Robby Yung on Animoca’s Web3 Investment, TON, and Mocaverse

When speaking English, the word Animoca doesn’t roll off the tongue easily. Is it Japanese? A sweet treat? A trendy coffee?

According to Robby Yung, CEO of London-based Web3 investment giant Animoca Brands, it is neither of the two, but rather a portmanteau that “bridges animation and mobile communications.”

This means that Animoca is clearly focused on creating a Web3 environment that it wants to dominate, and on gaming. What that means and sounds like to outsiders, probably doesn’t make any difference to the company.

Animoca Brands has come a long way since it was founded by Yat Siu and David Kim in Hong Kong a decade ago. In recent years, it has been open about its strategy to become a metaverse company, even after the metaverse “narrative” was widely seen as a failure as the hype died down in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After inviting Jung to speak on a panel at the House of the Block event at London’s Hurlingham Club in June, the magazine sat down with him to learn more about his journey so far and the exciting evolution of Animoca Brands, a company that has never been smooth sailing.

Animoca Brands is still focused on building the metaverse and gradually investing in and onboarding companies. It’s a market maker that helps launch and market coins. The goal is to bring all these different projects into what Animoca Brands calls the “Mocaverse.”

“Over time, we want to bring all the established players into the Mocaverse. We’re really busy right now. We’re doing a lot of things and have some interesting partnerships,” he says. “Our Moca token launched four weeks ago and there’s been a ton of interest. Our community is growing now and we’re tapping into that passion.”

Animoca has several major cryptocurrency brands.

Some of these investments are well-known: Jung says the biggest studio, The Sandbox, continues to be a “key pillar,” and points to OpenSea and NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs as other big success stories.

But he admits there were some big missed opportunities, including as an early investor in Unity in 2010.

Unity, a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, has raised about $900 million in eight rounds and is currently valued at $6.8 billion, according to Stock Analysis.

While there are other interesting projects and potential legends like Sky Mavis, the developers of Grapes and Axie Infinity, that are growing exponentially and integration with Mocaverse is the ultimate goal, it is the open network blockchain and Telegram that are currently driving the popularization of games and content.

Yung was quick to seize the opportunity, citing “obstruction by Apple and Google” as the reason why TON games are booming on Telegram and attracting hundreds of millions of users.

Open platforms like Telegram and TON are superior to closed ones.

Yung says Telegram and TON can build communities quickly and that the messengers offer “unlimited distribution.” Despite spending millions on user acquisition, “Apple/Google are too intrusive and missed the point.”

“They don’t like companies from a decentralized perspective and have tried to maintain a monopoly. They want absolute control, and they’ve done a good job, but things are changing. After all, we’ve all been kicked out of the app stores.”

In fact, one of the reasons founder Yat Siu became interested in cryptocurrencies was because an early Animoca mobile game was unilaterally removed from the app store and lost market share overnight.

“Telegram has 1 billion users now and the number is growing every month. We need to control our industry, the amount of money spent on Google ads is ridiculous. We prefer a community with airdrops that keep money in the industry and not take it out. The TON blockchain provides this.”

Others in the industry back up Jung’s claims and numbers. Dan Beasley co-founded Grapes, one of Animoca Brands’ emerging investments.

“Telegram is where crypto natives go to learn about projects, and it’s growing by over 50 million new users a month, and now it’s at 1 billion. That’s incredible, and it’s where every web3 game company should be. It’s a no-brainer,” he says.

The magazine interviewed Jung before Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France, and the impact on the platform and TON is still unknown. In response to the news, TON lost a quarter of its market cap.

Animoca has been delisted from the Australian stock market.

Animoca Brands currently has a portfolio of over 540 investments in Web3 projects and is even considering an IPO in 2025, but it has had its dark days.

In the spring of 2020, the Australian Stock Exchange delisted the company after deciding to ban all blockchain companies.

Yung dismissed allegations that Animoca did anything illegal, but it must have been particularly galling to shareholders.

But Jung addresses these tough questions with aplomb, his career and life around the world undoubtedly making him strong, and he has been based in London since 2019.

Yung’s Journey into Blockchain

Yung was born in Germany and moved to the United States when he was four. He told the magazine that he had a safe and happy childhood in Connecticut. His father worked in advertising for McCann Erickson.

He had always been interested in public policy, particularly international relations, and decided to go to the University of Chicago and spend time in Asia, connecting with his family. “My dad is Chinese, and I speak Chinese,” he said.

“I finished my degree, moved to New York, worked in real estate during the day and got my master’s degree at night, and then realized I wanted to focus on China, so I moved to Hong Kong.”

It was now the 1990s, and mobile communications in particular were booming. Yung was in the right place at the right time, working for Metromedia, run by John Cloogie, who was 80 when he arrived.

After that, Jung’s life was a whirlwind. The company was sold to AT&T Wireless, and Jung became, in his words, “a gopher and Mr. China.”

Eastern Europe and the collapse of Dotcom

He led the expansion into emerging markets from the collapsed Soviet Union and spent time in Russia, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

“I traveled everywhere for three years before the Internet was invented, around 1997. My father had previously invested in a paging station in China, so I bought an ISP in southern China.”

“I ran a business for two years, and it was a terrible business, but I took that experience and turned it into a web development business and raised my first venture capital.”

Jung laughed off speculation that he had become a “Nepo Baby” and got right to the point about how his journey began with Animoca.

“I met (Animoca co-founder) Yat Siu in 1997 or 1998, and we became friends. Then I enjoyed the Internet bubble, survived the crash, closed the business in 2001, and took a year off to reflect on that horrible but formative experience.”

“For the next 10 years, I focused on media businesses in China. I took two to IPOs, one was successful, one wasn’t, and then I went after Yat Siu again.”

“It seemed like the right time to join forces, and the past decade has proven that to be true. I set the company’s strategy in 2012, led the company to a Series B fundraising, took the business public in 2015, and added Brands to Animoca’s original name.”

With an IPO slated for 2025, Animoca Brands has become one of the biggest names in Web3, and its focus on acquiring brands and intellectual property could propel it further into the mainstream.

There are significant obstacles ahead, but as the TON blockchain and Telegram distribution grows and invested companies move into the Mocaverse, Jung is taking control and keeping his mind on all the games. Let’s see where it goes.

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Monty Moonford

Monty Munford writes regularly for the BBC, The Economist and City AM, and was a technology columnist for Forbes and The Telegraph. He also runs a growth and visibility consultancy and has appeared at over 200 events and conferences, interviewing Tim Draper, the late John McAfee, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak, Kim Kardashian, Guns N’ Roses and many others.

Follow the author @montymoonford