Gendai Games gets funding, grows team
Now that Gendai Games Inc. has closed on a $1.1 million round of venture capital funding, the Austin-based company is filling out its team.
Gendai Games is looking to add about five people to its current team of six employees plus the three founders, CEO and co-founder Michael Agustin (photo) says.
Positions open now at Gendai Games are administrative assistant, front-end web engineer, quality assurance specialist, user experience designer, and game and tools engineer.
DFJ Mercury led the funding round, with participation by Steamboat Ventures, DFJ Frontier and ff Asset Management as well as individual investors Paul Bricault, Paige Craig, Tom McInerney, Josh Resnick and Mark Suster.
“Our company has always been very capital-efficient, and we plan to continue that philosophy as we hit our next milestones. But, naturally, it will take a combination of revenue and other financing to grow much larger than we are,” Agustin says.
The company expects to graduate within the next year from the Austin Technology Incubator.
Gendai Games, founded in 2007, makes the GameSalad game creation tool, allowing non-programmers to create advanced games for the iPhone and iPad. Aside from Agustin, co-founders are Tan Tran and Daniel Treiman.
“GameSalad has been in beta for a year now. As we get close to what we consider a 1.0, we are looking to focus more on polish and performance, rather than a completely new set of features,” Agustin says.
“However, this is just the tip of the iceberg for us. We have ideas to make the tools even more accessible and fun to use, while making the software more powerful, so that more professionals and ‘prosumers’ are able to create more impressive games and interactive experiences.”
Gendai Games offers its tools and publishing as a free service. Users pay an annual subscription when they decide they want to generate revenue by making their apps available for purchase by iPhone and iPad customers.
“We believe that there are a lot of opportunities in mobile gaming,” Agustin says. “There are over 5 billion cell phones out there, and they are quickly being replaced by intelligent mobile devices, powerful enough to play engaging games that appeal to casual game players. It’s pretty clear that social games are colliding with the mobile world today.”
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