Taiwanese well-known investor "Stock Cancer" Xie Menghong established Xiao Nan Capital, focusing on early-stage investments in local game development to fill the long-standing capital gap in the industry.
Leveraging years of accumulated audience trust and investment expertise, Xie Menghong packaged volume, community, and capital together, aiming to create a funding channel for Taiwan's game industry different from traditional venture capital.
Stock Cancer's Cross-Industry Motivation
Since 2020, Xie Menghong has topped the Podcast charts with "Gooaye Stock Cancer". After becoming a new father, he reignited his passion for games through a local game and realized the structural funding problem for excellent Taiwanese game teams. Holding the mindset of "save quickly, invest quickly", he said:
Every time everyone tells you to run, you shouldn't run
With this contrarian thinking, he decided to establish Xiao Nan Capital, aiming to expand the asset scale to NT$300 million by the end of 2026, focusing on supporting Taiwanese original games with global potential.
The massive audience Xie Menghong accumulated as a "host" are not just potential players, but also the first batch of word-of-mouth seeds for game marketing. This approach of directly embedding media influence into the investment process reduces publishing and marketing expenses, creating the so-called "Stock Cancer Effect".
Zeczec × GameWorks × Xiao Nan Capital
Taiwanese independent games often face triple risks in market, execution, and capital. Xiao Nan Capital partners with crowdfunding platform Zeczec and incubation unit GameWorks to construct a vertically integrated "risk mitigation channel".
Zeczec validates the market through crowdfunding pre-sales, with successful cases bringing initial cash flow and external exposure. GameWorks provides project management, technical guidance, and publishing matchmaking to stabilize development progress. Xiao Nan Capital supports the production cycle with long-term funds. Now they demonstrate collaborative efforts to connect Taiwan's fragmented game creation resources into a closed loop, allowing creators to obtain resources and exposure early on.
Game Investment Barbell Strategy
Xiao Nan's first four investments cover three game studios and one game project. The relatively stable "Red Eyes Ruby" (Cup Dog Games) with a 2D pixel Boss Rush theme has controllable development costs and a clear audience, positioned as a stable revenue stream.
Another project, "Night Rampage" (Serious Games), challenges the saturated market with "close-range gun battle violent aesthetics", high-risk but potentially bringing explosive returns. The two cases seem vastly different but demonstrate Xiao Nan Capital's "barbell strategy" borrowed from financial markets, simultaneously laying out positions at both safe and high-return ends to navigate industry fluctuations.
Next Imagination for Taiwan's Game Industry
The success of works like "Detention" and "Devotion" proves that Taiwanese original games have an international stage, but initial capital remains a big problem. The "Stock Cancer Effect" shows how media celebrities can convert brand trust into investment leverage, boosting early-stage projects. In the future, Xie Menghong will face the challenge of whether invested games can balance fan expectations and LP returns.
If Xiao Nan Capital can continue to validate its model under the 300 million target, the Taiwanese game industry might welcome a true renaissance.
