ngmoco, a notoriously good developer for the iPhone platform (Rolando, WordFu), recently raised ten million dollars from previous investors of the studio. Instead of blowing the cash on cocaine, hookers, inflatable pools, and Christmas decorations, the developer will “utilize the funding to expand its pipeline of premium games and accelerate the development of its publishing and social gaming platform for iPhone and iPod touch connected gaming.”
Or in other words, make more iPhone games faster.
As long as ngmoco keeps it real by continuing to pump out quality products on the Application Store, I’m completely fine with this. But if I catch the studio wearing sunglasses at night or driving around a Porsche, we’re through.
ngmoco CLOSES $10 million INVESTMENT IN SERIES B
Norwest Venture Partners Leads Round, Financing to Fuel Growth
March 23, 2009 – San Francisco – ngmoco, the leading publisher and developer for iPhone and iPod touch games, has raised a new round of financing led by Norwest Venture Partners with the company’s previous investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Maples Investments also participating. Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners, has joined ngmoco’s board of directors. ngmoco will utilize the funding to expand its pipeline of premium games and accelerate the development of its publishing and social gaming platform for iPhone and iPod touch connected gaming.
“Our mission at ngmoco is to create and publish incredible game experiences in close collaboration with the best and brightest gamemakers in the world. The iPhone and iPod Touch have revolutionized both the gameplay and game-making experience and we’re committed to building a new type of world class publisher for this new kind of market,” said Neil Young, CEO and founder, ngmoco. “We are thrilled that Tim and NVP share our vision and look forward to building ngmoco into the leading next generation mobile games company.”
Games continue to dominate the App Store, and coupled with the amazing pace of adoption of the devices, have created an incredible new marketplace for games. Crafting experiences specifically for this new mobile landscape, ngmoco tailors its games to take unique advantage of the features and functionality of the iPhone and the iPod touch and provide players with the very best and most innovative games.
“The iPhone represents a significant milestone in the growth of the mobile gaming market, and has the potential to be the next mainstream gaming hardware platform,” said Tim Chang, principal at Norwest Venture Partners, who will serve on the ngmoco board. “As the smartphone games 2.0 market rapidly evolves, the need for cutting-edge, world class publishers focused specifically on new platforms like iPhone and iPodTouch will become more and more apparent, and we feel that ngmoco has the right team, capabilities and vision to pioneer such a model.”
Established in 2008, ngmoco is led by a decorated and veteran management team comprised of Neil Young, Bob Stevenson, Alan Yu and Joe Keene. Since its inception at the end of June 2008, the company has already developed and successfully deployed multiple iPhone and iPod touch games including the award-winning Rolando and chart toppers MazeFinger, Topple, Topple 2, Dr. Awesome, Dropship and Word Fu. With five top ten products and its games having been installed over seven million times, ngmoco is one of the leading gamemakers and publishers for the iPhone & iPod Touch.
About Norwest Venture Partners
Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a global venture capital firm that has actively partnered with entrepreneurs to build great businesses for more than 48 years. NVP focuses on investments in information technology including: Internet, media and consumer, software, services, enterprise and communications systems and semiconductor/components. The firm currently manages more than $2.5 billion in venture capital. It has offices in Palo Alto, California, Mumbai and Bangalore, India.
NVP has funded over 450 companies in the U.S. since inception. Some of the firm’s recent investments and transactions include Airespace (acquired by Cisco Systems), deCarta, DoubleFusion, KACE, Lumos Labs, mBlox, myYearbook, Open-Silicon (acquired by Unicorn Investment Bank), Persistent Systems, Rackspace (NYSE: RAX), SideStep (acquired by Kayak), Spinnaker Networks (acquired by Network Appliance), Sulekha, Winphoria Networks (acquired by Motorola), Yatra, and Yipes (acquired by Reliance/Flag Telecom). NVP has also funded such market leaders as Actel Corporation, Cerent (acquired by Cisco Systems), Documentum, Extreme Networks, Forte Software (acquired by Sun Microsystems), PeopleSoft and Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM). For more information, please visit www.nvp.com
About Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is passionately committed to helping portfolio companies succeed. Entrepreneurs gain access to KPCB’s matched portfolio of companies and associations with global business leaders. These relationships are the foundation for strategic alliances, partnership opportunities and the sharing of insights to help build new ventures faster, broader and with less risk.
About Maples Investments
Maples Investments is a Silicon Valley based, early-stage micro-fund focused on start-ups that fundamentally disrupt existing large markets or create new market categories. The firm currently works with consumer-focused companies such as ngmoco, digg, Twitter, Kongregate, IMVU, and Aggregate Knowledge, as well as business-focused companies such as Solarwinds, Spiceworks, Demandforce, YuMe Networks, and Hyper9.
About ngmoco
Headquartered in San Francisco, ngmoco was founded in 2008 by games industry veterans committed to the new mobile landscape opened up by Apple’s iPhone. ngmoco creates and publishes games built specifically for the iPhone made in collaboration with the best and brightest game makers in the world. Founded by Neil Young, Bob Stevenson, Alan Yu and Joe Keene, the company’s investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Maples Investments.
To witness the lives and minds of the ngmoco team at work on the future of iPhone and iPod touch games, visit http://www.ngmoco.com.
