Hiro Capital has launched a €100 million fund to back the future UK and EU leaders in the global Games, Esports, and Digital Sports sectors.
Hiro Capital will generally invest at the post-seed stage, at Series A and B. The fund will back deep technology entrepreneurs and creative studios in Games, Esports and Digital Sports and in sector-specific applications of Cloud, Mobile, Streaming, Big Data, AI, Wearables, AR and VR technologies.
Hiro offers macro exposure to three of the fastest growing sectors of the new economy, with 20+ years of tailwinds ahead, combined with exclusive deal flow thanks to the entrepreneurial backgrounds and reputations of the founders.
Hiro’s Heroes
As well as financial investment, Hiro Capital works with its entrepreneurs to help them scale, from assisting in early-stage planning and product development, to strategy, global expansion and exit timing.
Luke Alvarez, managing partner at Hiro, was co-founding CEO & President of Inspired Entertainment, a Nasdaq-listed mobile games and Virtual Sports technology company, as well as a co-founding non-executive of The Cloud Network, the EU’s largest public access Wi-Fi operator.
Luke was previously a Case Leader at the Boston Consulting Group. Luke leads Hiro’s investment strategy and compliance and focuses on Hiro’s digital sports and games technology investments.
Ian Livingstone, partner at Hiro, is the former chairman of Eidos plc, the publisher of Tomb Raider, and is often referred to as the “father” of Lara Croft. In the 1970s, Ian co-founded Games Workshop and brought Dungeons & Dragons to Europe. In the 1980s he co-created and wrote the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series which has sold in excess of 20 million copies worldwide. In 2002, Ian won the BAFTA Interactive Special Award for his outstanding contribution to the industry and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2006 New Year Honours, followed by Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to the computer games industry.
Ian has recently been a successful angel investor in several leading game developers including Playdemic, Fusebox and Mediatonic, and is the non-executive chairman of Sumo Group plc, one of the largest independent video games developers in Europe.
Cherry Freeman, partner at Hiro, was rated ‘Britain’s Coolest Female Founder’ by Business Insider in 2017 and is the co-founder of global community and e-commerce brand LoveCrafts, and has spent 10 years working with venture-backed tech companies including Mimecast and New Voice Media. She is a judge at Tech Nation and a contributor to Tech Nation’s ‘Upscale: what it takes to scale a startup, by the people who’ve done it’.
The Fund’s team of 10 also includes:
- Simon Cornwell, (Non-exec Investment Director), a former Partner and Investment Committee member at top European tech VC Amadeus Capital and the co-founder CEO of film and television studio The Ink Factory, best known for global television hit The Night Manager and for 2019 feature film Fighting With My Family; The Ink Factory also co-founded LA-based games studio Giant Squid, whose new game The Pathless launches in 2020 in the Epic games store, Apple Arcade and on PS4.
- Spike Laurie, (Esports Venture Director), respected former executive at ESL and Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment; Spike is an esports veteran with experience building esports production and infrastructure across three continents and driving multi-million dollar esports revenue pipelines.
- Thomas Martens, (DACH & Sports Venture Director), founder CEO of Global Sportnet (sold to Apax and WPP plc) and pioneer of European football rights at UFA Sports (/Sportfive/ Lagadère Sports), with 28 years in sports licensing, sports data, sports games and esports.
- Alistair Hopkins, (Technology Venture Director), a deep tech specialist with over 20 years in games, sports and network technologies and technology patents and IP.