Why We Led Survios’ Series A Years Ago.

Where were you on March 27, 2014?I was in San Francisco, on a very steep street, walking into a nondescript blue apartment building.Arriving in a basement studio apartment high in the hills south of downtown San Francisco, at 492 Clipper Street, I donned a backpack and a 3-D printed, ill-fitting head-mounted display.  I looked like a leading character out of the original Ghostbusters movie.Nathan Burba and James Iliff shared a wireless demo of “Zombies on the Holodeck”, an early VR first-person shooter where you fight off a zombie onslaught.  I was blown away by their early demo, and called my partners to insist that they drop everything to meet these founders and try their demo later that day.  I’m glad they did.Less than two weeks later, I met with Nate and James at Lupa, a restaurant not far from our demo location in Noe.  On behalf of Shasta Ventures, I presented them with a term sheet to lead a Series A investment in their company, Survios.  To celebrate, we ordered a bottle of wine.  The waiter’s response?  He carded Nate and James.  (…are you guys even 21?)  Their response?  Yes … and yes, we’d love to work with Shasta.I had done a lot of diligence before that meeting, but I have to admit that I wasn’t entirely sure if they were 21.Since then, I’ve loved working with this team.  They were the earliest pioneers of “room-scale” VR … long before anyone had heard of HTC’s Vive.  There was also a major pivot, and many technical challenges.  To the team’s credit, they’ve thrived despite these challenges.  Just a few months ago, they had the first “million-dollar-gross” revenue month in VR.  And they have some big news to report tomorrow.