Gaming site Haste Arcade raises $1.5M in oversubscribed fundraising round

Haste Arcade has just closed its $1.5 million seed round. The fundraising was oversubscribed, Haste was able to exceed the $1 million target that it had set for itself.

“We were originally seeking $1MM to lay a good solid foundation for the product/vision and then have some working capital to start testing our assumptions around product/market fit, specifically with marketing outside the ‘crypto’ community,” said Dan Wagner, the co-founder of Haste Arcade.

“After pitching the concept to a handful of investors, it became obvious that we weren’t the only ones thinking ILP™ Gaming could potentially become a ‘thing.’ We stopped pitching a couple of months ago but due to word of mouth and interest from other investors we were able to secure an additional $500K on top of the original goal bringing the total to $1.5MM,” he added.

The gaming industry

According to Wagner, there are several elements of the Haste Arcade that make investors confident in Haste’s future.

“First and foremost, the idea; its novel, it’s new, and it’s easy to understand. Get on the leaderboard. Get paid. It’s not rocket science by any means and at the same rate, it’s not hard to imagine something like ILP™ Gaming catching on and taking off.

“Secondly, the market. Online gaming is absolutely massive and even if you’re only able to capture a small fraction of the gamers in the world, you can build a business with millions or hundreds of millions of users.

“And finally, our team. It’s not our first rodeo, meaning, we’ve raised capital before and we’ve shown what it takes to build a business. Many don’t know this, but the four co-founders of Haste, Inc. have been working together for basically seven years at this point. We move fast, are great at failing, iterating, pivoting, and quite frankly just getting stuff done and keeping the ball rolling.

“Add in the rest of the folks we’ve brought on and our core team of 8 forms a solid foundation. When you realize the core team’s skill set and experience, you realize that in a lot of ways, it’s not your average startup. Since we started building beta, everything has been done first class. If we are right, Haste Arcade has uncovered an entirely new category in gaming, and there is most likely some money to be made from being the market leader for something like that,” said Wagner.

The lead investor in the round was Jonathan Cogley, the CEO of Logic Boost Labs. Cogley has a long and successful history in the cybersecurity field and recently sold his cybersecurity company Thycotic for $1.4 billion. Now, he spends his time at Logic Boost Labs, a San Diego-based accelerator that invests in early-stage leaders.

Other notable investors that participated in the seed round include Thomas Vu, who formerly worked at Riot Games helping bring League of Legends to market; Anthony Borquez, the CEO of Grab Games and a professor at the University of Southern California; Craig Brennan, the Silicon Valley veteran with decades of experience in software leadership/management that sits as the CEO of private and public companies; and Brad Powers the CIO of Passport.

Seeing new investors throw their hats in the ring is a positive sign. Investors provide companies with the resources they need to succeed because they see value in the company’s business model and have the belief that their business will be worth significantly more in the future. Businesses like Haste that find a way to implement innovative ideas that have the potential to revolutionize an industry will always be sought after by investors.

The fact that the latest haste fundraising round was oversubscribed confirms that theory and supports the idea that there is a tremendous amount of value that can be realized by the businesses using the Bitcoin blockchain as a core component of the app, service, or experience that they are creating.

The Haste Arcade future

“We are highly focused on a couple of things at the moment like capturing and analyzing data from our marketing efforts and sharpening the unit economics so that we have a compelling story when we start raising growth capital. We are also highly focused on creating new and more engaging experiences throughout the arcade. We’re very excited about certain items on our roadmap and believe the online gaming community will be too,” said Wagner.

Ultimately, the money Haste Arcade has raised will bring them closer to having their overall vision come to fruition.

“In the future, you will come to Haste Arcade for awesome experiences. You will play games, compete, and have fun, but you will also drop in just to hang out, be social, and communicate with the friends that you’ve made from all around the world. You will enjoy immersive experiences in the metaverse. You will make some money and some will even quit their jobs and become professional gamers in the arcade,” Wagner said.

“You will see Haste Arcade on national television. You will see Haste Arcade promoted by the biggest celebrities and pro athletes in the world. You will buy a Haste console. You will play ILP™ games at your local bar. You will even walk into a physical arcade and play skeeball or shoot hoops for ILP™. If you are involved now, you will be proud to have been a part of it all in its early stages,” he added.