Having worked with Pollen VC for two years, metrics have scaled upwards and Viker has been reaping the rewards. “If I look at 2020 as a complete year, the month-on-month growth was in excess of 35%. Having the credit facility in place really helped us to deploy more capital and achieve that level of growth,” Beasley says. On the subject of borrowing against the long tail value of existing cohorts, he notes “Being able to extract that kind of future value is of vital importance to us because there is a lot of value trapped in these users. By unlocking it we can increase our pace of acquisition even further.”
Using capital in a non-dilutive way also signals capital efficiency to investors; it shows that studios can be effective in how they use their capital. “Our investors view the facility we have with Pollen VC in an extremely positive light, because our core strategy is licensing global IP and there is an upfront cost to secure it,” says Beasley. He adds that with the use of debt as part of their capital mix, “we don’t have to continually raise more equity and dilute everybody down. So our investors are a big fan of how we use the facility which really is a win for both founder and equity investors.”
Using debt as part of their capital mix is not just a strategy that works for Viker, however, similar success stories are being shared amongst founders all over the world. Beasley says, “I’ve got a really good network of fellow founders through our VCs and angel investors and have introduced many people to the concept. It’s becoming a big part of the mix for entrepreneurial studios who want to scale efficiently.”