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Presence Capital launches $10 million early-stage VR and AR investment fund

Investing in the vision thing

Presence Capital launches $10 million early-stage VR and AR investment fund

VR and AR are already dominating the attention of the venture capital community, and that situation doesn't look like changing anytime soon.

Indeed, if the announcement from Presence Capital is anything to go by, it's merely getting more intense.

The San Francisco outfit has announced it's closed its inaugural fund of $10 million, which it is, and will be, investing solely in early-stage VR and AR companies.

It already counts Harmonix, Baobab, and Waygo among its investments.

Helping hand

"We've seen time and time again from our previous endeavors that anytime there's a platform shift, multi-billion dollar companies are created," said Amitt Mahajan, Presence Capital's managing partner.

"Our goal is to be early to support and empower exceptional entrepreneurs that share our vision and enthusiasm about VR and AR as the next major platform shifts."

Alongside Mahajan (Epic Games, Zynga, Google), the company has two other managing partners.

Phil Chen founded the HTC Vive project at HTC and brokered the company's partnership with Valve.

Paul Bragiel has advised companies such as Uber and Unity, and been involved in the seed rounds of more than 150 companies.

"We believe there's a gap in funding at the early-stage level mostly given the VR and AR markets haven't been clearly defined yet," added Chen.

"Now the market is becoming primed it's important that the startups entering the market are providing value, have room to be creative and can help the global community fully explore what is possible."


Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.