Joshua Lu

Oct 17, 2023 | a16z.com | Joshua Lu |Sarah Wang |Jonathan Lai |Doug McCracken

We hear a lot of discussion around the best practices for launching a mobile game, and one particular topic that often comes up is: whether or not to do a soft launch. And if you do soft launch, how can you tell if your game will be successful? Much of the mobile games industry has taken the tactic of soft launching seriously – in September alone, there were more than 100 games soft launched on the Apple App Store and over 600 on the Google Play Store.

Sep 21, 2023 | a16zcrypto.com | Chris Dixon |Joshua Lu

Composability is one of the most powerful forces enabled by blockchains: for the first time, users can take code, assets, and items from one application and use them with another. In previous eras of the web, this was impossible because every social network, marketplace, exchange, and game engine has its own system of closed servers, but in web3 everyone shares the same open database.

Sep 14, 2023 | a16z.com | Joshua Lu |Andrew Chen |Jonathan Lai |Robin Guo

Every few years, the games industry reinvents itself via new technological breakthroughs. Past examples include the Free to Play era, kickstarted by the dawn of novel game loops and monetization systems, along with the introduction of Mobile as a new distribution platform, which now accounts for $92.6B in revenue and makes up 49% of the total games market. We are now experiencing a new transformative shift, one that could be the most impactful yet.

Sep 11, 2023 | a16z.com | Jonathan Lai |Joshua Lu |Robin Guo |Andrew Chen

Anime as a media category has exploded in reach and cultural influence around the world. 69% of Gen Z watch anime and half of Netflix’s 222M subscribers watched anime in 2021, with total anime watch time growing 20% annually. – where creators live stream via an anime-style virtual avatar – is also becoming increasingly popular on Twitch, growing at 350% YoY. In 2022, anime games accounted for 20% of total mobile game spend at $17B, not inclusive of PC/console spend.

Aug 1, 2023 | a16z.com | Joshua Lu |Andrew Lee |Robin Guo

SPEEDRUN began with a simple question: how can we support the best gaming founders at the earliest stages of their journey? Our answer was to craft a bespoke accelerator for the gaming industry. We invested in all 32 companies from our first cohort and more than 80% received additional funding after Demo Day in June.