Makers Fund

Investment decisions sit with the partnership committee, led by Founding Partner Jay Chi alongside Partners Michael Cheung and Alli Ottarsson. Chi's tenure at Tencent, where he drove international gaming M&A and partnerships, heavily shapes the firm's investment thesis. Operating partners with studio-founder backgrounds contribute to diligence but final IC authority rests with the named partners.

Makers sources through its network of full-time operating partners — former studio heads and creative directors embedded in the firm's investment team. These operators maintain relationships across developer communities in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Additionally, Jay Chi's Tencent alumni network provides visibility into early-stage Asian gaming studios before they seek external Western capital.

Makers invests from seed through Series B, with a primary focus on early-stage gaming studios and interactive platform companies. The firm reserves significant follow-on capital for growth-stage rounds of existing portfolio companies, a structure that requires larger fund sizes — Fund II closed at $500 million in part to support these reserves.

The firm explicitly avoids sectors outside interactive entertainment and gaming-adjacent infrastructure. General enterprise SaaS, biotech, hard tech, and consumer non-gaming fall outside mandate. Even within gaming, Makers has historically shown less appetite for pure esports team investments, preferring platform and studio models with recurring revenue mechanics.

Makers embeds former studio founders and live-ops veterans as full-time investment team members who participate in the investment committee process, not as external advisors consulted on specific deals. This structural integration means technical due diligence on game engines, retention curves, and platform risk is conducted by permanent team members rather than contracted experts, creating a sourcing and evaluation moat.