Welcome to Extra Crunch Tuesday

For our first investor survey of the year, Lucas Matney interviewed eight VCs who invest in massively multiplayer online games to discuss 2021 trends and opportunities:

• Hope Cochran, Madrona Venture Group
• Daniel Li, Madrona Venture Group
• Niko Bonatsos, General Catalyst
• Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Venture Partners
• Sakib Dadi, Bessemer Venture Partners
• Jacob Mullins, Shasta Ventures
• Alice Lloyd George, Rogue
• Gigi Levy-Weiss, NFX

Having moved far beyond shooters and sims, platforms like Twitch, Discord and Fortnite are “where culture is created,” said Daniel Li of Madrona.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez uses Twitch to explain policy positions, major musicians regularly perform in-game concerts on Fortnite, and in-game purchases generated tens of billions last year.

“Gaming is a unique combination of science and art, left and right brain,” said Gigi Levy-Weiss of NFX. “It’s never just science (i.e., software and data), which is why many investors find it hard.”

On Thursday, we’ll run our second VC survey of 2021: Mike Butcher polled several investors who focus on Lisbon about its growing status as the city “gears up to be a European tech tiger.”

I hope your 2021 is off to a great start; thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch!

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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How artificial intelligence will be used in 2021

Four years after its launch, Scale AI has a valuation above $3.5 billion.

The company rose to prominence by selling data that helps train machine learning models for autonomous vehicle companies.

Today, its visual data labeling platform serves companies in sectors like robotics, e-commerce, insurance and real estate, reports Kirsten Korosec.

In an interview with Scale AI Alexandr Wang, she asked him to forecast some of the technology’s biggest emerging use cases.

“I’m super-psyched because I think that the technology is getting to a point where it’s going to meet a lot of the hype that has happened,” he said.

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TC Sessions: Justice 2021

Sponsored by TechCrunch

Explore inclusive hiring, the gig worker experience, the justice system and more in a series of interviews with key figures in the technology community.

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What's going on with fintech venture capital investment?

Reviewing data from October through mid-December, Alex Wilhelm found that “one of the hotter domestic segments of startup land is not set to have a good global year.”

Although the dollar volume flowing to fintech startups in the US and Europe has increased over the last three years, “huge declines in Asia have overshadowed results in the other two regions.”

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Dear Sophie: Tips for getting a National Interest green card by myself?

Dear Sophie:

I’m working in the Bay Area on an H-1B visa and my employer won’t sponsor my green card.

I really want permanent residence, but I never won a Nobel prize; I’m single; and I don’t have a million dollars yet. However, I think I might qualify for an EB-2 NIW green card.

What can you share?

— National in Napa

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Extra Crunch’s top 10 stories of 2020

On New Year’s Eve, I made a list of the ten “best” Extra Crunch stories from the previous twelve months.

My methodology was personal: from hundreds of posts, these were the ten I found most useful, which is my key metric for business journalism.

Some readers are skeptical about paywalls, but without being boastful, Extra Crunch is a premium product, just like Netflix or Disney+. I know: We’re not as entertaining as a historical drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II or a space western about a bounty hunter.

But, speaking as someone who’s worked at several startups, Extra Crunch stories contain actionable information you can use to build a company and/or look smart in meetings — and that’s worth something.

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5 questions about 2021's startup market

In his inaugural column for 2021, Alex Wilhelm asked and answered questions about five topics he expects to explore in detail over the coming months:

1. How long can seed deal-making stay hot?
2. How long can investors keep writing such quick checks?
3. How long can startup valuations be based so heavily on far-future growth?
4. Can the 2021 IPO market live up to expectations?
5. What happens to startup growth rates when the world returns to normal?

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How to convert customers with subscription pricing

Startups that lack insight into their sales funnel have high churn, low conversion rates and an inability to adapt or leverage changes in customer behavior.

If you’re hopping to convert and retain customers, “reinforcing your value proposition should play a big part in every level of your customer funnel,” says Joe Procopio, founder of Teaching Startup.

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