I made my first private gaming investment this year (through SocialLeverage ) because my best friend Rob Segal was taking the helm. Rob is uber successful having sold his agency to IPG back in bubbly times and running Sony Playstation for years in Canada. He showed me WorldGaming and it was obvious that if it worked and Rob could do the dealmaking to speed the business and customer acquisition along, than they had something.

I had already passed on Zynga so it’s not like I had a feel for the gaming space.

The one thing I do see is the moomentum…Zynga, Playfish and social gaming going vertical and $ERTS $ATVI $GME moving in the other direction. The profits in the industry are either shrinking for good or just moving to the social space.

A few months later, WorldGaming has become VirginGaming and Richard Branson has his sleeves rolled up to carve out a big space in the global peer to peer gaming business. Venture Beat has the full story .

Congratulations Rob, Billy and the rest of the team.