Phil Sanderson

Calling Investors: Invest in the original Xbox “Duke” controller… I am working with a new gaming peripherals company set to take the world by storm and they are looking for investors to join the team. Founded by Duke Schnepf, son of gaming visionary, and Xbox founder, Brett Schnepf, backed by multiple founding fathers of the Xbox, this company is pushing the boundaries of the gaming peripherals sector. Their journey began with Brett Schnepf, a luminary whose contributions to gaming history are etched in stone. As a founding member of the Xbox console team, Brett's design prowess shaped modern gaming, with iconic creations like the Sidewinder PC controller and the legendary Duke controller. Today, Duke Schnepf carries forth his father's legacy. Upside and a half! In late 2024, a major streaming platform will release a series chronicling the founding of a pioneering gaming console (can you guess which one) and the launch of Duke's ground-breaking products, offering an intimate look at the visionary minds behind this revolution. Looking for investments of $10K, $20K, $50K, $100K, $250, $500K, and $1M. Higher investments with equity shares are available for discussion. We foresee full returns and profits delivered within 1 year. If you're interested in being part of this exciting journey, please get in touch to set up a call ASAP. #Gaming #InvestmentOpportunity #Innovation #GamingPeripherals #TechInvestments #gamedev #investors #angelinvestors #gameinvestor #PEinvestment #AngelInvestment

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Gaming Founders are always curious about publishing and what they need to keep in mind before approaching the Publishers. This blog's like a handy cheat sheet, covering all the key stuff you can't afford to forget. It's a quick read that'll make sure you're up to speed on the ins and outs of publishing without missing a beat!

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🌟 Exciting Partnership Opportunity for Roblox Developers! 🌟 At Senior Studios, we specialize in the integration of brands in gaming, and we're looking for Roblox games to partner with! If you're behind a Roblox game with an active player base, we want to integrate our client brands into your games for limited-time campaigns. We've had the privilege of working with iconic brands like Opera GX, creating memorable, engaging experiences that captivate audiences worldwide in #Minecraft. Now, we want to bring that expertise and excitement to the Roblox community. 🚀 What We Offer: 1. Monetization Opportunities: Open new revenue streams through limited-time brand campaigns in your game. 2. Collaborative Efforts: Our team ensures the integration respects your game's integrity and enhances the player experience, our approach is always community-first. We're excited about the potential of #Roblox to create engaging, branded content that players will love. If you're interested in exploring what a partnership could look like, let's connect! 🔗 Reach out directly or drop a comment below to start the conversation. Shares are much appreciated! #Roblox #RobloxDev #RobloxDeveloper #RobloxStudio #BrandPartnership #RobloxGame

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"As we grew the game industry a hundredfold, 75% of the time investors could prove the game biz would always fail." — Bing Gordon, xCEO of EA and Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Mobile gaming has been declared dead more than once. Supposedly, it has matured again and it's time to move on to the next big thing. Yet Roblox revenue is up 31% year over year, and daily active users are up 27% (https://lnkd.in/gDvn5KeK). How can that be? Anyone with kids doesn’t need these Roblox numbers to see that the next generation consumes content differently. When they enter the workforce, they’ll spend on mobile games and apps, valuing this digital interaction more than previous generations and in ways we may not yet understand. I’m aware of today’s challenges—I feel them as a supplier to mobile gaming companies. But I’ve been in this industry long enough to know that real growth often comes from unexpected places. Analysts often do not include these unexpected forces in their predictions. https://lnkd.in/gp8vf9Dq

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Hey folks, I think you might be aware that what we're building at DeepCast includes a podcast discovery and exploration platform for listeners at www.deepcast.fm. We also recently unveiled www.deepcast.pro -- a promotions, marketing, and monetization platform for podcasters (and folks like networks and agencies who support them). "You make the shows, let us help you with what comes after." Shows claimed and processed via DeepCast Pro are also published for listener consumption on DeepCast. High value all around! If you're a podcaster, claim your show at www.deepcast.pro to get started. Free speaker-labeled transcripts for all your episodes as well as generated insights for each (key takeaways, quotes, topic & keyword sets, summaries, and more) plus many more features—and growing daily! We're shipping fast over here! (Thanks to Rachel Perez Hosna Qasmei Kim Burgaard Benjamin Moon Rachel Magana Hari Ramachandran!)

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Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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Are you ready to take a deep dive into the success story behind Brawl Stars' revolutionized battle pass with Phillip Black? Join us for an exclusive members-only Economy Roundtable, co-hosted by Liquid and Grit and Game Economist Consulting, featuring special guest Phillip Black. 🌟 Key Takeaways: - Discover how Brawl Stars' new battle pass led to a staggering 61% increase in U.S. iOS revenue and all-time high DAUs. - Learn about the strategic changes that drove player engagement, including a shift to cash purchases, tiered pricing, and a revamped reward structure. - Gain insights into how shorter seasons, adjusted XP systems, and innovative IAPs contributed to the game's success. 🔒 This roundtable is exclusively available to Liquid and Grit subscribers. If you're a subscriber, don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from industry experts and gain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving world of mobile gaming. 🗓️ Event Details: Date: May 23rd Time: 9AM PST Location: Virtual 🎟️ Reserve your spot now by DMing me. Don't miss this chance to network with fellow industry professionals and unlock the secrets behind Brawl Stars' battle pass triumph! 🚀 #GameIndustry #BattlePass #EconomyRoundtable #BrawlStars #MobileGaming #Monetization

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💡 Exciting news from one of our AI super-builders, James Dominguez! Late last night, James shared that we’ve reached a major milestone: laying a key foundation for the use of AI to transform educational content into immersive video game experiences. 🚀 From James: 🎉 Major Content Processing Milestone! We’ve just completed our first large-scale deployment of the Interactors pattern, letting our LLMs stretch their legs with room to think deeply. The results are exciting: 📚 The Big Picture: - Two full semesters of mathematics content transformed - Every educational PDF and lesson now has its corresponding “base text” - Clean, distilled representations ready for personality injection 🎯 What We’ve Achieved: We’ve successfully transformed complex & redundant educational content into its purest textual form, creating a clean foundation for everything that follows. 🤖 Next Phase: All this pristine base text is ready for the next step - each piece will be flavoured by our NPC Robot personalities, bringing unique character and engagement to each interaction. This represents a significant step forward in our content automation pipeline! 🌱

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This weeks episode was excellent. NIA. https://lnkd.in/dCXpNZxe

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Concord, Spectre Divide, Xdefient, The Finals... Just a couple of years ago Shooters were the darling of the game industry. Today, not much so. Why is that? In our latest Deconstructor of Fun podcast, we’ve assembled a POWER panel—Adam Telfer, Chris Sides, Phillip Black, and Devan Brennan (Newzoo) — to take a hard look at the state of the shooter genre. The squad dives into the forces shaping shooter games today, from the impact of lockdowns on gaming behavior to the migration challenges facing new FPS titles in a crowded market. 🎯 Here’s a glimpse of what the fellas cover: ✅ The shifting landscape for PC & console shooters ✅ Trends in player engagement and retention ✅ Lessons from recent launch successes and struggles ✅ Barriers to new PvP shooter titles ✅ And a peek into the future of extraction shooters Check out the report on Deconstructor of Fun and catch the podcast on YouTube or Spotify (just search for "Deconstructor of Fun"). There are a lot of graphs that you will miss in the audio-only version. 🎧 Read or watch now and get ahead of the curve! #gamedevelopment #gamedev

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As the critical backer of two of the success stories here, Rocket Lab and Planet, DCVC is delighted to see the heroics of these teams highlighted — and their positive impact on humanity’s security and prosperity. It is also an interesting story of the difficulty markets — private and public — have in filtering out charlatans and hypesters in deeply technical arenas that promise gold rush outcomes, whether it is in space systems (as is the case here), AI (we can all watch it happen), energy and climate tech, biotech, or robotics.

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🎥 The Streaming Landscape is Shifting – Here's What I Learned at AFM🎥 Recently, I attended the American Film Market (AFM) in Vegas to push on with partnerships for Apeflix. While the nostalgia of Santa Monica lingered (and the air was really dry), one thing stood out: the global entertainment industry is at a tipping point. When you see Russians outbidding Americans for content, you know the game is changing. Here are the key takeaways: 🔑 Peak TV is Over After a decade of explosive spending on proprietary streaming platforms, the returns aren’t matching the investment. The result? A slowdown in global content spending as media giants rethink their strategies. 🌍 Global Content is on the Rise International markets are no longer just consumers—they’re creators. Netflix's Squid Game proved that globally appealing stories can break barriers, and now non-English content is booming. In fact, Netflix and Amazon accounted for 87% of non-English content available in early 2024. 📉 North America’s Spend is Contracting By 2028, programming spend in the North American market is projected to drop by over 20%, while regions like South Korea and the U.K. are becoming production powerhouses. The era of "content for every niche" is being replaced by strategically crafted, globally resonant hits. It’s a fascinating—and unpredictable—time for the entertainment industry. "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." – The Shawshank Redemption 🌟 #Entertainment #Streaming #ContentCreation #AFM #Globalization

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My view is that the Xbox Mobile App Store could emerge as a strong competitor to both Play Store and App Store, leveraging Xbox's gaming ecosystem, exclusive content, and cloud gaming capabilities. Its success hinges on developer adoption, user base expansion, and seamless cross-platform integration. By offering competitive policies and unique offerings, it might drive innovation and consumer choice in the app market. However, it faces challenges like regulatory scrutiny and the need to avoid issues that have plagued other major app stores.

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I spend a lot of time discussing #VentureStudios — often these are #investors (#angels, #LP's, #VC's, and #FamilyOffices), current and aspiring studio operators, and #startup #founders curious about how being part of a studio might benefit them. This is a relatively new asset class, so many of the questions I get come down to understanding the studio model itself (e.g., what exactly is—and isn’t—a studio). For me, the simplest way to explain it is this: a venture studio is a company that builds companies. They typically serve as founding or cofounding entities. While #incubators and #accelerators can offer similar support, they tend to work with businesses that are already up and running. What sets studios apart is their involvement from the very start.

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