Playco Has Raised $100m At $1B Valuation In Series A Round
? Early Stage VC
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Tokyo-based instant games developer Playco Global has raised $100m at a $1B post-money valuation in Series A round
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Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Josh Buckley led the round with participation from Sozo Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, KSK Angel Fund, Mistletoe Singapore, Digital Garage, Dreamers VC, and Makers Fund
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With initial plans to raise $60m, Playco expanded the fundraising to allow more investors to join the round
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Playco was founded earlier this year and has already become a gaming unicorn in the first round of financing. The company plans to release its first games later this year
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Such an impressive valuation is partially explained by its successor heritage (Game Closure)
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Game Closure was the developer of cross-platform HTML5 instant games, founded in 2011
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Playco acquired tech solutions and hired part of the team from Game Closure
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Playco should have a high profit margin with lower marketing costs (direct click), focus on “games for everyone” (high organic virality), and lower stores’ commission rates
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The financing was used to gather a team of 75 people in a short period of time. The unicorn’s team consists of the gaming industry veterans, such as Michael Carter (co-founder of Game Closure), Justin Waldron (co-founder of Zynga), Takeshi Otsuka (former director of DeNA), Teddy Cross (pioneer of HTML5 gaming)
? Products
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Playco is a game developer that works on a web-based game engine for the creation of instant games playable through a simple web link and available on every platform
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Playco targets Google Play Instant, iOS App Clips, Facebook Instant Games, Snapchat Minis, and cloud streaming platforms (e.g. xCloud, Google Stadia)
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The company has already partnered with such companies as Facebook, Line Messenger, Rakuten Viber, and Snapchat. It sees an opportunity to distribute its games via WeChat, Tik Tok, Tinder, Zoom, and House Party in the future.
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The studio also plans:
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to provide internally developed games and their distribution among instant play platforms
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to create the backend infrastructure and performance analytics tools
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to improve the production of the games with WebGL, cloud computing, and 5G networks
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SOURCES: VENTUREBEAT, TECHCRUNCH
