2022 Year in Review

As another year comes to an end, the time to reflect is upon us. Reflection is a crucial part of growth. Without it, the years meld together and the bigger picture can become blurred. It's important to take time to zoom out and make sure the vision is clear. For us, that vision has never been more clear.

We're on a mission to accelerate humankind’s potential by streamlining the journey of the entrepreneur. Our startup ecosystem has innovation at its core and we took major steps in 2022 to continue expanding it.

We wouldn't have been able to tackle even bigger projects and reach new heights this year without our extraordinary team, which doubled in size!

Like a proud parent, we're excited to share everyone's accomplishments and have highlighted a few of them below (you can also read about them all in our 2022 Year in Review blog post).

We wish you all a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season.

Best wishes,

Team Interplay

Venture Capital

Our Venture Capital vertical focuses on identifying and investing in promising technology-enabled businesses across Seed, Series A, and Series B. We aim to partner with founders who are passionate about solving meaningful problems and building scalable businesses. In 2022, our portfolio expanded to include eight new investments and two follow-on investments.

These are the eight new companies we were excited to welcome to our portfolio:

• ‍ASK-AI, using breakthrough AI-NLP to aggregate text-heavy company knowledge & customer communications.
• ‍Banyan, making it easy for consumers to connect their receipts to the apps and services they choose.
• Black Crow AI, helping companies of all sizes improve profitability with the power of machine-learned prediction.
• Boom & Bucket, changing the way contractors buy and sell used heavy equipment.
• ‍Justpoint, redesigning the personal injury industry.
• Noble, empowering any company to quickly build, launch, and scale credit products.
• ‍ShopThing, transforming the way people shop and sell through live video commerce.
• Slate, a content creation platform for on-brand social media.

These are the two portfolio companies we were thrilled to make follow-on investments with.

• MicroAcquire, a startup acquisition marketplace that helps turn founder journeys into success stories.
• Properly, a Canadian real estate technology company that enables homeowners to buy when they find the home they love.

Blockchain

Our Blockchain vertical invests in companies that are using public blockchains to drive the next iteration of the internet and disrupt our most fundamental institutions.

In addition to launching, here are some exciting highlights:

• ‍‍At the end of November we had our first close.
• We committed to three strategic investments into other excellent funds (Shima Capital, Collab+Currency, and Frictionless Capital).‍
• ‍We're active members in eight DAOs.

Along with our important business milestones, we continued to exemplify thought leadership in the world of blockchain.

• ‍Decentralization: A Holistic Framework‍
• Liquid Podcast‍
• Crypto 101 Podcast‍
• The mathematics behind zero-knowledge proofs

Content

Creating educational and useful content for founders, startups, VCs and LPs is a top priority for us. The main focus for this initiative has been our podcast, Innovation with Mark Peter Davis.

We launched the pod in January of '21. Two years later and 74 episodes in, we're going strong!

The most recent episode - and the last one of the year - is a recap of notable events from 2022 and our predictions for 2023. Here's a link to check it out.

Incubator

Our Incubator partners with existing early-stage companies to help them succeed and scale. We work with a relatively small number of companies at once. If an accelerator is like a classroom, our Incubator is like private tutoring.

Over the past year, we continued working with high-quality companies that are based out of the US as well as other countries from all over the world, including Mexico, Pakistan, and the Caribbean.

We're proud to be working with a diverse and accomplished set of founders that includes many from underrepresented groups as well as a range of experiences such as second and third-time founders, physicians, statisticians, and more. We are on track to work with 12-15 more companies in 2023!

Here are the companies that joined the Incubator in 2022:

• Futurist AI, a Breakthrough Natural Language Processing platform capable of revealing the motivations that drive customer behaviors.
• GoDocta, a telemedicine platform that's globally expanding patient access to care.
• Hadley, matching families looking to save for education to the 529 Plan that's right for them, for free.
• Goodwell, reinventing the classic toothbrush to give it a modern and sustainable update.
• Manna, a platform where home cooks, chefs, recipe developers and creators can interact, customize recipes and share food.
• Meatit, a direct to consumer company reinventing the meat supply chain in Pakistan.
• MIDAS Technologies, a marketplace providing tools that allow for the visualization of cash consumption trends and analytics.
• Picket Pharmaceuticals, developing and brings to market innovative complex generic pharmaceutical products.
• Qortor, a better way for creators and brands to collaborate and sell together.

Family Office

Our Family Office leverages our deep network in the key innovation sectors to access alternative assets that can uniquely provide material wealth appreciation and positive social impact. Like the rest of Interplay, 2022 has been a big year for the FO team.

• We're now servicing and investing on behalf of 5 families.‍
• ‍We added four new team members:Director, a turning point for the business.Associate, set to join on 1/2/2023.2x Operation Specialist, significantly leveling up quality of services to existing member families.
• We added four new services and capabilities to offer our members:Tax AdvisoryInsurance AdvisoryEstate Planning Strategic AdvisoryEmergency Planning Services
• There were 25 investments committed and funded YTD, which include: 9 Venture-Stage Direct Investments6 Growth-Stage/Pre-IPO/Secondary Direct Investments1 Real Estate Direct Investment2 Traditional Buyout Funds1 Real Estate PE Fund2 Generalist VC Funds1 Hybrid Credit Fund1 Search Fund of Funds1 Israeli Tech Fund of Funds1 Blockchain VC Fund

Services

Interplay’s platform companies employ hundreds of people and provide core operational services to more than 10% of all venture-backed startups in the US.

Here are a few select highlights from Bowery Legal, Chelsea Capital and Firon Marketing.

• Firon grew to 20 full-time employees, with at least 2 members in each of its main service departments; SEO, Advertising, Social Media Management, Website Development, Email/SMS Marketing, and Content Writing.
• Chelsea Capital's team expanded and evolved. They promoted Monette and hired Lauren, who has been amazing and allowed the company to expand its ops services business. In addition to a growing team, Chelsea Capital's revenue doubled in 2021, with both tax and CFO revenue increasing by approximately 2.5x.
• Bowery Legal’s team grew more than two-fold, adding attorneys Mike Feldstein and Enes Sevencan and Paralegal Liza Quimbo over the past year, bringing the team to 6.  Bowery also built its client base significantly over the past year. Perhaps most interestingly, based on the growing word-of-mouth reputation, Bowery Legal has gained a reputation as a high-quality firm in the Startup, Emerging Companies, and VC legal industry, known for being capable of providing top-level services at significant cost savings compared to larger alternatives. This has led to Bowery bringing several clients on board that were previously from large, name-brand firms in the space.

P.S. To stay in the know and/or get in touch, feel free to click any of the links in the footer:

• Engage: This is a one-stop-shop for all of the ecosystem’s offerings. Apply to Interplay Ventures and Interplay Incubator and/or learn more about and get in touch with our service companies‍
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