Vision Venture Partners Launches with an Eye on Shaping the Esports, Digital Entertainment and Lifestyle Food and Beverage Segments
Vision Venture Partners, a newly-formed private equity firm, has officially launched with initial investments in the hyper-growth esports, digital entertainment and lifestyle food and beverage sectors. Through the partners’ experience, relationships and access to capital, the firm will provide its operating companies with a proven recipe for long term success – hire the right people, develop a compelling product, execute an aggressive go-to-market strategy and efficiently deploy capital to capture and grow a leadership position in the market.
Vision Venture Partners (VVP) is comprised of four seasoned partners including Stratton Sclavos, Amit Raizada, Rick Fox and Jace Hall. Sclavos and Raizada have decades of success as operators, investors and founders, Fox is a three time NBA champion and longtime business colleague to Raizada and Hall is a gaming industry legend, having mastered, designed and published many successful game titles.
Vision Venture Partners is focused on nurturing companies building a new generation of services for what Sclavos calls “Generation Always” consumers. “These are today’s consumers who are always connected, always social, always mobile, always interactive, always serious and always aware,” explained Sclavos.
Sclavos stressed that a differentiating factor for VVP is the hands-on nature of its four principals. “We are actively involved with every aspect of the companies we invest in and we will provide not only capital, but executive management, talent recruitment and strategic business relationships.” Sclavos formerly served as chairman and CEO of security services company VeriSign, which he led for over a decade as VeriSign grew into a NASDAQ-traded corporation with over 5,000 employees, $1.7 billion in annual revenues and a market value of over $25 billion.
“Between the four of us, we’ve achieved decades of demonstrable business success and value creation. We’re dedicated to building equally passionate and successful management to grow all our ventures,” explained Raizada. The former CEO of Spectrum Business Ventures has a deep background in acquisitions and has built more than 100 operating companies in finance, technology, energy, retail, esports, hospitality and food and beverage.
Fox, has utilized his traditional sports background to help expand esports awareness beyond the gamer community and onto broader audiences through his venture with Echo Fox, VVP’s competitive esports franchise. “We’re already setting the standards in esports and we’ll do the same in other sectors. We want to ensure each portfolio company gets the resources they need to win,” added Fox who knows a thing or two about winning.
Rounding out the partnership group is avid gamer and content creator Jace Hall. The former executive vice president and general manager of Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment grew the company from $60m to $600m in three years with over 600 employees.
The firm operates from a nearly 30,000 square foot Beverly Hills office featuring 75 private office suites, 100 workstations, three production studios and an esports training facility. The headquarters also includes an expanding production arm creating original content for esports and other entertainment categories targeted at live broadcast, video-on-demand and online distribution. Related project announcements are expected this month as well as ventures in the lifestyle food and beverage sector.
For more information, see: www.Vvpllc.com.
About Vision Venture Partners
Vision Venture Partners (VVP) is a private equity firm formed by Amit Raizada, Rick Fox and Stratton Sclavos. Drawing on its Partners many decades of business and personal success, VVP is focused on finding or creating operating companies in a wide variety of high-growth markets including technology, esports and video gaming, digital content production and lifestyle brands in food and beverage. VVP is focused on finding and nurturing entrepreneurs and companies that are building a new generation of services for the Generation Always consumer – today’s consumer who is always connected, always social, always fun, always mobile, always interacting, always multitasking, always serious, always aware.
Through the principles’ experience, relationships and access to capital, VVP provides its operating companies with a proven recipe for long term success – hire the right people, develop a compelling product or service, execute an aggressive go-to-market strategy and efficiently deploy capital to grow and capture a leadership position in the market.
