You’ve seen “Pinterest for X” style startups before I’m sure. Well, gamesGRABR is a new style “social network for gaming” which is aiming to become a sort of ‘Pinterest you games’. But before you turn away, take a look, as this is more than just an interface, it allows the user to curate games collections, discover, engage, play and share them with other users, on any gaming platform. Today it’s launched an equity crowdfunding campaign, to raise £150,000 for startup capital.
Led by serial gaming entrepreneur Tony Pearce, the campaign aims to raise interested investors for equity in parent company TeePee Games. Funding will be supplemented by an additional £200,000 raised by Pearce and his team from existing investors. The company closed a seed funding round of £250,000 in March 2013, used to develop and launch the site as it is today.
He tells me: “I suppose Pinterest could be a competitor but no gamers would be seen dead on Pinterest. We are still the only company to focus 100% on games in a pinboard style UI with social and cross platform discovery and recommendations. Other gaming sites such as Playfire you can see what your friends are playing but just on console games.”
Since a beta launched in June it’s been gaining traction and claims to have hit 100,000 uniques, continual growth and an average of 35% returning. The platform has over 50,000 games across all platforms and new features such as platform and genre filtering, the ability to play, buy or download any game in one click plus more social integration.
It’s also interesting that they chose Crowdcube which is essentially a much quicker way to raise equity funding – assuming they make it of course.
Pearce has in the past raised over £15m in VC funding, starting 3 companies with 2 successful exits. He co-founded Player X, Europe’s largest mobile games distribution company in Europe that was acquired by Spanish mobile content company Zed in April 2009.