Participated · Equity · May 2012

Crowdstar builds social and mobile games, with a history of fashion-focused titles like Top Girl and Social Girl. The company has shifted its entire focus from Facebook to mobile platforms (iOS and Android) and is placing renewed emphasis on tablets. Crowdstar plans to bring two mobile products to market later this year, one of which will be fashion-focused while the other will be a different genre. The company disclosed an additional $12M from existing investors and has more than $46.5M in total funding to date. Crowdstar employs about 70 people. The article notes rising mobile marketing costs and higher platform fidelity expectations, with new-game launch costs reaching into the millions—context for the new capital raise. Crowdstar is a games developer known for titles like Top Girl and Social Girl that has pivoted from Facebook to mobile. Its mobile versions have attracted 25 million users, with revenue split roughly 80% iOS and 20% Android; Google Play and Amazon's appstore are even in monthly revenue, though Amazon users are more lucrative. The company targets young women ages 13–30 and is pursuing "profitable growth" under CEO Peter Relan. Crowdstar raised $11.5 million in a recent round to double down on mobile, bringing total funding to $35 million. It is moving off Facebook due to reduced profitability there and has laid off about 25 people from its Facebook studios. Management cited broader market dynamics—Facebook's clampdown on viral channels and 30% revenue share, and Apple's larger payments ecosystem—as factors in the pivot. The article notes increasing competition and pressure on profit margins in mobile gaming and suggests recent sector exits have set benchmark valuations that may constrain upside for later investors. CrowdStar is a social gaming company best known for Facebook games Happy Aquarium, It Girl, Happy Pets and Mighty Pirates and is the fifth-largest Facebook social gaming app developer with 29 million monthly active users. The company recently reported its largest quarter of revenue in Q1 2011. Under new CEO Peter Relan (creator of incubator YouWeb), CrowdStar is shifting from being Facebook-dependent toward becoming an independent social gaming platform. It plans to expand internationally (about 50% of traffic is already international), push into mobile with iOS-first releases incorporating location and push notifications, and pursue talent and small studio acquisitions. CrowdStar currently has about 100 employees and says it will use part of the new funding to roughly double headcount, hiring developers, artists, producers, analysts and content managers. The company previously started with only $100,000 in funding from YouWeb; new investors and partnerships are expected to help with mobile expansion and China/Japan market entry.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2010

Aurora Feint is best known as the maker of OpenFeint, a mobile social platform and game network. The company operates a library of roughly 3,400 titles, including Fruit Ninja, Jaws and Monster Dash. Its signature game, Aurora Feint, and its sequels have over 1,700 reviews averaging four stars; Monster Dash has a 4.5-star rating from 610 reviewers. Games on the network are developed by partners such as Digital Chocolate, Hudson, Big Pixel, Half Brick, Capcom and Taito. The company was founded in 2007 and is based in Burlingame, CA. To date it has raised $12 million in total funding, most recently a $3 million round. Aurora Feint provides the OpenFeint social-gaming platform, launched in December 2008, that lets mobile game developers add leaderboards, achievements and cross-promotion to iPhone titles. The platform has more than 200 live App Store games, about 500 titles in development and 2,500 registered app developers. OpenFeint is designed to help publishers increase engagement and discovery across a crowded app marketplace. The company has 19 employees and was founded in 2007 in Burlingame, Calif. As part of an international push into Japan, DeNA is deploying OpenFeint on a new smartphone and Hudson Soft will be the first Japanese partner, using OpenFeint for an upcoming Bomberman mobile game. The deal supports Aurora Feint’s expansion into one of the world’s largest mobile markets but the company’s own revenue figures were not disclosed in the article.

Led · Equity · Jul 2010

OpenFeint, from Aurora Feint, provides a plug-and-play mobile social gaming platform and application that includes leaderboards, virtual currencies and achievements running in a cloud-based web environment. The company has pursued a cross-platform approach, launching on iPhone and iPad and adding Android developers, and it released PlayTime to enable real-time multiplayer games with voice chat across iOS and Android. OpenFeint has added 3,400 games and over 45 million mobile gamers in just over a year, demonstrating considerable traction. The startup has raised a total of $12 million to date, including a $5 million investment from The9 and a $3 million investment from Intel Capital. The new investment will be used to expand its social gaming SDK to other platforms and devices. The company is evaluating expansion to four to five additional platforms, including Windows 7, BlackBerry and various tablets. OpenFeint (Aurora Feint) offers a cloud-based social gaming platform and smartphone app that provides leaderboards, achievements, developer SDKs, and mobile payment options. The platform already powers services in over 2,200 live iPhone games and serves roughly 28 million users, growing about 25% month-over-month. OpenFeint is expanding to Android with a forthcoming release that will include a standard SDK, a game-discovery store, mobile payment options and Google Checkout integrated into the developer SDK. The company lists publishers on its platform such as Astraware, Digital Chocolate, Glu Mobile and Hudson Soft. Aurora Feint says it will continue adding features to its iPhone community while broadening platform support to generate additional revenue and user exposure.