When Ada Ventures first invested in SideQuest’s seed round in 2021, it was a relatively small — though growing — gaming platform that allowed Oculus headset users to find games not available in the main store.
I was delighted to catch up with Orla Harris, its cofounder, and discuss what’s changed since their small beginnings in Northern Ireland — including their $12.5m 2022 Series A round led by GV (Google Ventures). She runs SideQuest — and a global team of nearly thirty based in the US, Spain, Canada, the UK and Ireland — alongside her husband Shane. They’re a brilliant partnership and I love the story of how they got hitched in 2016 at CES the global tech trade fair. “We went to the conference, and we got married in Vegas while we were there,” says Orla. “I don’t go to conferences anymore.” There’s that typically deadpan Belfast sense of humour.
Like many startups, SideQuest was founded through adversity. And like all good origin stories, the problem was personal. Shane had developed a social VR game but he was devastated when it was rejected by the Meta store. It seemed headset manufacturers were only accepting games from big-name studios. He developed a sideloading method to load the game onto the Oculus headsets bypassing the official distribution process. “It wasn’t a jailbreak,” says Orla. “It was a legitimate developer workflow that we were using for its intended purpose, but I don’t think Meta expected it to end up having millions of users.” Orla came on to help with the business and marketing side of SideQuest.
The startup is part of a rapidly expanding industry. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global virtual reality gaming market is projected to grow from $7.92 billion in 2021 to $53.44 billion in 2028, due to the rising adoption of VR hardware and accessories as well as more innovative software and content offerings. The interplay between tech behemoths and smaller startups in providing both the hardware and software has been a fascinating watch. When I ask Orla about the Metaverse and its tribulations, she pushes back. “It’s a word that holds meaning only to the person who’s saying it because it’s indescribable. We just tend not to lean into it because it’s a buzzword.”
SideQuest’s growth has been impressively quick. In their pre-seed round, they were endorsed by Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift, and managed to raise $650,000 in total. “Once we had that first investment it gave an element of legitimacy,” says Orla.
Their relationship with Meta has remained mutually beneficial. They were directly involved in the creation and implementation of App Lab, a distribution platform set up by Meta, to provide apps without requiring store approval nor sideloading. This collaboration works for both companies; SideQuest is the main way to find and access App Lab games and over 90% of App Lab traffic comes through SideQuest. “We are feeding into their ecosystem in a positive way,” she says. “We are allowing content to be created, to grow communities and to get good metrics to help with their journey to the main store.”
SideQuest raised funds again in September 2021 with a £3m seed round. We were introduced to the company by Carmen Alfonso Rico, who had invested in SideQuest’s pre-seed round through The Fund. Carmen, who is now investing through her own fund Cocoa, loves to invest in community-driven companies where there is a strong pull from users — like us at Ada Ventures. The seed round was led by our friends at PROfounders Capital with participation from Connect Ventures alongside Ada Ventures.
SideQuest continued to rapidly grow their user base and, in September 2022, they closed a $12m Series A round. Ada Ventures invested in both. We were keen to continue to support the company and were pleased to be able to invest twice our allocation in the round. “Check, Matt and Ada’s extended team has been very founder-friendly, even when the VC landscape shifted in 2022,” says Orla. “They were still very much investing in, and supporting their portfolio.”
The VR gaming content curator is preparing for a future where there is a wide choice of Android-based standalone headsets. “SideQuest also supports all other android-based headsets on the market including recent releases by Pico,” says Orla. “The goal is to remain platform agnostic so we can provide multi-platform support to developers.” This is one of the reasons for GV’s interest, and ours too at Ada Ventures.
Even so, the third round of funding was perhaps less straightforward than expected. 2022 was tougher for startups and VCs due to geo-political challenges and social-media blowouts. But, as we know all too well at Ada Ventures, it’s all about finding the right match. Shane got a message on LinkedIn from someone at GV and passed it on to Orla. She remembers that from the first few calls it was clear that it was a progressive conversation.
Orla is clear on how valuable her time is, particularly when it comes to investment opportunities. “I learned how to have a conversation, a two-way conversation to establish very quickly in the calls whether or not this was a fishing expedition or whether or not there was money potentially on the table.” I think this is an important best practice point for founders; you are meant to be having a dialogue with investors and forming a relationship. It’s not a one-sided pitch and at Ada Ventures, we like founders who do their due diligence on us! Part of that is making sure your investors share a similar attitude and will support you in sickness and in health, so to speak. “I do work on gut feeling, I do work on the emotion of things,” says Orla. It’s these intangible things that make great founders, startup teams, investor relationships (and even happy marriages!).
Read more:
· Married co-founders are a startup’s secret weapon — TechCrunch
· Why Google Ventures is investing in Sidequest VR — Mixed News
· Google’s GV backs SideQuest, an unofficial Meta Quest app store — TechCrunch
· Tackling Investors’ Fear of Backing Married Co-Founders — Medium
· Investors shouldn’t be afraid to back married cofounders — Sifted
· Virtual Reality Gaming Market Report 2021–2028 — Fortune Business Insights
· Venture capital investment in Northern Ireland firms triples over three years
