Tripledot Studios has raised $116 million to do resounding work in the mobile game industry.
The 20VC-led funding round has given London-based casual game maker Tripledot a valuation of $1.4 billion. The company’s investors include Access Industries, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Eldridge. The deal came just ten months after the company’s first round.
Lior Shiff founded Tripledot together with Akın Babayiğit and Eyal Chameides, who are important names in the game industry, in London in 2017. Shiff sold Product Madness, which he previously co-founded, to Aristocrat Leisure in 2012 and stayed with the company for several years to streamline the business of Aristocrat, the gambling leader. Babayiğit previously worked at Peak Games and King.
The company stated that it aims to use the money to build its portfolio of games and continue acquisitions.
Shiff gave the following words in his interview:
“So far, things are going quite well for us. We have a unique company that has been able to get and retain a really accessible audience and move super fast. The reason we’ve been doing well is that we were very fortunate to have just a world-class team, across categories of games, from product, tech, testing, and art. We build the technology and the teams that can execute very well across all these functions, and we are taking on bigger projects, more ambitious projects.”
Babayiğit, Chief Operating Officer, said that the company had launched four games this year. He said the company had taken advantage of the fact that games have shown historical growth and have drawn investors’ attention by supporting more gaming companies.
Shiff continued his speech as follows:
“It’s an interesting time in the games ecosystem, and we have seen the biggest m&a transactions in mobile games. It’s a great time for any company to raise money. For later-stage companies such as ourselves, we are fortunate that we enjoyed very high growth. It definitely helped us.”
The company aims to be one of the best at creating highly engaging casual games that hold gamers exceptionally well over a long period of time.
Harry Stebbings, Managing Partner of 20VC, said in a statement:
“Tripledot’s growth rate and efficacy in building successful and highly retentive games is unmatched. The leadership of Tripledot is singular; they have built an operation that has been scaling up rapidly while keeping its commitment to quality and a great company culture that knows how to attract and retain the best talents in gaming. We are looking forward to being part of the Tripledot journey.”
Tripledot reaches more than 25 million people every month with hit games including Woodoku and Solitaire. In an interview with GamesBeat, CEO Lior Shiff said the company has tripled its revenues in 2021. The company will focus on data-driven decision-making to create chart-topping games targeting over 30.
The company has released ten games to date. The games with the best success were Solitaire and Woodoku. When asked if the hyper-casual model was a priority, Shiff said it was a good business model but did not suit them.
“We like building games that become part of people’s daily routine for years to come. We love games that have long-term retention. Across all of our portfolio, we try to build or buy games. Our DNA is to build the best game we can and to iterate and improve it and keep improving it. With hypercasual, the shelf life is so short you don’t have this opportunity to build the quality of product that we strive to build.”
