Ex-Mintable COO secures $1.7m for new Web3 gaming startup

A screen capture of Uncharted’s Gangster Arena / Photo credit: Uncharted

Jiawen Ngeow was COO at Mintable, an NFT marketplace backed by billionaire investor Mark Cuban, before leaving amid a legal battle with the company’s CEO. Now, Ngeow has founded Uncharted, a Web3 gaming startup that has just raised US$1.7 million in seed funding.

Shima Capital led the round, which saw participation from The Spartan Group, Double Peak Group, Devmons, and 32-bit. Uncharted’s angel investors also include the three founders of Immutable, Zynga’s Justin Waldron, and Ronin co-founder Aleksander Larson.

Uncharted will use the new funds to expand its GameFi ecosystem, adding that its debut game, Gangster Arena, generated 150 ether (US$486,000) in its first season. The company is now launching Gangster Arena 2 and strategizing for future development.

Ngeow had left Mintable – whose other backers include Animoca Brands, prominent angel investor Koh Boon Hwee’s CRC Capital, and now-defunct Three Arrows Capital – in January 2023. The turmoil at Mintable began in 2022, when it continuously posted losses and reduced revenues amid a declining interest in NFTs, with sales of the digital tokens hitting a 12-month low in June of that year.

This resulted in multiple legal challenges from Ngeow, CEO Zach Burks, CFO Chui Bond, as well as ex-board members Jeremy Khoo and Adam Gartenberg. The executives were fighting over control of Mintable’s operations and a funding deal with private equity fund Nepstone that ultimately went south.

Initially, Mintable Burks wanted to enter the Ethereum trading space in an effort to turn things around for the company, board member Jeremy Khoo said in his affidavit. But Burks needed investors to agree before doing so, which they reportedly did not.

Burks, who is still CEO at the company, filed a lawsuit in January 2023 after Mintable’s series B round collapsed, with Ngeow named as defendant along with board members Khoo and Adam Gartenberg. Ngeow countersued in September 2023, and both parties reached a settlement by December.

While Cuban had even asked Burks at one point to “do the right thing” and step down, the CEO still lists himself as Mintable’s founder on his LinkedIn page.

See also: Chaos at Mark Cuban-backed NFT startup after founders, directors lock legal horns