SAN FRANCISCO, CA — (Marketwired) — 11/14/13 — TinyCo, the San Francisco-based developer of popular mobile games such as Tiny Monsters and Tiny Castle, today announced that it has closed $20 million in new financing, led by Pinnacle Ventures with prior investor Andreessen Horowitz also contributing. The investment will aid TinyCo in creating deeper, higher quality free-to-play mobile games.
“Mobile gamers aren-t stupid — they want more from the market than uninspired clones and low production values,” said Suli Ali, co-founder and CEO of TinyCo. “The only path forward is to produce games that bring something special to the table. That-s why we-ve taken the time to improve our processes and tighten our focus. We have to develop bigger, better games.”
The new capital supplements TinyCo-s $18 million financing from 2011, which was led by Andreessen Horowitz with angel investors Ron Conway and Keith Rabois also participating. The funds will primarily be used to bring on additional design and production talent that will focus on new titles to be released in 2014.
Since 2010, TinyCo games have been downloaded more than 85 million times on Apple, Google, and Amazon mobile devices. TinyCo games have been featured by Google and Amazon as case studies in monetizing the Android and Amazon platforms.
TinyCo has also announced that Mike O-Brien, president and co-founder of ArenaNet and executive producer of its wildly popular “Guild Wars” franchise, will join Ali and Marc Andreessen on the company-s Board of Directors. O-Brien brings decades of gaming experience to TinyCo, having played an integral role in a number of Blizzard-s most successful franchises, including “Warcraft,” “Starcraft,” and “Diablo.”
“With strong roots in mobile game operations and monetization, solid leadership, and a team of world-class developers and creative talent,” said O-Brien. “TinyCo is perfectly positioned to bring their studio to the next level.”
“Mike is an incredible executive who has built great games businesses. With his breadth of experience we will expedite our learning and strengthen TinyCo-s growth over the long term,” said Andrew N. Green, TinyCo-s Head of Business Operations.
TinyCo also recently added a number of key executives to its team, including gaming veterans Chelsea Howe, Will Luton, and Brett Levin. Howe, a former game designer at Zynga, was named one of Fast Company-s Most Creative People. She joins TinyCo as a senior game designer along with Luton, author of “Free-to-Play: Making Money From Games You Give Away” and former Mobile Pie creative director. Levin is a former senior game designer at LucasArts, bringing over 15 years of gaming experience to TinyCo as a lead game designer.
TinyCo builds engaging game worlds that can be played anywhere, on mobile devices. Founded in 2009, TinyCo has developed more than a dozen successful games for Apple, Google, and Amazon mobile devices. The company has been recognized as one of the first to crack the code on monetizing the Android platform, and its games have been downloaded more than 85 million times. The company-s investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Pinnacle Ventures, and angel investors including Ron Conway and Keith Rabois. For more information about TinyCo, please visit .
Contact:
Nick Shepherd
(415) 625-8555
You must be logged in to post a comment Login