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b'Any good XR startup needs someone to\\ninvest in their world-changing idea before they can start changing\\nthe world. The GFR Fund is one such investor group, and this one in\\nparticular has cultivated an impressive portfolio of XR\\nup-and-comers. Managing partner Teppei Tsutsui drops by to share some\\nof his investing strategies.\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: Welcome to The XR for\\nBusiness podcast with your host Alan Smithson. Today\\u2019s guest is\\nTeppei Tsutsui. For the past decade, Teppei has been the managing\\npartner of the GFR Fund, and he\\u2019s led several key investments in\\nacquisitions in Tokyo, including GREE\\u2019s acquisitions of open feet and\\nFunzio. Teppei is currently leading the GFR Fund in San Francisco.\\nYou can learn more about the GFR Fund by visiting gfrfund.com.\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nTeppei, welcome to the show, my friend.\\n\\n\\n\\nTeppei: Oh yeah. Thank you for\\nhaving me here.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: It\\u2019s my absolute pleasure.\\nYou guys were one of the very first companies to start investing in\\nthe virtual and augmented and mixed reality space. You come from a\\ngaming background. Maybe just give us a little overview of the GFR\\nFund, and how this came to be that you\\u2019re investing in some of the\\nname brands in virtual reality.\\n\\n\\n\\nTeppei: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So the GFR Fund is a seed stage fund that\\u2019s investing technology companies, disrupting the digital media and entertainment space, including VR and AR. We have about 40 million under management and we invest in primarily in North America, but also in Asia and Europe, too. And we are backed by ALEC Japanese\\u2026 more like a strategic investor from Japan and Asia, including GREE, which is a publicly-traded company, a mobile gaming company out of Tokyo, and they also help us investing in companies and altogether. Before launching this fund back in 2016, I was working for a company called GREE. \\u2014 that\\u2019s the same company that I was kind of explaining \\u2014 and I was the head of the corporate development team based in Tokyo, and also here in San Francisco, so that I was kind of working together with them, just looking for lot of the venture companies in the gaming \\u2014 and VR and AR \\u2014 space, as well. So that\\u2019s how we got started, this GFR Fund, and that\\u2019s the relationship.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: GREE is a fairly large\\ncompany, is it not? \\n\\n\\n\\n\\nTeppei: It is. So they have\\nabout 1.5 billion market cap and they\\u2019ve got about a thousand\\nemployees across the globe and they\\u2019ve got 2,000 billion US dollar\\nrevenues. So it\\u2019s I feel like a decent company, decent size company.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: That\\u2019s awesome. I would\\nassume because \\u2014 it\\u2019s social media and gaming \\u2014 you would be a\\ndirect competitor or something like Tencent. Would that be the case?\\n\\n\\n\\nTeppei: Yeah. In a way. But the\\nGREE\\u2019s more built upon the mobile games, whereas the Tencent sell\\u2013\\nthey do both PC games and some sort of consoles, too.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: Got it. I\\u2019m looking at your portfolio here under the GFR Fund. You\\u2019ve got VRChat, Spaces, the WaveVR, Littlstar, InsiteVR, Streem, Torch. Let\\u2019s go through these \\u2014 if you don\\u2019t mind \\u2014 and kind of talk about each one one at a time, and why you guys chose to invest it. But first I want to know: you talked about your fund being $40-million, when did that fund start?\\n\\n\\n\\nTeppei: The first fund was\\nlaunched in April 2016, so it\\u2019s almost like a four, three and a half\\nyears ago. And then we also launched a second fund, beginning of this\\nyear.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: Great. And then, so you\\u2019ve got\\u2013 that\\u2019s $40-million total under management?\\n\\n\\n\\nTeppei: Yes. Yeah. We'