Tier One Entertainment (Tier One) is now considered to be one of the most successful Esports and Gaming companies in Southeast Asia. Due to the company's success and ambitious plans for expansion in Southeast Asia, other companies have taken notice, yet it was Philipp Kindt and Evgeny Astakhov of Atlas Ventures who were the first interested and made the initial investment that allowed Tier One to get moving and build confidence for other companies to invest as well.
Tier One is a Gaming and Esports company with big dreams and has the confidence of its backers to make those dreams come true. It is on the verge of establishing an independent hub in the Philippines after recently securing funds from a pre-series A round. It is the first of many entities in the region that have found this market of gaming and esports, it is estimated that as of this writing this niche is well worth over $160 billion.
Earlier this year with great anticipation, Tier One announced that after the initial investment of Kindt and Astakhov's VC, Atlas Ventures, Gobi Partners decided to lead another fund-raising round through its joint-venture fund. Core Capital and the US record label conglomerate Warner Music Group Corp also put their hats in the ring and decided to invest.
Bitkraft Ventures, a multibillion-dollar VC, saw these promising signs and decided to invest too. Some of Bitkraft Ventures' powerhouse clients include GroupM, Foodpanda, Unilever, Riot games, Samsung, and Smart Communications.
Tier One communicated that thanks to investments from Atlas Ventures and Bitkraft Ventures it will make a more pronounced presence in other Asian countries. It is currently operating in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Myanmar. Tier One intends that at its current rate of growth, to be the biggest gaming company in all of Southeast Asia.
After receiving such tremendous backing, the founder and CEO, Tryke Gutierrez said that the company is "now poised for explosive growth." As an international gaming company in a region with many talented and game enthused populations, the company has the capacity to expand exponentially. Thanks to the "Internet of Things" (IoT) people from across the globe can also participate. Already a large amount of capital has been earmarked to hire backend teams that will further support the company's talents. This is in addition to expanding eSports operations in Tier One's eSports department dubbed Blacklist International.
Gutierrez also commented that since "The gaming industry is going through a golden age and this funding will help accelerate our growth by allowing us to replicate our success in other markets. In just a few years of operations, we've found a winning formula in eSports and gaming by developing a robust business model around top tier content creation and authentic distribution."
A Co-founder of Tier One, Alodia Gosiengfiao, who is also a famous cosplayer, expressed her gratitude toward the investors, especially Atlas Ventures, noting that the new funding will bring the "company to the next level."
"We have come a long way since our first business meeting at my home in 2017. With the growth of mobile gaming, streaming, and eSports as an avenue for youth (and adult) entertainment, we came up with the foresight to develop and house these talents by building our very own YG Entertainment of gaming," said Gosiengfiao.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the new Delta Variant, and possibility of other new variants spreading beyond country borders, employers at times have forced their employees to work from home. So far this has had unanticipated results but has been a big boost for the gaming sector. Office buildings have been working at a much lower capacity, thus allowing employees to work at home thus providing them with more work-to-life balance that has ultimately made them more efficient. This new shift in the corporate world has been embraced by some, preferring their workers to work from home (at least partly). This is good news for the gaming industry because now a larger amount of people can log in at their leisure and play.
The company as of now has about 420 talented individuals with a cumulative reach of 100.9 million unique users on Facebook, 23.5 million views on YouTube, 11.8 million views on Instagram, and 9.1 million views on Tiktok.
