Ascendo Ventures Leads FunNow Series B - Winner Takes All Position in the Post-COVID19 Era
Ascendo Ventures invested in the Series B round of FunNow, a startup based in Taiwan. Participating as a lead investor, the total round amount was 15 million US dollars (approximately 18 billion won), with participation from various strategic partners in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, including PChome, KKday, Westron, CDIB Capital, Darwin Ventures, Accuvest, Sanfu Travel Group, and CSV Venture Fund.
FunNow Series B TechCrunch Article
FunNow is a Taiwanese leisure and entertainment commerce platform company that offers various activities such as food, travel, lodging and leisure activities, which invested from our first fund, the Ascendo Genesis Fund, in early 2020.
One might say that our timing with FunNow wasn’t optimal if not at least fortuitous. Our first investment into the company was in January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic exploded worldwide. Considering that FunNow's business is a platform that integrates offline-based operators, the impact that COVID-19 had on their business and offline operators needs little to no explanation.
Honestly, none of us could have expected such a world-shaking pandemic at the time of our investment. In addition, as this was an overseas investment, we were unable to hold management meetings face-to-face with the founders in Taiwan. Thus, we could not discuss concerns regularly over meals and share in their difficulties together, with no choice but to interact only remotely through online communication and video conferencing.
Yet, it was quite dramatic to observe the company’s progress roughly 6 months into the pandemic. Surprisingly, the company was achieving steep sales growth, and was even able to take advantage of the pandemic to acquire TABLEAPP, Malaysia's No. 1 restaurant reservation company under good conditions. In ways their progress can be attributed to luck, but in the case of FunNow, unlike other activity and booking companies, it was targeting local users and not overseas travelers, and in FunNow’s largest market of Taiwan, COVID-19’s impact on daily life and the economy was limited especially in comparison to the rest of the world. As it turns out, Taiwan has proven to be an epitome for pandemic control with respect to relative and total contraction cases.
How does one assess and navigate markets in the midst of the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, where unexpected events continue to occur and virus mutations such as Delta and Omicron variants have everyone on alert? It is a stark reality that there are few companies that still show positive indicators in the offline activity platform sector. As such, due to the pandemic, at the time of this follow-on investment in FunNow, the investment hypothesis that we devised at the time of our initial investment is still not fully applicable especially given the many changes to the operating environment. However, one thing for certain is that people cannot just stay at home and play games, watch Netflix and YouTube, and live virtually in the metaverse indefinitely. People will and must live their lives outside again.
With this as a backdrop, Ascendo Ventures decided to lead this round. While I am glad for our portfolio company to be quietly moving towards a winner-takes-all position, I cannot be wholeheartedly happy about it given the ongoing pandemic because it is hard to observe the prolonged difficulties of many local and offline businesses. That being said in the meantime, if someone is to lead the offline activities market and provide greater opportunities and hope to offline operators, I have full conviction that T.K. Chen and the FunNow team will carry the torch and do their utmost to achieve that goal.
