Why we Invested in GamerzClass

Therefore, his friend and future co-founder, Rasmus Holmgaard, suggested that they start a food-tech business where Victor would lead the sales efforts. They hustled their way into several of Copenhagen’s top restaurants, but, unfortunately, it didn’t work out as planned. 

Instead, he told us about his semi-pro career in football and how a sudden injury had led him to move from one sport to another: Counter-Strike. In the world of Counter-Strike, he managed to regain the locker room feeling he was so crucially lacking after having left the world of football. 

And just like the injury didn’t stop Victor from switching sports, he and Rasmus quickly started focusing on their next venture - their biggest passion at the time - namely esports. 

Because during his years of playing several hours of Counter-Strike a day, Victor had also realized another problem; that even though he put in a lot of hours, he didn’t see the impact on his gameplay and rank that he had hoped for. 

He had been frantically searching the internet for tutorials on how to improve his aim and map control but ended up with poorly edited Youtube material from other casual players, which made very little difference. 

In 2018, Victor and Rasmus, therefore, started sketching out a solution to this problem and began to reach out to big esports stars on social media, asking them to participate. 

Luckily, the Nordics have a lot of them, like Pimp (CS:GO) and Froggen (LOL), and by proving to them that they were leaving money on the table, Victor and Rasmus managed to sign them up and convince them to share their knowledge with eager fans around the globe.

Their timing was immaculate; between 2019 and 2023, esports viewers expect to grow from 454m to 646m at a growth rate of 9%. Esports have now reached a point where it’s, for some, no longer a hobby but rather a viable career path. 

Case in point, some of the best players now have an annual income of $5-10m consisting of just prize money from competitions, meaning that top esports players can make similar money to world-class athletes in other sports.

Gamerzclass’ (https://gamerzclass.com/) current offering is primarily focused on building the best gaming edutainment platform by creating personalized experiences for players to help them improve their gameplay. 

Their edge lies within their access to top talent and their ownership of high-quality content produced in a scalable way. Here, we can see some similarities to the original content boom of Netflix and HBO, and how it has changed our expectations on content quality. 

However, they are already expanding their offering. 

In addition to the Masterclass format, Gamerzclass provides the ability for 1-on-1 coaching and extensive feedback sessions. In the future, it will explore more ways for players to interact and transact with pros and other casual gamers. 

Gamerzclass is a great match with our wider gaming thesis: that we will see the limits between gaming and reality becoming even blurrier over time. The consequence will be that more gamers will want to move beyond improving their skills. 

They will also look for new ways to interact with other players, transfer goods - such as skins and weapons - and the continued capacity to build virtual identities and express their personalities online.

In a short period of time, Victor and Rasmus have managed to sign up some of the best talents in their respective games, such as N0tail (Dota 2), Tekkz (FIFA), Twistzz (CS:GO), and Jensen (LOL). 

They have also shown amazing traction in their growth and retention of paying users, continuously shipping new features, and experimenting with the product/onboarding.

The fact that many of us on the team are fellow gamers combined with being incredibly impressed with the team and product of Gamerzclass, we are super excited to lead their $2.5m Seed round together with our friends over at Bumble Ventures.

If you are looking to join the next breakout success from Denmark, and if you’re a fan of the esports space, find their open positions here: https://www.notion.so/Careers-4bda08a4d26f437d82732d1606ac95ba

You can read more here: https://esportsinsider.com/2021/06/gamerzclass-2-5m-seed-round