Announcing Hydratac

The Return To Entrepreneurship

As a VC I used to joke that it would take a long time for me to even the scales with time on the investor side, given I had spent 15 years pre-VC as an entrepreneur/exec/operator/builder at multiple cofounded startups, Google X, Riot Games, and Deloitte. Today I’m ecstatic to announce that those scales have tipped back the other way - I’m returning to entrepreneurship after spending almost 5 years as cofounder/partner at 1am Gaming VC and our parent firm March Capital.

We began digging into the opportunity that became Hydratac Inc. last year as a firm and realized that it was simply too massive, and too perfect a fit, for us to not have me plant a flag in the gap. Massive greenfield market + unique team XP + huge tech/product head start = pull the trigger (pun intended, as you’ll see below).

Late last year we closed $3M in initial capital from lead 1am Gaming VC and HGM Fund after we assembled our founding team and got the first iteration of the product up and running internally. Today we’re 7 fulltime (several open positions), testing daily, on schedule for public launch in 2025, and a bit overwhelmed at the inbound attention pre-announcement 😉

Though we’re not ready to unveil quite everything publicly about what we’re building yet (and who’s building it, including my cofounder, given the even crazier attention these names will attract in the community!), here’s what we can share today: we’re developing what will be an unprecedentedly high fidelity military simulation, starting with CQB, and expanding from there; Hydratac is a portmanteau of “Hydra Tactical”, “Hydra” for short. Our first SKU will be a PC consumer release later this year that’s built on our proprietary, battle-tested frontend+backend (hence the speed to market), and we’re already incorporating specs from the military for their use cases - which will further enhance what players get to experience.

That flywheel effect was a huge multiplier for us at my last venture funded / cofounded startup Cape (backed by NEA, Google, others) and acquired by Motorola Solutions (www.cape.com), where we gave players on PC the ability to fly and dogfight real drones (virtual weapons) around the world with near-zero latency camera & control, and then gave the same capability to our military and police customers.

The idea that became Hydra came together after initial brainstorming sessions last year with some of the best minds in military FPS, tactical shooters, hardcore b2c milsims, and FPS in general, as well as military folks both on the uniformed and private sector sides of the table. The immediate enthusiasm and insight from Dan Bunting, former studio head at Treyarch for 20 years of Call of Duty Black Ops titles, who had been waiting for years to see this executed, was a massive boost. Dan led the investment on behalf of 1am in his capacity as Venture Partner, and serves on our Board.

This would not have been possible without the incredible support of my 1am cofounders Gregory Milken, whom I joined at March Capital to kick off our very first gaming fund in q4 2019, and Francisco Liquido (also cofounder of my first company way back in 2004) who spun out 1am Gaming VC as its own firm with us in q2 2023; founder Par Chadha and the whole crew at HGM Fund, whose holdings span over $B in revenue, 15K employees, and over 20 countries; and the legion of others who devoted their expertise, mentorship, and support to getting us off the ground.

I’ll be sharing a ton more in subsequent posts as I know the above leaves too much to the imagination. A couple of the topics I’ll be covering based on what folks have told me they want to hear (always open to more, let me know at louis@hydratac.com): the IP+tech arbitrage play we are exploiting; how to successfully launch a product to consumers that meets military requirements; more content about the past companies we’ve founded and how they’ve led to this one; partnerships we’re building to extend the reach of our IP; and lots more.