Robbie Yung on Animoka Web3 Investments, Tons and Mokavers

The word Animoka doesn't exactly roll off the tongue when you speak English. Is it Japanese? Is it a sweet snack? Is it even a trendy type of coffee?

According to Robbie Yung, CEO of London-based Web3 investment behemoth Animoka Brands, it's neither of those things, but the portmanteau that “connects animation and mobile communication.”

That means focusing on games and creating a Web3 environment that Animoca clearly wants to dominate. No matter what it looks like to outsiders, it probably doesn't matter to the company.

Animoka Brands has come a long way since it was founded in Hong Kong by Yat Siu and David Kim over ten years ago. In recent years, Metaverse has made no bones about its strategy. Even after the collapse of Metaver's “narrative” was widely seen as the stimulus was lost after the Covid-19 pandemic.

After discussing Yung on a panel at the Block event at London's Hurlingham Club in June, the magazine caught up with him further to learn about his journey to date and the exciting evolution of Animoca Brands, the company that never had the journey. Direct on all.

Animoka Brands is still focused on building Metaverse and gradually investing in passenger companies. It is a market maker that helps launch and market coins. The aim is to bring all these different projects into what Animoca Brands calls “mocavers”.

“Over time, we want to bring all of our company to Mokaverse, and right now, it's really busy. We are doing a lot of work and creating exciting partnerships,” he said. “Our Moka demo launched four weeks ago, and there was a lot of demand. Now, our community is growing, and we're feeding off that community's enthusiasm.

Animoca has a large stable of crypto brands.

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

But he admits there have been some big missed opportunities, most notably his passing as a former investor in Unity in 2010.

Unity — a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies — has raised nearly $900 million in eight rounds and currently has a valuation of $6.8 billion, according to Stock Analytics.

Other interesting projects and potential legends such as Vine and Axi Infinity developer Sky Mavis are growing exponentially, and while joining Mokaver is the ultimate goal, it's the Open Network blockchain and Telegram that currently make games and content widely accepted.

Yung is quick to recognize the opportunity and cites the “disruption of Apple and Google” as tons of games spread across Telegram and attract hundreds of millions of users.

Open platforms such as Telegram and Ton have defeated closed platforms

Yung says Telegram and Ton can create communities quickly, and that the messenger offers “unlimited distribution.” Despite spending millions on consumer acquisitions, he said, “Apple/Google missed a trick that would be so disruptive.

“They don't like companies from a decentralized perspective and trying to stay in their monopolistic positions. They want absolute control, and they've had a good run, but things are changing. And we've all had things pulled from the App Store.”

In fact, founder Yat Siu's interest in crypto was sparked when an early Animoka mobile game was unilaterally pulled from the app store and lost market share overnight.

“Currently there is an audience of one billion users in Telegram, and the numbers are increasing month-by-month. We need to control our industry, and the money spent on Google advertising is ridiculous. We prefer a society where there are airdrops that put the money in the industry, not take it from it. The TON blockchain offers.

Others in the industry back up Jung's claims and numbers. Dan Beasley co-founded Wines, one of Animoca Brands' growing investments.

“Telegram is where crypto natives go to find out about projects and is growing by over 50 million new users per month and has now reached the billion mark. Unbelievable numbers, and where any Web3 games company should be active. It's a no-brainer,” he says.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov interviewed Magazine Yung before they were arrested in France, and the benefits of that platform and tone are to be seen. In response to the news, Ton lost a quarter of its market value.

Animoka was launched from the Australian stock market

While Animoca Brands now has a portfolio of over 540 investments in Web3 projects and is considering an IPO in 2025, there have been some dark days.

In the year In the spring of 2020, the Australian Securities Exchange delisted the company after it decided to ban all blockchain companies.

Yung bats away any suggestion that Animoca has anything up its sleeve, but it must be a particularly frustrating complication for shareholders.

Yung, however, takes tricky questions like these in his stride, a career and life that has no doubt traversed the globe and landed him in London, where he currently resides as of 2019.

Yung's journey to blockchain

Jung was born in Germany and moved to America at the age of four. He told the magazine that he had a safe and happy childhood in Connecticut. His father worked in advertising with Makan Erickson.

He had always been interested in public policy and decided to study at the University of Chicago, specializing in international relations and then spending time with his family. “My father is Chinese, and I know how to speak Mandarin.”

“After I finished my degree, I moved to New York, did my master's at night while working in real estate during the day, and then moved to Hong Kong because I realized I wanted to focus on China.”

It was now the 1990s, and the telecom business, especially mobile, was booming. Yung was in the right place at the right time and worked for Metromedia, run by John Cloughi, who was 80 years old when Yung arrived.

After that, Yung's life was a whirlwind. The company was sold to AT&T Wireless, and Yung became, in his own words, “Gopher and Mr. China.”

Eastern Europe and the dotcom boom

He spent time in Russia, Georgia and Kazakhstan, heading to emerging markets from the collapsed Soviet Union.

In about 1997, before the Internet took off, I went all over the place in three years. My father previously invested in paging sites in China. So he bought an ISP in southern China.

“I ran the business for two years, and it was really a terrible business, but I used the experience to turn it into a web development business and raise my first venture capital.”

Jung laughs off the suggestion that this would make him a “Nepo Baby”, then rushes to find out how his journey with Animoka began.

“From 1997 to 1998, I also met [Animoca co-founder] Yat Siu, and we became friends. Then I enjoyed the Internet bubble, survived the disaster and closed it down in 2001 before taking a year off to reflect on the terrifying and formative experiences.

“For the next decade, I focused on media businesses in China. I took two of them to IPO, one was successful, the other was not so successful, and then I met Yat Hsu again.”

“It just seemed like the right time to work together, and the past decade has shown that in action. I developed the company's strategy for 2012, took the company to a Series B raise and took the business public in 2015 before we added Brands to the original Animoka name.

As of the 2025 IPO mark, Animoca Brands has become one of the biggest names in Web3, and with a focus on acquiring brands and intellectual property, it has the potential to cross over into the mainstream.

Big hurdles lie ahead, but Jung has his hands on control and his mind on those games as Ton Blockchain and Telegram's distribution network grow and companies that have invested in them move into MoCaver. Let's see where it ends.

Subscribe

A very engaging read in Blockchain. It is given once a week.

Monty Munford

Monty Munford writes regularly for the BBC, The Economist and CT 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 the likes of Tim Draper, the late John McPhee, Sir Tim Berner-Lee, Steve Wozniak, Kim Kardashian, Guns N' Roses and many others. .

Follow the author @montymunford