- Smash Ventures is founded by Eric Garland and Evan Richter.
- Smash Ventures came out of hiding with its $75 million funds for media, entertainment, and games.
- The fund involves investments in Epic Games, Byju’s, DraftKings, Nobull, and Manscape.
- Garland formerly led venture investments for Disney.
Smash has invested in five companies in the past couple of years in deals where the fund and its partners put more than $500 million into the portfolio companies. It plans to invest in only about 10 to 12 companies, as it’s not using a “spray and pray” strategy. Smash Ventures finally came out of hiding with its $75 million fund for media, entertainment, and games.
Smash Ventures was founded by Eric Garland and Evan Richter. Garland formerly led venture investments for Disney, after he sold his startup BigChampagne to Live Nation in 2011. Richter was a former part of Disney’s corporate strategy and business development team, and he was also an investor at Insight Partners. They were both accustomed to working behind the scenes.
Smash to invests in Epic Games, Byju’s, DraftKings, Nobull, and Manscaped.
Their fund investors include former Disney exec Kevin Mayer, Pixar cofounder Ed Catmull, and Willow Bay, the dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. They were able to be a big part of the Epic Games’ $1.25 billion funding in 2018 since they also talked their limited partners into putting more money into the deal. The same happened with DraftKings and India’s e-learning company Byju’s. It also invested in Nobull and Manscaped.
Smash has invested in five companies in the past couple of years in deals where the fund and its partners put more than $500 million into the portfolio companies. Smash plans to invest in only about 10 to 12 companies, as it’s not using a “spray and pray” strategy.
The Edited Transcript of an interview taken.
Evan Richter: It’s an interesting one. Eric and I came together from two pretty different backgrounds in the venture ecosystem. Eric was a serial entrepreneur. I was, I guess, a serial investor, a late-stage investor at different firms. But we came together in the same place and time with the same thesis, which was that consumer software and internet businesses are building these massive user bases that they essentially engage with at unprecedented levels.
Eric Garland: Thinking back on that time, we have to give a lot of credit where it’s due, to Ed Catmull. While we were formulating a thesis about the opportunity, Ed was thinking a lot about not only his legacy, but Pixar’s role and Disney Animation’s role going forward.
The current generation of game engine developers are continuing to build on that original vision that goes back several decades. Ed said, “Have you and Evan spoken to the innovators in that field? Have you talked to the builders of game engines?”
It was a matter of hours after that first conversation with Ed–we put out just a handful of cold calls. One of them was a totally cold email. I think we guessed Tim Sweeney’s email address
