Heyzap built a social platform for mobile games, originally incubated by Y Combinator and launched as a Flash games platform before refocusing on mobile. The company has rolled out player leaderboards, achievements, and an ads SDK. Heyzap reports 9 million registered users. The team says leaderboards, achievements and ads SDKs are taking off and plans to use new funding to hire engineers and salespeople to fuel growth. Financially, the company has now raised more than $8 million in total. Co-founder Jude Gomila confirmed the latest funding in email and the round was revealed in a regulatory filing. HeyZap distributes casual and social games across the web through a set of APIs, applications, and widgets. It launched in early 2009 as a 'YouTube for Flash Games' and has added features for developers including an achievement system, micropayments, and analytics. The platform distributes 30,000 games across 220,000 websites and has 4,000 developers signed up. HeyZap has shifted its focus toward helping social games expand beyond social networks like Facebook and recently scored a deal with Ning to integrate HeyZap into Ning networks. The company says it will use the new funding to add engineers and expand business development efforts. Prior financing includes Y Combinator and a $650K seed round from Union Square Ventures, Joshua Schachter, and other angels in May 2009. Heyzap builds a widget-based distribution platform for Flash games, positioning itself as a “YouTube for Flash games.” The widget includes a catalog of about 12,000 games that site owners can quickly integrate. The company focuses on partnering with major online publishers—Current features the widget in its gaming section and Cooliris is a partner. Heyzap monetizes through advertising embedded in the widgets, most of which is served by Mochi Media, and it recently launched an API to present games outside the widget. The team is very small, with founders Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund remaining the sole employees. Heyzap plans to use the funding to expand.

Total raised

$8M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Jan 2013