Joining Play Ventures as Venture Partner

I’m joining Play Ventures as a Venture Partner

I wanted to write about my new role at Play Ventures, where I just today started as Venture Partner. Besides my work on Elite Game Developers, I’ve been getting into investing in gaming studios. I feel that this is an excellent step for me in my career of exploring the investment side of the industry. Let me explain what this role is all about and how it will affect things going forward.

What is a venture partner?

It’s a part-time role, where the venture partner helps the VC firm with deals and helps with portfolio companies that the VC firm has invested into. 

Venture Partners are not full partners of a VC firm (who can write cheques for investments) but are usually brought in by a partnership to find new investment opportunities and manage portfolio companies. And that’s exactly the role where I’m going to be sitting at.

The main difference with venture partners and general partners is that the VP won’t be signing any checks or making an investment decision on their own. They will work with the general partners of the firm to convince them of deals that should be made.

On Play Ventures

I’ve known the founding partners Harri Manninen and Henric Suuronen for over ten years. We all kicked off our startup careers in the ’00s here in Helsinki, but we’ve never worked together. As I have the utmost respect for Harri and Henric in many ways. Them being gaming company founders themselves, and their approach to invest and support founders resonates with my approach. And, as they’re putting in the effort to be a leading VC firm in gaming, I couldn’t be more thrilled at joining them as a Venture Partner.

Play Ventures is growing. They will be announcing a Fund II in 2021 and will start deploying those funds immediately into gaming startups. They need help, and I feel that this is the best place for me to turn to the next chapter in my gaming career.

How does this affect my work on EGD and angel investing

First off, why am I joining as a Venture Partner? I want to learn more about venture capital. I’m curious about the whole industry. My focus with Play Ventures is to help their existing portfolio companies to grow and succeed.

Regarding Elite Game Developers, things will be business as usual. New podcast every week, new templates, webinars, EGD News will go regularly. Nothing will change.

I will continue doing angel investing. There is overlap with Play Ventures, but the ideal case for me would be to co-invest where Play Ventures is leading a funding round.

If you’re starting a games company, please reach out on LinkedIn.