the internet as we know it,” said Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital. “We’re proud to back Matt and the rest of the team who are making this vision a reality.”

Founded in 2018, Unstoppable Domains offers NFT domains that give people full ownership and control of their digital identity. The company has registered 2.5 million domains, which people can use to log into more than 150 Web3 applications, replace lengthy crypto wallet addresses on more than 80 wallets and exchanges, create decentralized websites, and build their web3 identity. Unstoppable Domains has built more than 300 partnerships with leading web3 companies like Polygon, Blockchain.com, MoonPay and more. Unstoppable Domains has generated more than $80 million in sales since launching in 2019.

“For too long, companies have controlled people’s digital identities, and Unstoppable Domains is putting that power back into the hands of people,” said Matthew Gould, Founder and CEO of Unstoppable Domains. “As the digital economy becomes a larger part of our lives, it’s time for people to own their identity on the internet. We’re thrilled to partner with Pantera and other investors who share our vision of onboarding billions of people onto Web3 through NFT domains that unlock user-owned, private, and portable identities.”

Unstoppable Domains is a fully remote company and was recently named one of America’s Best Startup Employers by Forbes.

ABOUT UNSTOPPABLE DOMAINS

Founded in 2018, Unstoppable Domains is an NFT domain name provider and digital identity platform working to onboard the world onto Web3. Unstoppable Domains offers NFT domains minted on the blockchain that give people full ownership and control of their digital identity, with no renewal fees. With Unstoppable Domains, people can replace lengthy alphanumeric crypto wallet addresses with a human-readable name and log into and transact with apps, wallets, exchanges and marketplaces. The company was named by Forbes as one of America’s Best Startup Employers in 2022.

ABOUT PANTERA

Pantera Capital is the first institutional investment firm focused exclusively on bitcoin, other digital currencies, and companies in the blockchain tech ecosystem. Pantera launched the first cryptocurrency fund in the United States when bitcoin was at $65/BTC in 2013. The firm subsequently launched the first exclusively-blockchain venture fund. In 2017, Pantera was the first firm to offer an early-stage token fund. Pantera Bitcoin Fund has returned over 32,000% in nine years and has returned billions to its investors. Pantera manages $4.7bn across three strategies – passive, hedge, and venture.

The original press release can be found on PR Newswire.

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Velosimo, the next generation of government technology integration that enables government agencies to meet citizens’ expectations of modern and uninterrupted digital services, announced it has secured an $11 million Series A investment led by Macquarie Capital Principal Finance, with participation from Valor Equity Partners. This funding will enable the company to accelerate sales and expand its best-in-class integration platform. Funding comes on the heels of the company’s remarkable growth since launching in 2018.

“At Velosimo, we believe our online experiences with government agencies should be as easy as with retail providers,” said Kris Trujillo, Founder and CEO of Velosimo. “Broken integration between government software platforms has hindered agencies in providing this level of online customer experience. Velosimo solves this challenge for agencies. We are thrilled to have reached this milestone. Partnering with Macquarie Capital and Valor will allow us to quickly scale our sales and product teams to meet the increasing demand for our platform.”

Velosimo’s vision is to transform our virtual engagements with government by revolutionizing systems integration. Traditional system integrations are unworkable and too complex for most agencies. Seeing this need, Kris Trujillo founded Velosimo and launched the industry’s first integration platform for government. Unlike other integration platforms, Velosimo targets government and has a team of industry veterans and a groundbreaking platform with self-healing transactions and no-code connectors uniquely built for government. These differentiators have led to over 70 state and local government customers, including San Diego, CA, El Paso, TX, Washington DC, and the State of California, and strategic partnerships with leading government software companies such as Accela, Cityworks, Cartegraph, and Laserfiche.

“We are excited to partner with Velosimo, as they build the preeminent IPaaS solution for the government sector,” said Larry Handen, Senior Managing Director at Macquarie Capital. “Government agencies are looking for fast and efficient means of interconnecting their systems. They want these solutions to be self-managing and future-proof. Velosimo’s solution and team are uniquely positioned to deliver on this demand.”

Before this raise, early angel investors included industry leaders Maury Blackman, former CEO of Accela and current CEO of Premise Data; Daniel Kim, former Accela board member and investor, and current partner at HKW; and Stephen Davis, managing partner at Banneker Partners.

Macquarie Capital Principal Finance’s investment in Velosimo represents its sixth investment in government technology companies since the beginning of 2019.

Read our blog post (https://www.velosimo.com/newsroom/funding) for more information.

About Velosimo

Velosimo provides cloud-native, off-the-shelf technology connectors explicitly built for government and the distinct scenarios of inner-system use by staff and citizens, with connector management and deep insight into all connected systems transactions on the Velosimo Connect Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). Velosimo also provides a revolutionary, low-code environment for rapid custom connector development by Government Technology Companies, System Integrators, and government agencies. The Velosimo Marketplace showcases the burgeoning collection of quickly enabled, ready-made, certified connectors from Velosimo and their partners.

Government agencies are turning to Velosimo as their move towards online, touchless service drives the need for predictable systems interoperability and modern, uninterrupted user experiences.

About Macquarie Capital

Macquarie Capital is the advisory, capital markets, and principal investment arm of Macquarie Group. It encompasses corporate advisory, a full spectrum of capital solutions, including capital raising services from equity, debt, and private capital markets and principal investments from Macquarie’s balance sheet. Macquarie Capital has deep sector expertise in the aerospace, energy, defense and government services, consumer, gaming and leisure, financial institutions, healthcare, industrials, infrastructure, resources, software and services, technology, telecommunications, and media sectors. Macquarie Capital Principal Finance, the financing and principal investing arm of Macquarie Capital makes investments from Macquarie’s balance sheet and provides flexible primary financing and secondary market investing solutions for corporate and commercial real estate clients across North America, Europe, and Australasia.

The original press release can be found on PR Newswire.

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ZEBEDEE, the leading fintech and next-generation payment processor for the gaming industry, today announced it has closed a $35M funding round led by Kingsway Capital and joined by leading global merchant bank The Raine Group as well as video-game giant Square Enix. Existing investors including Lakestar and Initial Capital also participated in the round. This Series B funding round will help ZEBEDEE scale company-wide to meet the needs of the biggest names in the games industry.

ZEBEDEE has created a platform that allows any game developer to easily add programmable money into their games. Anything that happens in a game can trigger a payment, which is sent instantly and at nearly zero cost. When a player shoots someone in a competitive CS:GO match, they can take a small amount of money (e.g. a fraction of a cent) from them in real-time inside the match itself. When a character in a platform game jumps and picks up a coin—as in Super Mario—that coin can be worth real money, which the player receives instantly and can also spend instantly. To make this work, ZEBEDEE offers both API-based tools for developers as well as an app for gamers, which enables them to discover the growing range of ZEBEDEE-powered games and acts as the wallet for sending and receiving funds between games and players.

To make this work from a technical standpoint, ZEBEDEE uses the Bitcoin Lightning Network as a key piece of its payments infrastructure. While blockchain gaming has become a persistent buzzword over the past two years, ZEBEDEE steadily maintains its differentiation as a FinTech and payment services provider focused on gaming: Bitcoin is simply the payment rail that enables the flexible, programmable transfers of any amount between any game, app or user. For ZEBEDEE users, it is not about Bitcoin, nor should it be. It is about a more rewarding experience in games, packaged into intuitive and simple UX that does not require any knowledge of crypto.

This approach clearly resonates with both gamers and game makers and has led ZEBEDEE to have an outstanding year, with their user count increasing by over 10x since the startup announced their series A round in September 2021. The growth has partly been driven by ZEBEDEE’s fast pace of innovation and ability to deliver exciting products to market, as well as a growing number of partnerships both with game studios building on the platform and integrations with notable finance industry players.

“We are pleased to be in a position where we can confidently scale our team and grow our business even as the macroeconomic backdrop becomes increasingly uncertain,” said Simon Cowell, CEO of ZEBEDEE. “This funding round gives us the ability to meet our highly ambitious roadmap both in terms of building out our infrastructure to support the hundreds of millions of users that play our partners’ games, as well as hire the top-level talent needed to ensure every partner has the best possible experience working with ZEBEDEE.”

ZEBEDEE’s new funding round puts the startup in a strong position to expand its best-in-class infrastructure, tools and services tailored specifically for games developers, many of whom are already working with ZEBEDEE.

“We are excited to lead ZEBEDEE’s latest funding round and support their continuing mission to become the Bitcoin enabler of choice for their partners,” said Afonso Campos, Managing Partner at Kingsway Capital. “Partnering with ZEBEDEE will allow its entire ecosystem to benefit from higher user retention, lower transaction costs and generally a superior payments experience. Importantly, it will also help bring Bitcoin to millions around the globe.”

“In ZEBEDEE, we see a world-class team that has created a truly powerful use case for cryptocurrency in games,” said Kenny Lee, Vice President at Raine Group. “We have seen new monetization methods disrupt the gaming industry in the past, and we believe the integration of Bitcoin directly into games is a new way to expand the connection with players and engage them in ways that were never possible before. The wide range of use cases for ZEBEDEE’s platform provides flexibility for the game designer and allows ZEBEDEE to partner with any developer, from AAA console and PC to hyper-casual mobile.”

The original press release can be found on Business Wire.

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Fathom Yacht Club (FYC), co-founded by BIPOC female entrepreneur Jessica Hunt and her husband, Jonathan Sands, is the result of a mix of careers that come together perfectly to build and grow an NFT-backed decentralized yacht club.

Hunt holds a Master’s in Hospitality from Florida International University and a web development degree from Wyncode Academy, a well-respected coding bootcamp in Miami. She has also worked in marketing, Web3, and golf clubs where she’s learned about club memberships.

Sands, on the other hand, brings marine expertise as a marine surveyor with a degree in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from the University of New Orleans.

As a couple who lives and works in Miami and spends a lot of their free time chartering boats both locally and abroad, one thing they always felt was lacking was a social community that they could share their love for boating with. They didn’t want to join a traditional yacht club because the notion was so stale at this point. “It’s old school. We’re global now, so why not build something global,” Hunt said.

What really intrigued the pair is that through a utility-backed NFT community and a booking app, they could reinvent the yacht club membership model and make it something decentralized, associated with multiple locations, and host exclusive VIP experiences that would cater to their members.

“To me, what’s exciting is that I personally love boating – my husband and I charter boats often,” said Hunt. But as a developer who has been keeping up with the explosion of Web3 and its developments, she also said of FYC: “I love the tech that’s behind it.”

The duo decided that their hometown of Miami was also the perfect place to start FYC; after all, Miami and Ft. Lauderdale are international boating capitals, and the weather is ideal for cruising year-round.

Together, Hunt and Sands have collaborated to enhance the NFT market with Fathom Yacht Club. Three membership tiers are available, ranging from $5,000 – $15,000, each giving you access to bigger boats, the ability to bring more guests, and exclusive experiences and perks. But unlike a traditional yacht club, there are no initiation fees or annual fees, and your membership is leasable and sellable. And you don’t have to worry about any social events being at the dated clubhouse because instead, they’ll be at luxurious and contemporary locations around the world.

The post Meet Fathom Yacht Club the World’s First Tokenized Membership to a Social Yacht Club appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Cryptocurrency is the current buzzword in the realm of economics these days. But for those who haven’t dipped their toes into this lucrative market, the world of crypto remains a questionable investment, especially in light of today’s months-long crypto winter.

But there is a good reason to believe that crypto will become bullish, especially due to the increased use of blockchain technology and the crypto market in different industries. Crypto’s value has seen exponential growth in the past year, with the market cornerstone Bitcoin reaching an all-time high of $68,000 in 2021. And although crypto has declined this year, Bitcoin is still projected to be worth $100,000 in two years.

This growth is especially reasonable considering the growing use-cases of cryptocurrencies. While numerous establishments are starting to accept crypto, its applications have spread beyond conventional transactions and into more unexpected and exciting areas.

Here are some novel applications for crypto and digital assets.

Gaming

Gaming is one of the most popular uses of cryptocurrencies, as they benefit from streamlined and decentralized payments. Online casino games, for instance, have started using cryptocurrencies in their operations, accepting crypto payments for cash-ins and handing them out as rewards. There are also play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity and Pegaxy, whose mechanics award players with cryptocurrencies once they complete certain goals within the game.

Yes, incorporating crypto-based rewards allows you to accrue assets that have value in fiat. But more importantly, it allows you to monetize gaming for leisure.

Fan Support for Sports

Crypto assets can now allow you to support your favorite sports teams by purchasing fan tokens officially. Although not exactly a cryptocurrency, fan tokens operate similarly as a public ledger authenticates them. Elite sports teams worldwide, including top soccer clubs PSG and FC Barcelona, are embracing fan tokens. Fan tokens can be bought using a proof-of-authority blockchain called CHZ, giving the owner access to voting and membership rights ownership. These tokens allow you to participate in official team polls to help your team make fan-related decisions in notable sports clubs. They are also interchangeable for merchandise, rewards, exclusive promotions, and VIP experiences.

Nonprofit Security

Charities and nonprofit organizations, such as UNICEF and the Rainforest Foundation, are largely benefiting from the secure transactions they can afford from cryptocurrency donations. Because the blockchain enables a transparent flow of information, donations based on crypto assets allow for a more cost-effective, convenient, and secure receipt of donations. For the same reasons, they also facilitate anonymous donations without donors entrusting their anonymity to the organization’s discretion.

Most significantly, perhaps, are the low processing fees that come with donating in crypto. Because of this, more money goes to the organizations’ projects and initiatives and allows administrators to declare these assets as non-cash gifts.

Travel

Because of the numerous use-cases of cryptocurrencies, travelers can now rely on their digital assets to travel more conveniently. Notable travel agencies like Expedia now accept Bitcoin as payment for logistical travel expenses like flights, car rentals, and hotels. Some even offer discounts if you choose to pay with Bitcoin. Moreover, Bitcoin ATMs, available in select countries, make it much more convenient for you to convert your digital assets into the local currency in many major cities.

Cryptocurrencies are here to stay. As the world opens up to cryptocurrencies, these assets’ applications become more and more relevant in the real world. Ultimately, widespread implementation of these uses will pave the way for optimal convenience.

The post The Applications for Crypto Are Growing—Here Are a Couple of Notable Ones appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Led by investor and entrepreneur Fernando Garcia, Bridge 3 Labs (B3L) is an Austin-based blockchain startup focused on long-term wealth creation through disruptive Web3 technology. Founded in January of this year, the startup describes itself as “the 1st NFT Venture Studio bringing access to exclusive IRL assets through utility NFT projects.”

Born in Spain and now living in San Francisco, B3L’s CEO and Co-Founder Fernando Garcia has made a name for himself as an unstoppable leader and entrepreneur. He currently holds the position of Vice President of K2 Capital and Senior Vice President at Postlane Partners, having held similar leadership positions at Gladieux Energy, CKC Partners, and Search Fund Accelerator. Fernando is now channeling all of his experience on Bridge 3 Labs, which he is sure will outperform his previous $75M fuel automation technology and distribution business.

With this mission in mind, B3L is bringing together a private community of entrepreneurs and investors from different backgrounds to revolutionize how NFTs create wealth. By sourcing, identifying, and investing in promising teams, the startup not only helps new Web3 projects get off the ground but also brings value to its members. The B3L team has over 30 years of combined experience as founders and leaders of start-ups and mid-stage across the IT, Energy, Luxury Real Estate, and Wine industries.

The project uses its own NFT “B3L Pass” not only to grant its holder access to the exclusive community but also to advanced trading analytic tools, research, educational content, private IRL event invitations, and exclusive rewards. While the use of NFTs as a means to access a community is not new by itself, the highly professional nature of the B3L pass. In addition to this, the team will soon be adding value to the Genesis Collection via “Heirloom” NFTs.

Non-Fungible Tokens have been long criticized for their highly speculative nature and supposedly “lack of value”. Heirloom NFTs address this issue by using tangible high.end luxury experiences and commodities as their backing. At this time, these include a private Bitcoin mining operation, a boutique hotel chateaux, and a world-class winery. The high value and utility of the assets backing these NFTs mean that they will be especially beneficial to long-term holders, resulting in them being an heirloom of sorts as they continue to appreciate in value.

By taking the idea of NFT away from an art-focused technological tool, B3L is looking to make them a more effective and attractive wealth-generating tool. While this would be closer to the idea behind cryptocurrencies, Heirloom NFTs differ in their use of stable IRL assets instead of services and trust. B3L is bringing the best out of the worlds of crypto, NFTs, and luxury assets into a single product, a mix that is sure to be a game changer in the long term.

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YuLife originally made a name for itself in its home market of the U.K. for its new approach to the provisioning of life insurance: Yes, sell a policy that provides financial security to your people in the event of your death, but do so with a focus on improving the policyholder’s current life with wellness opportunities and encourage use of that with gamification — a model that not only is aimed at benefitting the policyholders more, but increases engagement on the platform and provides a complementary revenue for YuLife, which offers deals on the wellness services.

Its idea took off — it is now used by more than 500 businesses, including Co-op, Del Monte, Jaguar Land Rover, Santander and CapitalOne, which in turn provide plans to their employees, one of three of whom engage on the app daily. On the heels of that, now the company is announcing that it has raised $120 million to expand the concept. Today, YuLife covers group life insurance, critical illness protection and income protection, but it is now rapidly expanding to new categories like dental and health, as well as financial services (pensions being one example of a category that has a strong affinity with life insurance), as well as to new markets like the U.S.

The funding, a Series C, is bringing a new strategic investor on board, Japan’s Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, which is leading the round, along with participation from previous investors Creandum, LocalGlobe, Target Global, Latitude, Anthemis, OurCrowd, Notion, MMC and Eurazeo.

CEO and co-founder Sammy Rubin tells us that this latest fundraise values the company at $800 million. For some context on that figure, when YuLife more recently raised money before this — a Series B of $70 million in 2021 — it was valued at $346 million.

That is a decent jump considering the current climate. Many tech companies are finding it hard to raise rounds, and when they are doing so valuations are definitely getting buttoned down (and in a number of cases seeing down rounds). And insurtech specifically is definitely not being spared: On the heels of a boom during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, insurance technology funding in Q1 2022 was 50% lower than a year ago, and Q2 is shaping up to be even slower, according to research from Dealroom.

Part of the reason for YuLife’s bump is that the company itself has continued to grow through the slowdown.

Rubin tells me that its customers — it sells only directly to organizations in a B2B model, who in turn provide life insurance to their employees as part of larger benefits programs — have grown 4x in the last year (not as many as the year before, which was 10x, but still growing), with revenues up fivefold and coverage now totaling $50 billion versus $15 billion a year ago. Close to 50% of its customers are new to the platform, he said, and in doing so is expanding the scope of those that are considering it as a worthwhile benefit for their employees.

“These are companies that had never had life insurance before,” Rubin said, noting that they are attracted not just “by the whole life insurance benefit, but the holistic platform around it.”

That holistic platform is an interesting twist on the basic concept of what life insurance can be about.

The app is built by veterans of the gaming industry and is designed around the concept of different natural environments such as forest and mountains, which YuLife collectively terms its “Yuniverse.”

Within each of these environments, users are encouraged to walk, cycle, meditate and do other activities to get around their environments in a healthy way, while at the same time being able to compare their progress against other co-workers. As with a lot of gaming these days, it is a degree of personalization in everyone’s experience: One person leaning into one activity over another seems to produce different subsequent scenarios.

Along with this, users are offered discounts on third-party products to further engage with the game within YuLife, which could include a subscription to meditation app Meditopia, FitBit and Garmin devices, and more. As users make their way through their worlds, they get rewards in the form of something called YuCoins. The YuCoins can in turn be used to redeem vouchers from the likes of Amazon and Asos.

Group life insurance, Rubin said, is the company’s flagship product and accounts for over 80% of revenues. Its other products — currently critical illness, income protection and dental — account for the other 20%. Its revenues, he added, are attributed to the sale of insurance policies. “Our insurance policies are holistic and include the wellness element,” he said.

Wellness in itself is a massive opportunity — worth some $1.5 trillion in 2021 according to McKinsey estimates — and while you can see a strong affinity between how that might be oriented around a life insurance product, and indeed a health insurance product, it will be interesting to see how YuLife tailors the concept to other kinds of insurance and to other products such as financial services. Rubin noted that right now one of the perks in the dental product is a free electric toothbrush for each new user (although users still have to pay to replace the heads).

In terms of the other way that YuLife could grow, Rubin added that it has “no plans” to become a DTC product but to continue selling through companies. This continues to set it apart from the wider wave of insurtechs, which have largely disrupted the incumbent market by improving accessibility to getting insurance in the first place.

AIG, Met Life and Zurich are YuLife’s current underwriters in the U.K. and Rubin said the company is currently negotiating with underwriters and other partners for its U.S. launch. Dai-chi Life does have operations in the U.S. market — among other activities it owns Protective Life — but Rubin said the strategic element of this investment is not aimed at that but rather a longer-term plan also to expand into Japan.

“Dai-ichi Life is committed to supporting companies that have a proven track record of changing people’s lives for the better, and YuLife does exactly that, by bringing tangible value to financial products to bolster individuals’ well-being,” said Toshiaki Sumino, director and managing executive officer at Dai-ichi Life Holdings, Inc., in a statement. “YuLife has immense potential to build on its achievements to date, and we are thrilled to invest and help propel YuLife toward its next steps and scale its global operations. YuLife shares our ethos of harnessing the latest trends in technology to make a genuine difference to the lives of those using financial products.”

The original article can be found on TechCrunch.

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When Apple announced their plan to remove a key mobile identifier for advertising (the IDFA), the initial reaction from mobile advertisers, app developers and tech providers ran the gamut – from concern and panic to resignation and cautious optimism. Some were embracing it. Some clearly were not. Nonetheles, the turmoil eventually gave way to resignation, excitement and some truly unexpected findings as life without IDFA set in and the mobile world adjusted to the new realities Apple’s decision brought.

We spoke with a selection of experts from different points on the mobile advertising spectrum to gauge how this tectonic shift in the mobile landscape met or exceeded expectations, and what unusual secondary effects they found in the wake of its implementation.

Grit Daily: It’s been over a year since Apple’s initial announcement. What has changed for you since then in terms of your original perception of this coming change and its impact on the mobile advertising landscape since then?

Yulia Kournik (Product Manager, YouAppi): When Apple announced its new privacy policy we knew that we had to deal with the opt-out users and find a new strategy. But how can you offer personalized ads if you can’t access the IDFA? Besides that, we were not completely sure which opt-in rates to expect. It took a few months before we started seeing the full effect of Apple’s change as Apple device owners update their iOS software.

At this point, we are confident that we have managed to adjust our product to the new reality. We created a new solution that uses a blend of probabilistic and contextual, privacy-safe data to undertake an alternative targeting type without IDFA. We continue working on improving our methods of collecting contextual user data, targeting the right audience, finetuning our capabilities for detecting users without the IDFA, and serving personalized ads.

With the actions we’ve taken and the high opt-in rates, we are optimistic, as we see that mobile advertising is able to work efficiently in a new privacy era.

Mike Brooks (SVP Marketing, Weather Bug): WeatherBug was worried about iOS 14 and the impacts it would have on growth and monetization, and we were right to be. We’ve realized CPM loss, as tracking hasn’t been applicable to most iOS users. Our life in the iOS acquisition world was made more difficult along with everyone else’s.

Grit Daily: There was a fair amount of confusion and worry around many elements of the rollout. How much did the confusion and worry match the reality of the rollout?

Yulia Kournik (Product Manager, YouAppi): It’s no secret that SKAdNetwork provides limited opportunities for making targeting decisions. Our goal is to make the most of the data provided by SKAdNetwork data. Here, of course, cooperation with the application developer and the MMP is very important in order to use this framework as efficiently as possible.

Kochava Product Marketing: In theory, SKAdNetwork is an intelligent, privacy safe mechanism to provide deterministic marketing feedback. Like all SaaS products, iteration and product development is an important part of that product’s lifecycle.

Grit Daily: Apple tried to toe a narrow line by allowing users the option to opt into IDFA tracking. We’ve actually seen opt-in rates increase significantly (AppsFlyer shows 46% across all categories) over time. What’s your take on this and what do you think the implications are?

Kevin Mullen, Chief Product Officer, Roq.ad: It’s actually a wider opening than most people think. Since Apple is (likely purposefully) silent on the using of publisher IDs and allowing them to be mapped directly to other IDs, they left a wide berth for publishers and others in AdTech to manage the ecosystem using publisher IDs and identity graphs instead of – or in parallel to – IDFA…Apple’s not helping them do it, but their silence on Publisher IDs speaks volumes.

In part, the increase in acceptance rates is to be expected, and certainly sectors like dating and weather apps are going to do well on getting positive ATT responses because using location is a natural and user-accepted part of those apps…others, like casual games, for example, are still getting very poor performance on ATT acceptance. We’ve seen a similar shift toward acceptance in the web world with GDPR consent banners over time that mirrors the shift mentioned above. When consent banners were first updated for GDPR compliance (cookie consent predates GDPR in Europe by several years) the acceptance rates were extremely low…they have been steadily rising since about 2017.

Kochava Product Marketing: It is only that high because that is only 46% of the apps prompting (that number decreases when you factor in the number of apps not prompting). We expect that Apple will continue to support the third-party (3P) ecosystem that Apple relies upon.

Grit Daily: Many companies used IDFA as an opportunity to completely rethink their advertising strategies and come up with new methods to aggregate users that eliminated those unique identifiers that troubled privacy advocates but still allowed for the exploitation of useful ad data. Any particular solutions or workarounds you’re most impressed with? Or anything that’s been notably bad?

Yulia Kournik (Product Manager, YouAppi): The secret to success here is in making the maximum from the same limited ad data we all now have. When the contextual data brings good results, it’s impressive.

Kevin Mullen,Chief Product Officer, Roq.ad: Honestly, we could never know if any of those solutions really worked because we don’t have a way to effectively attribute conversions…those FLOC-esque aggregation techniques could work, but without real attribution tied to it, no targeting data is verifiable.

Grit Daily: As was noted, Apple is clearly not the only game in town. We’ve seen significant budget shifts to Android already but demand for Apple still remains high. How do you see this all playing out going forward?

Mike Brooks, SVP Marketing, Weather Bug: As an omnichannel publisher, the rules of engagement for each of the three major domains (Android, iOS, Chrome) are starting to diverge significantly. As Apple pushes towards a consented world, Google believes you can build privacy-forward technology that doesn’t require consent to do right by consumers. I see us treating each of these three as separate businesses starting in the not-too-distant future.

Kevin Mullen, Chief Product Officer, Roq.ad: For the foreseeable future, the mobile OS world is going to be a duopoly. Yes, it’s true that budgets have shifted to Android for now, but they will eventually come back as much as possible to Apple because Apple users tend to have higher household incomes and more disposable cash. The limiting factor is target-ability, and that can generally be solved using Publisher IDs in conjunction with IDFAs to build a profile of a device. As mobile performance DSPs in particular start using identity graphs more heavily, I expect these budgets to shift back toward iOS, though at slightly lower CPMs.

Grit Daily: At the time of the announcement Re-Engagement and Retargeting were two of the areas that seemed likely to be impacted? How much impact did it ultimately have? Were you surprised? Why or why not?

Yulia Kournik, Product Manager, YouAppi: Indeed, when the new privacy policy was introduced, we had some concerns about its effect on the retargeting and re-engagement activities. Along the way we’ve seen that the opt-in rates are much higher than the initial projections. We can target opt-in users as we always did. For retargeting opt-out users, we developed our probabilistic and contextual solution which allows us to detect users without IDFA. With l all this, the impact of the new privacy policies on the retargeting activities is less significant than it was initially expected. We have worked hard to achieve this, so we are not surprised that our efforts brought some good results.

Kevin Mullen, Chief Product Officer, Roq.ad: Sometimes the storyline doesn’t completely match the data. Yes, there was definitely a narrative in 2020 & early 2021 that retargeting would be “dead” in mobile, and that’s true to an extent, I guess, but what no one really focused on was this – there just was not that much mobile in-app retargeting to begin with outside of the mobile gaming “call-backs” to try to get people to re-engage with apps they had installed, but stopped playing.

Retargeting is fundamentally about trying to reach people that have seen or engaged with your product and convincing them to finish their purchase, or purchase again.

If I’m engaged enough to have a brand’s application installed, then I likely have an account, and that brand has my email. In that case, the cheaper and more efficient way to get me to purchase or purchase again is via that email address. In my world, that’s Hertz, United, Marriott, and Disney+.

None of the other apps on my phone would make sense as generating retargeting demand. Strava, Venmo, and SpenDesk don’t really have anything that they want to generate demand for, so they can’t really justify retargeting.

Industry soul searching

Apple’s decision to eliminate IDFA with the launch of iOS 14 has certainly forced the industry to do some serious soul searching and naturally led to a scramble for new solutions. But, it certainly didn’t mean the end of effective advertising on mobile. It just meant that advertisers and tech companies had to rethink what it means to provide relevant ads to users and how they do it. The IDFA for Apple was one tool – albeit a highly effective one – but their decision ultimately spurred the industry forward to develop new and varied solutions and ways to imagine the advertising landscape.

The post An IDFA Retrospective: What really happened? What’s next? appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Video game creative writing has quickly become one of the most innovative arenas for writers in the 21st century. Imagine Todd Meier’s “Civilization” without leader motivations, steampunk scenarios and wistful narrator musings to distract and amuse while the game loads. No comic book-based action-adventure game would have any elan were it not successfully adapted from its source material of lengthy scripts to bring the characters and story to life. Role-playing games with their various outcomes just doesn’t feel organic without realistic consequences to smooth the action back into the cutscenes. And lest we forget, cutscenes themselves can be longer than entire trilogies worthy of their own edited presentations on YouTube.

As with any other profession, skills must be developed, nurtured and honed. An education in creative fiction writing might not be necessary for everyone, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have the skills and experience that go along with that particular degree when job hunting. Even spending time in a university drama department can yield valuable skills when it comes to directing voice actors to give life to your characters.

On the flip side, having a grasp on the nuances of back end game creation and development can be just as useful when building a realistic and cohesive narrative for a digital universe. Understanding the creative bounds and potential of coding will give you, the writer, context for how the overall product is developed with developers on the technical side.

Here are some recommended steps you can take now:

• Really, truly, obsessively study video games. Play them to be sure, but take notes on the successes and failures of each. Is there a thread or theme that runs from the opening credits until your sign off? Do characters interact hyper-specifically to each other, their environment, and the prompts and buttons of the player?
  
• Be the writer you want to become. Writers write – don’t just dream it, be it. Write short stories and novellas because you love telling stories. Write poetry to make your prose shine. Keep a journal of ideas, notes, brief excerpts of conversations real and imagined.

• Seek assignments from local publications for the professional experience, whether or not it yields a paycheck. The criticism and feedback provided by the editors and fellow writers will be essential in your personal writing process. Writing for a timed publication will also teach you the importance of meeting a deadline

• Make friends with other writers! Even well-known writers you’d think would never give you the time of day. Join creative collaborations with amateur artists and game designers, many of whom frequent game shops where good old fashioned dice rolling RPGs are sold. Established writers don’t have all the time in the world for folks that aren’t serious; but if you’re tenacious and respectful of the craft and show some actual promise in your work, you’ll find that 99% of professional writers are somewhat approachable and there are many ways for this to manifest. 

• Explore digital art! As digital artwork and artists have become part of the vernacular and are bridging the gap between fine art and gaming, taking the time to catch a show or deep dive into digital art archives will provide you with a base level understanding of the imaging and universe creation that you’ll be writing for – context is everything!

• Make your own hypothetical video game or find someone who can build your ideas into a real interactive prototype. Be prepared to hire someone and don’t be afraid to fight for the integrity of your vision while also yielding to the limits of the technology. Remember you’re still learning about the creative process here and see this is a stepping stone towards future success.

• Build your writing portfolio. The more work you can show prospective partners and employers the better. Consider the range and type of work in your portfolio as well. Don’t be afraid to include a variety of writing projects and experiments – nothing is too short or off-base as long as it is of quality.

• Apply for jobs in the industry and go on interviews. Learn to take criticism and “No” for an answer and how to persist without being a pest. Do it for the practice and don’t be afraid to come back for more. Many employers eventually hire the person who appears to want the job the most.

Be patient. No one gets anything they want quickly especially in a competitive field like video game design, but be persistent and eventually this practice will bear fruit.

The post How to Get Into Writing for Video Games appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Tel Aviv, Israel, June 27, 2022 – Incredibuild, creator of the leading hybrid development acceleration platform for developers and DevOps teams, announced today it has raised $35M in Series B funding after doubling its ARR, increasing its valuation significantly. Hiro Capital, the entrepreneur-founded VC focused on Videogames, Creator Platforms and Metaverse Technologies, led the round with participation from existing investor Insight Partners. Insight Partners acquired a stake in Incredibuild for $140 million just over one year ago in a round with several components, joining Fortissimo Capital, which invested in the company in 2018.

In a world where user retention has become increasingly vital and rapid software releases are ever more urgent, Incredibuild has created the industry’s leading hybrid acceleration platform to support expedited development. By turning every machine on the network into a supercomputer, Incredibuild’s technology dramatically accelerates software builds, radically boosting development and testing cycles for industries across the board – including videogames, automotive, financial services, software services, interactive entertainment, and embedded technologies.

Incredibuild’s powerful distributed processing, easily deployed on premise, in hybrid mode and in the cloud, as well as its unique Build Cache acceleration technology, enhance product quality, shorten time-to-market, and raise customer satisfaction – all while reducing compute costs and time spent managing resources. Incredibuild helps companies across industries get their digital products out faster, more cost-effectively and with higher quality – increasing the number of mission-critical applications and solutions companies are able to release annually. Major brands rely on Incredibuild to shorten time to revenue (TTR) and dramatically increase developer satisfaction and team efficiency, including Epic Games, Adobe, Citibank, Microsoft and more.

“Games companies are feeling the squeeze in developer capacity. Incredibuild gives developers back precious time by accelerating build compilation,” said Cherry Freeman, Co-Founding Partner at Hiro Capital. “Amazing games companies like Tencent, Take Two, EA, Konami, Nintendo, Capcom, and WB Games are already reaping the benefits of Incredibuild and our hope is that more companies will discover and take advantage of their brilliant technology. As always, Games are the cutting edge for technological advancement, and we envisage a future where Incredibuild will be the de facto distributed supercomputer on every machine in every company. This journey also marks Hiro’s first investment in Israel, a country with a phenomenal technology track record, where we hope this is just the first of many future investments.”

“Enterprises are under unprecedented pressure to expedite the release of high-quality applications, to get to market faster with less overhead,” said Tami Mazel Shachar, CEO of Incredibuild. “We see Hiro’s investment, combined with our significant revenue growth, as validation that our market-leading platform has and will continue to help companies from numerous industries improve ROI and TCO and stay at the top of their game. We’re partnering with developers and customer-facing teams to continuously enhance our platform. At Incredibuild, we believe Development Never Stops.”

Over the course of this year, AWS and Microsoft have both announced partnerships with Incredibuild to integrate its gaming stacks in order to accelerate the go-to-cloud transformation of customers and partners worldwide.

In addition to enhancing platform capabilities and increasing value for customers, the funds will go towards expanding Incredibuild’s global market presence and accelerating the deployment of its Community, Developer Relations, and Cloud programs – further strengthening the company’s connections with developers and strategic partners.

About Incredibuild

Incredibuild has created the industry’s leading hybrid acceleration platform for development processes – compilations, CI/CD builds, testing, and more. Its Virtualized Distributed Processing technology recruits CPUs to turn every host into a supercomputer with hundreds of cores. Incredibuild’s powerful distributed processing and unique build caching solutions quicken dev and test cycles and increase the efficiency of every development sprint and iteration frequency – enhancing product quality, boosting developer satisfaction, and lowering time-to-market while dramatically reducing compute costs on-prem and in the cloud.

Incredibuild boasts over a quarter of a million users from 2,500 global organizations, including many Fortune 100 companies. Headquartered in Tel Aviv with offices in the US, Japan, UK and China, Incredibuild was founded on the premise that there is time to build and time to release. Frequency of updates is not just time- and cost-saving; it is an enterprise’s competitive advantage. Learn more at incredibuild.com

About Hiro Capital

Hiro Capital is a London / Luxembourg technology Venture Capital fund which invests in UK, US and European innovators in Videogames, Metaverse Technologies, Creator Platforms and Gamified Fitness. Hiro Capital generally invests at the Seed, Series A and B stages. We invest both in front-end Content creators in Games, Esports and Digital Fitness and in deep tech Metaverse applications of Cloud, Web3, Mobile, Streaming, Big Data, AI, Wearables, AR and VR technologies.

The original press release can be found on Incredibuild’s website.

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