wooga, Announces $24 Million Series B Investment with Highland Capital Partners
online social games, announced today a
Highland Capital Partners. Tenaya Capital and existing investors Balderton
Capital and HV Holtzbrinck Ventures also participated in the funding round.
In conjunction with the financing,
Highland, will join wooga’s Board of Directors. wooga’s games already attract
30 million players a month, and this funding will turbocharge the company’s
production of a new generation of engaging and entertaining social games.
wooga – whose name stands for “world of gaming”- produces easy,
accessible games for Facebook users to play with their friends. The team has
created some of the world’s most popular social games, including Monster
World,
user-base in 2011 from 14m to 30m monthly active users and overtook five
US-based competitors to become number three on the Facebook platform.
Founded in 2009, wooga launched its first free-to-play brain training
game, Brain Buddies, when the team was just five people strong. Today, the
company employs a truly international team of 85 people from 20 countries in
Commenting on the new investment,
said:
“When we started the company everyone told us the competition was too
intense, we would never make it, and now – two years later – we have three
games in the top 20, making us the only developer besides Zynga which has
more than two games in the top 20. The phenomenal growth that we have
achieved is a credit to the creativity and ingenuity of our team. wooga’s
success is based on having the best people, and we will use this funding to
hire the most talented artists, game designers and engineers. We intend to
build the team to 150 employees by the end of 2011, hiring two new employees
per week.”
Begemann, 34, added: “We have a ten-year vision to build one of the
largest gaming companies in the world by 2020. For 40 years, computer games
have been aimed primarily at young males – roughly 10% of the population. But
we believe that playing is a core human need, and therefore we design games
for 100% of the population. Our games attract more viewers than some of the
biggest TV shows. Millions of users spend on average 20 minutes a day playing
our games, returning several times daily. Social gaming is about to transform
the entertainment industry and this funding gives us the means to lead that
change…”
that Jens and his team have of the future of social gaming, and their record
in executing that vision to date speaks for itself. wooga is witnessing
explosive growth in active, loyal user figures. It has an excellent working
relationship with its Facebook partners, and is best positioned to develop
tomorrow’s most popular social games.”
type of company that Balderton loves to work with. In the two years since
Balderton invested, we’ve witnessed the company’s phenomenal growth from a
small but committed team into the world’s third-largest social games company.
wooga makes games that everyone wants to play. We are delighted to have
worked with wooga in its early stages and to deepen our involvement with Jens
and his team as they challenge Zynga and EA for global market share.”
“In less than two years, wooga has built itself into one of the top social
gaming companies on Facebook through its international reach and games like
Monster World,
games in seven languages at once, to making it easy to purchase virtual goods
through Facebook Credits, wooga exemplifies what’s possible when
entrepreneurs focus on a high quality user experience.”
Note to Editors
activities in
and business services companies, including PhotoBox, Privalia and
Spartoo.com. He is a former director of NASDAQ-listed Vistaprint, which
currently has a market value of more than
For the full release, please visit: http://www.wooga.com/?p=6842
Contact:
SOURCE wooga GmbH