NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Strider, building a platform to revolutionize how new IP are both developed and owned, has raised $5.5M in a seed round co-led by Makers Fund and Fabric Ventures, with participation from Shima Capital, Sfermion, Magic Eden and other notable funds, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $8.5M. Founded by game industry veterans, including former a16z Partner and TinyCo operations and growth executive Andrew N. Green, former EA Games and Jam City Product Management VP Michael Brozman, former Square Enix and Rockstar Games creative Michael Cala and former go-to-market specialist for TV and film Nick Braccia, the Strider team has deep roots in narrative games and world-class entertainment IP, including Harry Potter, Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Westworld, Dead Space, MARVEL Avengers, Watchmen and Futurama.
Strider’s mission is to give everyone the gift of being a creative storyteller. Strider will bring people into the heart of story creation through a powerful, fun toolset that includes social features centered around creating a “storyworld.” People will be empowered to collaborate on a storyworld’s characters, settings, history, and all of the lore that unfolds in between in a fast accessible interface. As part of the platform, Strider also aims to give creatives the power to be the owners of their own creations, giving contributors unique opportunities to retain ownership as they build alongside the community. The financing will be used to expand the Strider team and help to bring content creators onto the platform with tools for production and distribution.
“At Strider, we believe that everyone, everywhere, is a storyteller, and creating stories together is a lot more fun than doing it alone,” said Andrew N. Green, co-founder and CEO, Strider. “We are building a space where people can create and share those stories while being rewarded for their contributions. We grew up inspired by the incredible worlds of our favorite games, films and books, and spent years helping to build deep, narrative-driven games. Now, we’re excited to build a platform that gives power to fan communities – to give voice and ownership to anyone who wants to be a part of the creative process. We can’t wait to build stories together. This is a game changer for accessible creativity.”
“Andrew and the team have a bold vision for a platform that enables anyone to create and build aspects of a world and to collaboratively shape a larger universe together,” said Yohei Ishii, Makers Fund. “Strider strips away the barrier to building fully three dimensional worlds, investing in projects and helping build successful new IPs for the entertainment they want to experience.”
“Strider represents the way to a stronger and more loyal community,” said Ian Emerson, Fabric. “We are incredibly impressed by the team’s dedication to give fans more opportunities to contribute to the worlds they want to experience, providing valuable input on story, game mechanics, visual assets and other facets of the world and lore, helping to build games alongside Strider’s community of like-minded creatives using blockchain technology to allow for deeper ownership as they build together.”
More details about Strider will be revealed in the near future. To learn more, please visit strider.xyz and follow along on Twitter and Discord.
About Strider
Strider is a Collaborative Storytelling platform that brings creative communities and fans together to co-create, invest in and develop new worlds and entertainment products with the Community. Founded by games industry veterans Andrew Green, Michael Brozman, Michael Cala and Nick Braccia, Strider is backed by Makers Fund, Fabric, Shima Capital, YGG and more. To learn more about Strider, please visit strider.xyz and follow along on Twitter and Discord.
About Makers Fund
Makers Fund is a global interactive entertainment venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments. Makers is dedicated to furthering growth and innovation in the interactive entertainment industry. With more than 90 portfolio companies to date, Makers provides founders strategic value that is deeply catered to companies across the value chain in the industry. For more information, visit makersfund.com.
About Fabric Ventures
Fabric is a venture contributor: building, backing and accelerating the boldest ideas in Web3, to create a more open and fair economy. As a top European Web3 fund, Fabric focuses on being the first institutional cheque invested in companies, crypto assets and digital networks on a path to becoming global winners. The Fabric team is made of founders and operators who have built companies to greater than $3 billion in value, and holds operational and investing experience from Google, PayPal, Sun Microsystems, Visa, Accel, eVentures, and EQT.
Fabric’s portfolio includes Polkadot, NEAR Protocol, Sorare, Decentraland, Orchid, 1inch, Coinbase, Sky Mavis (the team behind Axie Infinity), and The Graph. Historically the team also invested in Tagomi, Bitstamp, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Maker, Supermetrics, Thimble, Bitrise, Wagestream, Citymapper, Tray.io, Pusher, Modulr, Codat, Shazam, Raisin, PPRO, Tink, (Transfer)Wise, iZettle, and many more. For more information on our portfolio, opportunities and our thesis please see www.fabric.vc.
Contacts
Sibel Sunar
fortyseven communications for Makers Fund
makersfund@fortyseven.com
