Tenshi Ventures launched by Baverstock, Newth

Ian Baverstock and Jonathan Newth have unveiled their new business plans, following their full-time departure from Kuju - the company they founded in 1998 and later sold to Catalis.

Called Tenshi Ventures, the pair will be focusing on the investment segment of the industry, and offering consultancy services to start-ups and other businesses.

"We want to bring our experience to bear working with new start ups in digital media and games," Baverstock told GamesIndustry.biz. "The best way we can offer a real lift to these very early stage companies is by applying the lessons we've learnt over two decades of building and financing companies in the creative industries through consultancy as well as, potentially, some investment.

"There are also a lot interesting consultancy projects out there which don't need investment but which would benefit from the sort of huge depth of experience we can bring to bear."

The company - whose name means "angel" in Japanese - expects to see a significant proportion of its time spent helping other companies to raise funds, and Baverstock believes that in the current climate a strong proposition will need to feature some element of social networking to make it attractive.

"For a long time investors in games development were really focused on MMO and pure play technology companies," explained. "However the success of Playfish and the wider casual/social media space has made some investors sit up and look again at the games industry.

"It's not going to be easy for any new venture to raise funds in the near term, but a good concept with a rounded management team and a clear financial model will always find investment. I think it's fair to say that anything that attracts investment at the moment in games will probably have a strong online/social network element to it."

The full interview with Ian Baverstock will be published on GamesIndustry.biz later.