Why we invested in Sesame Labs, growth engine for web3 companies
One of the key challenges in scaling web3 adoption is the lack of a native marketing stack.
Sesame Labs is solving this problem by building a reliable engagement layer connecting developers, dApps, and consumers. The web3 gaming platform accelerates customer acquisition and in-game engagement with on-chain incentive programs.
Over the past six months, Samsung Next has seen the market for web3 growth tools heat up, especially in the areas including growth analytics, attribution, community, messaging, CRM, incentives, and adtech. We invested in Sesame Labs because it is one of the first teams to create a unique and measurable marketing unit for web3. We joined in a $4.5 million SAFE round for Sesame Labs led by Patron and Wing Venture Capital. Among the previous investors are Script Capital and South Park Commons.
Sesame Labs’ solution is a two-part ecosystem comprising a user app and a dApp portal. On the demand side, the user app provides a safer and more streamlined experience for discovering new web3 games. A proprietary dApp inbox lets users receive messages from trusted sources, filter-out spam and malicious links, and manage messages – and a unique marketing unit, called “quests,” promotes user engagement by rewarding discovery and community activities.
On the supply side, the dApp portal enables game developers to easily launch web3 campaigns targeted to specific communities, with measurable results. For example, users can build a comprehensive audience profile by combining off-chain data, such as Twitter profiles, with on-chain data.
Another reason for investment is our conviction in the team. The two founders have over 10 years of experience building ads and messaging products at Meta. Co-founder Aman Jain was the first backend engineer for Instagram, and head of engineering for Whatsapp when Meta was figuring out how to monetize it. He then went on to found Meta Innovation Labs in New Product Experimentation (NPE), a community of entrepreneurs at Facebook building new products. Co-founder Vinay Jain previously was a product manager for Facebook, where he was in charge of Facebook Pages, and grew the Facebook Leads Ads business to $1 billion a year. He also was a founding team member of the WhatsApp Business API, and the co-founder of a developer tools startup.
The Sesame Labs team is focused on giving dApp developers more powerful marketing tools. The goal is to replace the status quo – characterized by giveaway campaigns on Twitter – with an integrated platform that includes referral management, attribution software, analytics tools, and engagement systems. Since launching in private beta in September 2022, Sesame Labs has tested its platform with over a dozen large Web3 gaming companies, including Decentral Games, Ethermon, and League of Kingdoms.
The native marketing stack offered by Sesame Labs promises to help facilitate the mass adoption of web3 dApps and technologies in web2 spaces. We believe web3 is the next frontier, and that a trusted distribution channel is a necessary part of scaling. Sesame Labs is a blockchain-native solution that makes marketing fair, rewarding, and transparent for consumers, while giving dApp developers the tools they need to connect with their target market – on-chain, off-chain, or in-app.
Joan Kim is an Investor at Samsung Next. Samsung Next's investment strategy is limited to its own views and does not reflect the vision or strategy of any other Samsung business unit, including, but not limited to, Samsung Electronics.