INSIGHT
on the outside, it’s just a small, niche
thing, just a bunch of gamers. But I was in
the middle of it, I ran a team, I watched
the system grow up, and the only regret I
have is not being involved sooner. I think
this is absolutely a real sport, and every
single year there’s more and more people
in the mainstream media that accept
it, so the dynamics of the business are
very similar to traditional fantasy sports.
Like FanDuel, it is a proven model being
applied to a new industry.
Where has the financial backing/
investment for Vulcun come from?
It’s all VC. There’s no private equity. We
have raised a total of about $13.5 million,
about $1 million in about seed money
when we started, and the most recent
round was $12 million led by Sequioa, the
world’s leading VC firm. It’s a really great
group. As well as Sequoia, there’s Matrix
Partners, the partner there being the cofounder of Betfair, Josh Hannah. There’s
partners from Google Ventures in there, Joe
Kraus. The CEO of Zynga, Mark Pincus,
is invested. Personally, there’s the CEO
of Kabam, another large mobile gaming
company, Kevin Chou, who is part of the
round. If you look at the website, there’s
some other great names in there. These
people really belie ٔ