Juked: transparent comms gives hope to esports app seeking buyer
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What happens when you approach the end of your runway? It’s a scenario no start-up founder wants to find themselves in.
Ben “FishStix” Goldhaber and Chris “ChanManV” Chan started Juked in 2019 with the goal of building an inclusive community platform for esports fans. Juked originally launched as a web-based platform. However, it truly gained traction in early 2022 when its app launched on iOS and Android. By July, nearly 16,000 esports fans were using the app.
Juked knew it would need additional capital to fund further development and began pitching investors on a multi-million dollar seed round.
And then the world destabilized. Stock and crypto markets fell. The war in Ukraine continued. The Fed hiked interest rates. With uncertainty growing, investors changed how they were evaluating early stage prospects.
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“Ultimately, our metrics were only ‘good’ and not ‘great’ in a fundraising environment where only the very best companies were getting funded. The end result is that we unfortunately weren’t able to convince VCs to support Juked,” Goldhaber explained.
In an investment environment trending towards fewer, higher value M&A transactions, more start-up founders will find themselves in the same position as Goldhaber and Chan.
While the team could have remained quiet about their predicament, Juked’s community management strategy has focused on transparency. On September 24, Goldhaber posted a now
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