So I don't just sit by idly and comment on threads. I was looking into Cover again, because I like to learn about their business strategy, and I found this: Records of Cover's corporate fundraising.
https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organizations/last_funding_type/cover-corporationThree rounds total. One round in 2017 for $300,000, one round in 2018 for $2 million, and one round in 2020 for $6.6 million.
Notable things I found in this information:
>The common investor that was in all three rounds is Mizuho Bank/Capital. They focus on Information Technology and Bioengineering. The first two rounds were from Mizuho Capital, but the last round was from the bank itself, meaning Cover is a higher status to Mizuho than a simple tech startup now. Mizuho is also the second largest bank in Japan>No chink investment funds, once again destroying the old chink narrative that there was a secret chink investment>The 2020 round of fundraising was for expanding their overseas marketsInterestingly, this tracks with a previous interview I had found where Yagoo said this:
>"We raised about 700 million yen in May 2020, of which 40 million yen is invested in motion capture development. Currently, annual sales are about double-digit billion yen. Most of it is management business The total number of channel registrations on YouTube is more than 10 million. ”(Mr. Tanigo)Now I understand why there was so little invested into the improvement of their motion capture software; they put most of the money into overseas infrastructure.
But what's also interesting is that the fundraising was in May 2020. That means by the time it concluded and was being utilized, Cover was probably spending most of that money on the Chinese side of the business, since it was their strongest side branch at the time. That correlates with the CN girls getting 3D models, new outfits that weren't just the gift from the tournament, and why the CN traitors felt confident in their own chances of success; they were receiving a lot of capital beforehand, with a focus on growth, and assumed they were important enough to force a settlement in their favor.
This means HoloEN was likely the runt of the litter in terms of investment. Hololive China was already established, so it would be easy to invest further into their infrastructure. Hololive Indonesia started auditions July 3rd, 2020, after the capital was fully secured, meaning they could be developed on that money. Hololive English auditions were in March, far before the capital was being raised, and so they would've only been given the leftover funds after CN and ID were expanded.
I'll back this up with a few more things that we know about Hololive English.
>According to Kiara, Jenma was managing multiple overseas talents and speaks ChineseWe know that ID has their own manager (K-chan, I believe?), so that rules them out, leaving only HoloCN. It could also explain why Jenma is so doting on Kiara; after losing her CN workload, her sole focus became Kiara and possibly assisting Mori's manager.
>Hololive English's NA side seems to be understaffed and get little done compared to the JP region talentThat would make sense if it was a small investment. Again, we know that overseas talents only seem to get small amounts of support staff, from the discord leak, all of ID having one manager, and CN only having one manager from Japan itself. Considering ID's manager is alone, and that results in ID basically doing whatever they want, it's a miracle that Enma is managing a similar workload. But that also explains why the NA side of EN has help from odd places, such as AO-chan being someone Ina brought with them (if I remember her explanation of that correctly).
>When Mori went on the podcast, it was most likely Shinove who watched over her and screened conversationsIf they were expected to be the runt of the litter, it makes sense that they wouldn't have dedicated EN staff for this, and have to pull from another branch to help.
>Hololive English has unreliable levels of support from Cover, sometimes strong, sometimes weakThe most support is JP side, and the least support is on the NA side, but both are higher than the support ID tends to get. I imagine the original strategy they built for EN was actually cloned from the ID and CN branches, that is, three talents in a generation. But even Cover knew that English was a massive market, so they adjusted their strategy slightly for EN. Two girls from Japan that will be able to act as JP/EN fusion talents, tapping into Cover's prebuilt resources so that they can be presented as the "high spec" talent when dealing with corporate sponsorships, and then the typical side branch for the native EN market that would operate with the same level of independent oversight as the IDs and CNs.
Call me crazy, but I think this explains a lot of lingering questions, and gives some insight into the administrative reasoning that lead to our current situation.
