EGD 045: Investing At The Early Stage with Harri Manninen, Founder Partner at Play Ventures

Today I’m talking with Harri Manninen, the founding partner at Play Ventures, a seed-stages venture capital firm, with offices in Helsinki and Singapore. I’ve known Harri for about ten years now, ever since he was building Rocket Pack, the company that he and his co-founders sold to Disney, in less than a year of founding the company. We’ll now hear how Harri made his way into VC, and how he sees the seed stage developing for gaming startups.

Also, check out Play Ventures’ guide on pitching perfectly at https://playventures.vc/pitchperfect

Topics that we cover in the discussion include:

• How did you shift into investing? Why was VC the right job for you?
• How did you decide on the optimal size for the Play Ventures fund?
• What do the companies share in characteristics that manage to go from Seed to Series A?
• When you have invested into a company, some fare better than others. Have you developed a set of signs that point to positive developments and negative ones?
• What is a non-obvious red flag for you to invest in a games company?
• What legendary VCs do you look up to and why?