Velvet Sea Ventures & 01 Advisors
The separation from Beanie was followed by the announcement of PV’s restructure, with the creation of a new entity: Pixel Vault Inc, owned by GFunk, PV employees and their investors.
On 3 February 2022, it was announced that Pixel Vault Inc had raised $100m of funding from:
Velvet Sea Ventures (led by Michael Lazerow a.k.a. Laz); and
01 Advisors (led by former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and former Twitter COO Adam Bain).
Note: For Laz’s inside-perspective on his investment, his post Inside Pixel Vault: The Real Story is a great read.
Here’s what GFunk, Laz and Adam had to say about the partnership:
GFunk
GFunk: So yes, could we do this completely on our own without raising capital? We could, but it would be slower. And really it has nothing to do with the money, it has to do with aligning ourselves with like minded people with proven track records and operators themselves, right? People that know how to build businesses and people that want to take an active role in in making this the best company and the best, truly native Web3 entertainment experience it can be. And so that has been the focus in all of these conversations, finding the right partners, the right strategic people to help us build because, frankly, the money is not of concern. (source: MetaVault: Jan 12th Town Hall Recap) Adam, Dick, and Laz have been incredible partners. From the outset, we had been somewhat hesitant to take “VC money.” But what drew me to working with these three guys is that they're operators, they've built businesses, and they really believe in this space and the long term vision for Pixel Vault to be the first decentralized entertainment company (source: MetaVault: Feb 2nd Town Hall Recap)
Laz
Laz: Great entrepreneurs, they shine like a pile of diamonds. And that's what Sean has done to form the company and to give the community a chance to succeed at the highest level. (source: MetaVault: Feb 2nd Town Hall Recap)
Adam
Adam: I came to Twitter in 2010, when it was less than 100 people, one office location in San Francisco and zero in revenue. And together with Dick, we took the company from 80 people to about 8500 people, in a couple years. We went from zero to $2B in revenue faster than almost any other consumer internet company on the planet. Took Twitter public in 2013, and ran a public company for a bit. And so our focus has been taking those lessons that we learned around building a real company.
You know, the point that we came into Twitter, it was an amazing product. It was time to take it from being an amazing product into an amazing business and company. And so we started 01A after I left Twitter, for this exact purpose, when we realized most people in VC haven't actually built anything before. We wanted to build something for operators by operators, because we feel like we have a good way to relate to the same sort of problems and struggles. (source: MetaVault: Feb 2nd Town Hall Recap)
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