Questions about Ink Games, answered in the words of the people who did the work. The engagement itself is on its own page.
What was the seat on the seed raise, and how was the pitch reworked?
The seed closed in 2020, and the company then raised its Series A in September 2021 and its Series B in August 2022 on its own and shipped Prize Kingdoms. Our seat was go-to-market and the seed raise, worked with our capital partner, a registered broker, with the raise running through Prince Capital as the placement advisor. The pitch had been defending the current build feature by feature, so we moved it onto the team's judgment: what they had shipped at EA, Zynga and Buffalo Studios and how they decided what to cut. Then we worked the same contacts together instead of splitting the list, each of us with an equity position the contact could see, and took a meeting only when there was an inside champion and a process that fit a seed timeline.
What did the shared-contact approach change in the seed raise?
No meeting counts survive that we would quote. What changed was the unit of work, from names covered to conversations that count. Working one list together covers it at about half the speed of splitting it, so every meeting had to be with someone who could close, and the two-question filter did that: a specific person inside who would carry it without us in the room, and a decision process that fit a seed timeline. The seed closed in 2020, the filter stayed in use, and when the paid advisory ended in September 2020 our equity stayed in, which says what we thought of the read.