AMA: Future Technologies with Inclusive Voices

Sneaker VC

4 min readNov 1, 2020

https://youtu.be/d3zgoap68wY

A Conversation About Fundraising Realities for Minority Entrepreneurs Building the Future of Technology

with Casmir Patterson, and Miles Dotson of SneakerVC

Discussion Topics:

What is Decentralized Finance and what is the current use of related technologies in this area?

What are NFTs? What is NFT Gaming?

NFT’s or Digital Collectibles you can think of as Baseball Cards, Rare Art Prints, or Video Game Skins from Fortnight or GTAV.

What makes NFT Gaming unique is the idea of the Metaverse where a player can move their in-game items into another game or sell and trade them to other players on exchanges. The Metaverse consists of many players engaging in gameplay that leverages the interoperability of Blockchains such as Ethereum, EOS, & Flow that allows players to exchange crypto currency for items in the game. The Gaming worlds can range from Minecraft like environments such as crypto-voxels to VR spaces where players can buy virtual land and build stores where they can sell their digital goods and collectibles. These digital goods can go up in value based on their artistic merit and rarity leveraging blockchain technology for digital scarcity.

What areas of technology are top of mind for the team, and how is the industry addressing these areas of opportunity?

Casmir have been focused on…. Miles has been working on….

Does the change in regulations around Chinese controlled and managed tech companies open an opportunity for the work you are doing?

Women and diverse companies need funding, but we have seen several receive funding and not find unicorn success. What is the key issue preventing the growth of these companies?

Access to capital should be viewed like fuel enhancement to a business. All businesses require it to scale. Very often companies receive limited funding early stage but fail to find investors in their most important growth phase. We want to be the capital partner to the businesses as their needs evolve starting at the SEED stage. Women and minority controlled companies have received less than 7% of VC funding historically. In addition to this the lack of follow-on funding for these same companies can stall a tractionable company’s growth at the most critical moment.

Blockchain and digital collectibles seem to be extremely new spaces without established markets. How do you plan to determine the best investments in this category?

You’ve decided to become an investor, how are you going about this?

Angel List recently launched a Rolling Funds product that is making fund management more accessible for people who look like me. As a woman, inventor, …, … the people backing companies don’t look like me and don’t have access to the unique insights I have gained as a trendsetter in technology. Through working with the most influential thinkers — building the future long before the market knew — we understand the direction things are moving.

What is the key trend emerging in the gaming and immersive technology space?

What was the inspiration for SneakerVC?

We have been inspired by the impact of sneaker obsession and hip hop culture has had on the global economy. The impact of cultural influence is key in shaping new industries and driving the discourse around them. We believe that the future is taking shape with new innovations and diverse innovators. We stand in a unique position to impact culture and investing.

What approach are you taking with SneakerVC that is differentiated from past investment activity in VC?

Diverse founding teams are not receiving the follow on funding needed to achieve breakthrough market disruption. Post Accelerators and Incubators they are placed in a place of limbo without growth capital required to reach the next plateau of business. We have intrinsic value to offer this population of founders in shorting the network gap and distance they have from the capital needed to grow the future.

At SneakerVC,

We are dedicated to equipping the next generation of high performance business.

Our team has a broad industry focus with key interest investing in the future of finance (DeFi), immersive reality, and smart technologies.

SneakerVC taps into this generation’s passion, activism & spending power to bring seed capital to underestimated startup leaders building the future of technology driven business.

LP’s join an enthusiastic investor community who share our vision and thesis.
A portion of carry will contribute to a targeted selection of impactful charities and community orgs.
Influencing change with funding and initiatives that drive awareness, provide capital, and harvest innovation.