No one could have predicted the situation we are in now when we rang in the New Year just over four months ago, but there are a lot of lessons we will take away from this experience that will help us grow -- as individuals, as businesses and as an industry.
While we missed seeing you at GDC, and will miss seeing you at E3 and other events this coming year, our team at GFR Fund is proud to be a part of the virtual GDC event (August 4-6) with our panel on Seed-Stage Funding. Before the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent travel bans, we were fortunate to be able to travel to several industry events around the world. You can read about our experiences and learnings here.
As the world is now forced to conduct events online, we can't help but be reminded of an online pitch event GFR hosted two years ago in an effort to uncover new investment opportunities from around the world. GFR along with Super Ventures and The VR Fund reviewed more than 230 applications from VR startup companies ready to pitch their business plans to a panel of 27 investors located around the globe. The AR Online Pitch Event was ahead of its time, and in 2018 produced tremendous results for GFR Fund, as well as our peers.
Perhaps other investors and industries can take a page from our playbook too and consider holding similar events now that businesses are restricting travel for the foreseeable future.
Let us know in the comments if you think a reboot of our 2018 event is in order, and what categories you would like to see represented.