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BigBrain aims to bring live mobile trivia back to glory

Published May 6, 2021

If you ask Nik Bonaddio why he wanted to build a new mobile trivia app, his answer is simple.

“In my life, I’ve got very few true passions: I love trivia and I love sports,” Bonaddio told me. “I’ve already started a sports company, so I’ve got to start a trivia company.”

He isn’t kidding about either part of the equation. Bonaddio actually won $100,000 on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”, which he used to start the sports analytics company numberFire (acquired by FanDuel in 2014).

And today, after a period of beta testing, Bonaddio is launching BigBrain. He’s also announcing that the startup has raised $4.5 million in seed funding from FirstRound Capital, Box Group, Ludlow Ventures, Golden Ventures and others.

Of course, you can’t mention mobile trivia without thinking of HQ Trivia, the trivia app that shut down last year after some high-profile drama and a spectacular final episode.

Image Credits: BigBrain

But Bonaddio said BigBrain is approaching things differently than HQ in a few key ways. For starters, although there will be a handful of free games, the majority will require users to pay to enter, with the cash rewards coming from the entry fees. (From a legal perspective, Bonaddio said this is distinct from gambling because trivia is recognized as a game of skill.)

“The free-to-play model doesn’t really work for trivia,” he argued.

How Thor Fridriksson’s ‘Trivia Royale’ earned 2.5M downloads in 3 weeks

In addition, there will be no live video with a live host — Bonaddio said this would be “very, very difficult from a technical perspective and very cost ineffective.” Instead, he claimed the company has found a middle ground: “We have photos, we have different interactive elements, it’s not just a straight multiple choice quiz. We do try to keep it interactive.”

Plus, the simpler production means that where HQ was only hosting two quizzes a day, BigBrain will be hosting 20, with quizzes every 15 minutes at peak times.

Topics will range from old-school hip hop to college football to ’90s movies, and Bonaddio said different quizzes will have different prize structures — some might be winner take all, while others might award prizes to the top 50% of participants. The average quiz will cost $2 to $3 to enter, but prices will range from free to “$20 or even $50.”

What kind of quiz might cost that much money to enter? As an example, Bonaddio said that in a survey of potential users, he found, “There are no casual ‘Rick and Morty’ fans … They’re almost completely price sensitive, and since they’ve seen every episode, they can’t fathom a world where someone knows more about ‘Rick and Morty’ than they do.”

The drunken HQ Trivia finale before it shut down was insane

Metafy adds $5.5M to its seed round as the market for games coaching grows

Published May 6, 2021

This morning Metafy, a distributed startup building a marketplace to match gamers with instructors, announced that it has closed an additional $5.5 million to its $3.15 million seed round. Call it a seed-2, seed-extension or merely a baby Series A; Forerunner Ventures, DCM and Seven Seven Six led the round as a trio.

Metafy’s model is catching on with its market. According to its CEO Josh Fabian, the company has grown from incorporation to gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $76,000 in around nine months. That’s quick.

The startup is building in public, so we have its raw data to share. Via Fabian, here’s how Metafy has grown since its birth:

From the company. As a small tip, if you want the media to care about your startup’s growth rate, share like this!

When TechCrunch first caught wind of Metafy via prior seed investor M25, we presumed that it was a marketplace that was built to allow esports pros and other highly capable gamers teach esports-hopefuls get better at their chosen title. That’s not the case.

Don’t think of Metafy as a marketplace where you can hire a former professional League of Legends player to help improve your laning-phase AD carry mechanics. Though that might come in time. Today a full 0% of the company’s current GMV comes from esports titles. Instead, the company is pursuing games with strong niche followings, what Fabian described as “vibrant, loyal communities.” Like Super Smash Brothers, its leading game today in terms of GMV generated.

Why pursue those titles instead of the most competitive games? Metafy’s CEO explained that his startup has a particular take on its market — that it focuses on coaches as its core customer, over trainees. This allows the startup to focus on its mission of making coaching a full-time gig, or at least one that pays well enough to matter. By doing so, Metafy has cut its need for marketing spend, because the coaches that it onboards bring their own audience. This is where the company is targeting games with super-dedicated user bases, like Smash. They fit well into its build for coaches, onboard coaches, coaches bring their fans, GMV is generated model.

Metafy has big plans, which brings us back to its recent raise. Fabian told TechCrunch any game with a skill curve could wind up on Metafy. Think chess, poker or other games that can be played digitally. To build toward that future, Metafy decided to take on more capital so that it could grow its team.

So what does its $5.5 million unlock for the startup? Per its CEO, Metafy is currently a team of 18 with a monthly burn rate of around $80,000. He wants it to grow to 30 folks, with nearly all of its new hires going into its product org, broadly.

TechCrunch’s perspective is that gaming is not becoming mainstream, but that it has already done so. Building for the gaming world, then, makes good sense, as tools like Metafy won’t suffer from the same boom/bust cycles that can plague game developers. Especially as the startup becomes more diversified in its title base.

Normally we’d close by noting that we’ll get back in touch with the company in a few quarters to see how it’s getting on in growth terms. But because it’s sharing that data publicly, we’ll simply keep reading. More when we have a few months’ more data to chew on.

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TikTok’s new developer tools allow apps to offer ‘Login with TikTok,’ sound sharing, and more

Published May 6, 2021

TikTok is expanding its integrations with third-party apps. The company today announced the launch of two new tool sets for app developers, the TikTok Login Kit and Sound Kit, that will allow apps on mobile, web and consoles to authenticate users via their TikTok credentials, build experiences that leverage users’ TikTok videos and share music and sounds back to TikTok from their own apps.

The company already offers tools that allow app developers to share content, including both pictures and videos, back to TikTok. But the new kits — or, SDKs (software development kits) — expand upon that functionality to make TikTok not just a destination for sharing, but a more deeply integrated part of the third-party app experience.

For starters, the new Login Kit allows an app’s users to sign in quickly using their TikTok log-in credentials, similar to other social log-ins offered by Facebook or Snap. Once signed in, users can then access their TikTok videos in the third-party app, potentially fueling entire new app ecosystems with TikTok content.

Image Credits: TikTok

For example, a video dating app called Snack is using the Login Kit to allow users to share their TikTok videos on their dating profiles to help them find new matches. The game recording app Medal will allow users to share their TikTok videos with their fellow gamers. And Singapore-based Burpple lets users share their food and dining reviews with a community.

Other early adopters of the Login Kit include gaming clips app Allstar, anti-anxiety app Breathwrk, social app IRL, as well as dating and friend-making apps Lolly, MeetMe, Monet, Swipehouse and EME Hive. Creator tool provider Streamlabs is also using Login Kit, as is video game PUBG, which is only using the login functionality. A forthcoming NFT platform Neon will use Login Kit, too.

When users log in to these apps via their TikTok credentials, they’ll then be presented with an additional permissions box that asks them if the app in question can read their profile information and access their public videos, which they then have to also agree to in order to take advantage of the additional video sharing options inside the app itself.

For the time being, these are the only permissions that Login Kit asks for — and it doesn’t give the app access to further information, like who the TikTok user’s friends are, for example. If TikTok expands beyond these permissions in the future, it says it will be transparent with users about any changes or new additions. For the time being, however, the focus is more on allowing apps to better integrate TikTok content into their own experiences.

Image Credits: TikTok/Rapchat

The other new SDK launching today is the Sound Kit, which allows artists and creators to bring their original sounds and music from a third-party app into TikTok. This kit, which also requires Login Kit to work, will help TikTok seed its sounds database with more original content it doesn’t have to license from major labels. Instead, whatever licensing rights to the music and other sounds that exist within the original app will still apply to whatever is shared out to TikTok. But by sharing the music more broadly, creators can gain interest from potential fans and even see their sounds used as the backing for new TikTok videos.

Early adopters on this front include mobile multi-track recording studio Audiobridge, music creation and collaboration suite LANDR, hip hop music creation app Rapchat and upcoming audio recording and remix app Yourdio.

TikTok says some of the apps selected as early partners for the SDKs were those that already adopted its Share to TikTok SDK, which launched in 2019. Others, however, were chosen based on a specific set of criteria, including the ability to move quickly to integrate the new features and the strength of their specific use cases. TikTok was looking for a diversity of use cases and those that were particularly novel — like building out a dating network based on videos, for instance.

More information on the new tools and developer documentation will be added to TikTok’s developer website, but TikTok says it will be vetting and reviewing developers who request access. And as most of the current developer partners are U.S.-based, with just a few exceptions, the company says it is looking to diversify the list of companies going forward, as this is a global initiative.

“As TikTok becomes increasingly ingrained in culture, more third-party apps across a variety of categories and use cases are looking to tap into our community on their own platforms,” said Isaac Bess, TikTok’s Global Head of Distribution Partnerships, in a statement about the launch. “Through the Sound Kit and Login Kit for TikTok, we’re providing seamless integration solutions that help developers expand their reach, increase exposure for creators, and empower our community to showcase their content on other platforms,” he added.

How to attract more than 10 million TikTok followers in 5 months

Snap to launch a new Creator Marketplace this month, initially focused on Lens Creators

Published May 6, 2021

Snap on Wednesday announced its plan to soon launch a Creator Marketplace, which will make it easier for businesses to find and partner with Snapchat creators, including Lens creators, AR creators and later, prominent Snapchat creators known as Snap Stars. At launch, the marketplace will focus on connecting brands and AR creators for AR ads. It will then expand to support all Snap Creators by 2022.

The company had previously helped connect its creator community with advertisers through its Snapchat Storytellers program, which first launched into pilot testing in 2018 — already a late arrival to the space. However, that program’s focus was similar to Facebook’s Brand Collabs Manager, as it focused on helping businesses find Snap creators who could produce video content.

Snap’s new marketplace, meanwhile, has a broader focus in terms of connecting all sorts of creators with the Snap advertising ecosystem. This includes Lens Creators, Developers and Partners, and then later, Snap’s popular creators with public profiles.

Snap says the Creator Marketplace will open to businesses later this month to help them partner with a select group of AR Creators in Snap’s Lens Network. These creators can help businesses build AR experiences without the need for extensive creative resources, which makes access to Snap’s AR ads more accessible to businesses, including smaller businesses without in-house developer talent.

Lens creators have already found opportunity working for businesses that want to grow their Snapchat presence — even allowing some creators to quit their day jobs and just build Lenses for a living. Snap has been further investing in this area of its business, having announced in December a $3.5 million fund directed toward AR Lens creation. The company said at the time there were tens of thousands of Lens creators who had collectively made over 1.5 million Lenses to date.

Using Lenses has grown more popular, too, the company had noted, saying that more than 180 million people interact with a Snapchat Lens every day — up from 70 million daily active users of Lenses when the Lens Explorer section first launched in the app in 2018.

Snapchat launches a TikTok-like feed called Spotlight, kick-started by paying creators

Now, Snap says that over 200 million Snapchat users interact with augmented reality on a daily basis, on average, out of its 280 million daily users. The majority (over 90%) of its U.S. users are 13 to 25-year-olds. In total, users are posting over 5 billion Snaps per day.

Snap says the Creator Marketplace will remain focused on connecting businesses with AR Lens Creators throughout 2021.

The following year, it will expand to include the community of professional creators and storytellers who understand the current trends and interests of the Snap user base and can help businesses with their ad campaigns. The company will not take a cut of the deals facilitated through the Marketplace, it says.

This would include the creators making content for Snap’s new TikTok rival, Spotlight, which launched in November 2020. Snap encouraged adoption of the feature by shelling out $1 million per day to creators of top videos. In March 2021, over 125 million Snapchat users watched Spotlight, it says.

Image Credits: Snapchat

Spotlight isn’t the only way Snap is challenging TikTok.

The company also on Wednesday announced it’s snagging two of TikTok’s biggest stars for its upcoming Snap Originals lineup: Charli and Dixie D’Amelio. The siblings, who have gained over 20 million follows on Snapchat this past year, will star in the series “Charli vs. Dixie.” Other new Originals will feature names like artist Megan Thee Stallion, actor Ryan Reynolds, twins and influencers Niki and Gabi DeMartino, and YouTube beauty vlogger Manny Mua, among others.

Snap’s shows were watched by over 400 million people in 2020, including 93% of the Gen Z population in the U.S., it noted.

“We’re happy to announce Snap’s Creator Marketplace, which will drive win-win-win opportunities for marketers, Creators, and Snap,” said Peter Naylor, Snap’s VP of Sales in the Americas, of the marketplace news. “For brands, it’s an opportunity to leverage the expertise of our network of AR Creators; for Creators, it gives them a way to further build a sustainable audience and business on the platform; and for Snap, it means more advertising partners can produce and execute compelling creative on Snapchat without the need for extensive resources,” he added.

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Turkey’s Ace Games raises $7M to develop casual and ‘hyper casual’ games

Published May 6, 2021

Ace Games, a Turkish mobile gaming company founded by a former Peak Games co-founder, has raised a $7 million seed funding round led by Actera Group. Co-investment has come from San Francisco’s NFX. Former gaming entrepreneurs Kristian Segerstrale, Alexis Bonte and Kaan Gunay also participated. Firat Ileri is a previous investor from the pre-seed round.

The company runs two studios, one focused on casual and one on “hyper-casual” games.

Co-founded by CEO Hakan Bas, the former co-founder and COO at Peak Games, Ace Games has had some success on the U.S. iOS Store with its hyper-casual title, “Mix and Drink.”

In a statement, Bas said: “Ace’s main focus is actually the casual ‘hybrid puzzle’ game that we have been working on for a while now. However, our hyper-casual studio assists the main studio in many aspects like training talent, coming up with creative game mechanics and marketing ideas, generating cash, and creating user base.” Ace’s casual title is to be released late-summer this year and the global launch is expected in early 2022.

Peak Games, Gram Games and Rollic Games were all acquired by Zynga, showing that Turkey is capable of producing decent exits for gaming startups.

VCs such as Index, Balderton, Makers and Griffin have all made M&A deals with Dream Games, Bigger Games and Spyke Games.

6 investors on 2021’s mobile gaming trends and opportunities

Shift Technology raises $220M at a $1B+ valuation to fight insurance fraud with AI

Published May 6, 2021

While incumbent insurance providers continue to get disrupted by startups like Lemonade, Alan, Clearcover, Pie and many others applying tech to rethink how to build a business around helping people and companies mitigate against risks with some financial security, one issue that has not disappeared is fraud. Today, a startup out of France is announcing some funding for AI technology that it has built for all insurance providers, old and new, to help them detect and prevent it.

Shift Technology, which provides a set of AI-based SaaS tools to insurance companies to scan and automatically flag fraud scenarios across a range of use cases — they include claims fraud, claims automation, underwriting, subrogation detection and financial crime detection — has raised $220 million, money that it will be using both to expand in the property and casualty insurance market, the area where it is already strong, as well as to expand into health, and to double down on growing its business in the U.S. It also provides fraud detection for the travel insurance sector.

This Series D is being led by Advent International, via Advent Tech, with participation from Avenir and others. Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst and Iris Capital — who were all part of Shift’s Series C led by Bessemer in 2019 — also participated. With this round, Paris-and-Boston-based Shift Technology has now raised some $320 million and has confirmed that it is now valued at over $1 billion.

The company currently has around 100 customers across 25 different countries — with the list including Generali France and Mitsui Sumitomo, to give you an idea of where it’s pitching its business — and says that it has already analyzed nearly two billion claims, data that’s feeding its machine learning algorithms to improve how they work.

The challenge (or I suppose, opportunity) that Shift is tackling, however, is much bigger. The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, a nonprofit in the U.S., estimates that at least $80 billion of fraudulent claims are made annually in the U.S. alone, but the figure is likely significantly higher. One problem has, ironically, been the move to more virtualized processes, which open the door to malicious actors exploiting loopholes in claims filing and fudging information. Another is the fact that insurance has grown as a market, but so too has the amount of people who are in financial straights, leading to more desperate and illegal acts to gain an edge.

Shift is also not alone in tackling this issue: the market for insurance fraud detection technology globally was estimated to be worth $2.5 billion in 2019 and projected to be worth as much as $8 billion by 2024.

In addition to others in claims management tech such as Brightcore and Guidewire, many of the wave of insurtech startups are building in their own in-house AI-based fraud protection, and it’s very likely that we’ll see a rise of other fraud protection services, built out of adjacent areas like fintech to guard against financial crime, making their way to insurance. As many a fintech entrepreneur has said to me in the past, the mechanics of how the two verticals work and the compliance issues both face are very closely aligned.

“The entire Shift team has worked tirelessly to build this company and provide insurers with the technology solutions they need to empower employees to best be there for their policyholders. We are thrilled to partner with Advent International, given their considerable sector expertise and global reach and are taking another giant step forward with this latest investment,” stated Jeremy Jawish, CEO and co-founder, Shift Technology, in a statement. “We have only just scratched the surface of what is possible when AI-based decision automation and optimization is applied to the critical processes that drive the insurance policy lifecycle.”

For its backers, one key point with Shift is that it’s helping older providers bring on more tools and services that can help them improve their margins as well as better compete against the technology built by newer players.

“Since its founding in 2014, Shift has made a name for itself in the complex world of insurance,” said Thomas Weisman, an Advent director, in a statement. “Shift’s advanced suite of SaaS products is helping insurers to reshape manual and often time-consuming claims processes in a safer and more automated way. We are proud to be part of this exciting company’s next wave of growth.”

Oscar Health’s IPO filing will test the venture-backed insurance model

Una Brands launches with $40M to roll up brands on multiple Asia-Pacific e-commerce platforms

Published May 5, 2021

Una Brands' co-founders (from left to right): Tobias Heusch, Kiran Tanna and Kushal Patel

Una Brands’ co-founders (from left to right): Tobias Heusch, Kiren Tanna and Kushal Patel. Image Credits: Una Brands

One of the biggest funding trends of the past year is companies that consolidate small e-commerce brands. Many of the most notable startups in the space, like Thrasio, Berlin Brands Group and Branded Group, focus on consolidating Amazon Marketplace sellers. But the e-commerce landscape is more fragmented in the Asia-Pacific region, where sellers use platforms like Tokopedia, Lazada, Shopee, Rakuten or eBay, depending on where they are. That is where Una Brands comes in. Co-founder Kiren Tanna, former chief executive officer of Rocket Internet Asia, said the startup is “platform agnostic,” searching across marketplaces (and platforms like Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce) for potential acquisitions.

Una announced today that it has raised a $40 million equity and debt round. Investors include 500 Startups, Kingsway Capital, 468 Capital, Presight Capital, Global Founders Capital and Maximilian Bitner, the former CEO of Lazada who currently holds the same role at secondhand fashion platform Vestiaire Collective.

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Una did not disclose the ratio of equity and debt in the round. Like many other e-commerce aggregators, including Thrasio, Una raised debt financing to buy brands because it is non-dilutive. The round will also be used to hire aggressively in order to evaluate brands in its pipeline. Una currently has teams in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia and plans to expand in Southeast Asia before entering Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

Tanna, who also founded Foodpanda and ZEN Rooms, launched Una along with Adrian Johnston, Kushal Patel, Tobias Heusch and Srinivasan Shridharan. He estimates that there are more than 10 million third-party sellers spread across different platforms in the Asia-Pacific.

“Every single seller in Asia is looking at multiple platforms and not just Amazon,” Tanna told TechCrunch. “We saw a big gap in the market where e-commerce is growing very quickly, but players in the West are not able to look at every platform, so that is why we decided to focus on APAC, launch the business there and acquire sellers who are selling on multiple platforms.”

Singapore is poised to become Asia’s Silicon Valley

Una looks for brands with annual revenue between $300,000 to $20 million and is open to many categories, as long as they have strong SKUs and low seasonality (for example, it avoids fast fashion). Its offering prices range from about $600,000 to $3 million.

Tanna said Una will maintain acquisitions as individual brands “because what’s working, we don’t change it.” How it adds value is by doing things that are difficult for small brands to execute, especially those run by just one or two people, like expanding into more distribution channels and countries.

“For example, in Indonesia there are at least five or six important platforms that you should be on, and many times the sellers aren’t doing that, so that’s something we do,” Tanna explained. “The second is cross-border in Southeast Asia, which sellers often can’t do themselves because of regulations around customs, import restrictions and duties. That’s something our team has experience in and want to bring to all brands.”

Thrasio raises $750M more in equity for its Amazon roll-up play

Amazon FBA roll-up players have the advantage of Amazon Marketplace analytics that allow them to quickly measure the performance of brands in their pipeline of potential acquisitions. Since it deals with different marketplaces and platforms, Una works with much more fragmented sources of data for revenue, costs, rankings and customer reviews. To scale up, the company is currently building technology to automate its valuation process and will also have local teams in each of its markets. Despite working with multiple e-commerce platforms, Tanna said Una is able to complete a deal within five weeks, with an offer usually happening within two or three days.

In countries where Amazon is the dominant e-commerce player, like the United States, many entrepreneurs launch FBA brands with the goal of flipping them for a profit within a few years, a trend that Thrasio and other Amazon roll-up startups are tapping into. But that concept is less common in Una’s markets, so it offers different team deals to appeal to potential sellers. Though Una acquires 100% of brands, it also does profit-sharing models with sellers, so they get a lump sum payment for the majority of their business first, then collect more money as Una scales up the brand. Tanna said Una usually continues working with sellers on a consulting basis for about three to six months after a sale.

“Something that Amazon players know very well is that they can find a product, sell it for four to five years, and then ideally make a multi-million deal exit and build another product or go on holiday,” said Tanna. “That’s something Asian sellers are not as familiar with, so we see this as an education phase to explain how the process works, and why it makes sense to sell to us.”

Target Global leads $150M round for Amazon Marketplace consolidator Branded

Chime has agreed to stop using the word ‘bank’ after a California regulator pushed back

Published May 5, 2021

Chime can apparently call itself the “fastest-growing fintech in the U.S.,” but it has agreed to stop referring to itself as a “bank,” per a new report out of American Banker.

Evidently, the eight-year-old, San Francisco-based outfit was the target of an investigation by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation after Chime used “chimebank” in its website address, as well as used “bank” and “banking” elsewhere in its advertisements, according to the agency in a settlement agreement.

As noted by AB, Chime made the decision to settle ahead of a deadline imposed by the regulatory body.

The development shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with banking laws. No outfit can represent itself as a bank or credit union unless it’s licensed to engage in the business of banking. The commission that pushed back on the startup issues such licenses and regulates state-chartered banks in the state of California through the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation and said in the settlement that “at all relevant times herein, Chime was not licensed to operate as a bank in California or in any other jurisdiction, nor was it exempt from such licensure.”

Chime has at times attempted to draw a distinction between itself and a bank. When the company raised its most recent round of funding — a $485 million Series F round last September that valued the business at $14.5 billion — CEO Chris Britt told CNBC: “We’re more like a consumer software company than a bank . . . It’s more a transaction-based, processing-based business model that is highly predictable, highly recurring and highly profitable.”

Still, Chime, like many newer fintech companies, has seemingly embraced the term “neobank” and “challenger bank,” and perhaps it’s no wonder. It’s certainly easier to convey to consumers what it is selling, which is banking services that include — in this case — debit cards, spending accounts and savings accounts, all offered through users’ mobile phones.

Given the settlement, expect to see more startups like Chime make clearer that in most cases, they do not have a bank charter and instead are being provided services by banks that do. In Chime’s case, for example, it now makes more plain on its website that it is a “financial technology company” and “not a bank” and that its services are being provided by the The Bancorp Bank and Stride Bank, which are both FDIC members.

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Applications for the TC Early Stage Pitch-Off in July are open

Published May 5, 2021

Early-stage startups — now is your time to shine at the TechCrunch Early Stage event on July 8 and 9. This is part two of the highly successful event from April where top experts train and teach founders how to build, launch and scale their companies. In April we hosted the inaugural TC Early Stage Pitch-Off with 10 top companies from around the globe. TC is on the hunt to feature a new batch of 10 companies this summer to pitch in front of TC editors, global investors, press and hundreds of attendees. Step into the spotlight now. Apply here by June 7th.

The Pitch. Ten founders will pitch onstage for five minutes, followed by a five-minute Q&A with an esteemed panel of VC judges. The winner will receive a feature article on TechCrunch.com, one-year free subscription to Extra Crunch and a free Founder Pass to TechCrunch Disrupt this fall.

The Training. Nervous to pitch onstage in front of thousands? Fear not. After completing the application, selected founders will receive training sessions during a remote mini-bootcamp, communication training and personalized pitch-coaching by the Startup Battlefield team. Selected startups will also be announced on TechCrunch.com in advance of the show.

Qualifications. TechCrunch is looking for early-stage, pre-Series A companies with limited press. Our last pitch-off had one of the most geographically diverse batches from a TC event. The Early Stage Pitch-Off is open to companies from around the world, consumer or enterprise and in any industry — biotech, space, mobility, impact, SaaS, hardware, sustainability and more.

Founders, don’t miss your chance to pitch your company on the world’s best tech stage. Apply today!

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Supercell likes Metacore’s games so much it just gave it another $180M credit line

Published May 5, 2021

Metacore, a Finnish mobile games company, seems to have an amazing “relationship” with Supercell, another (quite successful) Finnish mobile games company.

Back in September 2020, Metacore raised $17.7 million in equity from Supercell and another $11.8 million line of credit, sometimes also called a debt round. That amazing relationship appears to be ongoing. Because Metacore has now raised yet another debt round from Supercell, but this time for €150 million ($180 million). These guys really like each other.

The simple reason for this is two words: Merge Mansion. This game has been so spectacularly successful that Supercell clearly wants a stake in that success, and it has the cash reserves to make that bet.

The puzzle discovery game has 800,000 daily players, and an annual revenue run rate of more than €45 million, so it’s really on a growth curve.

Why so successful? Well, players have really loved the idea that they can literally merge two items they pick up in the game to make a brand new thing. So for instance, you can merge two rakes and you get another kind of tool that you can then can use somewhere else. This is a very unique mechanic in mobile games.

Supercell is also enamored of Metacore’s games development strategy: It creates games with two- to three-person teams and only adds resources when a game takes off. This innovative approach to game development is at least part of the reason Supercell is doubling down on its investment, not just Merge Mansion itself. It’s a sort of “fail-fast” approach to game-making that is clearly paying dividends.

So why this approach to the latest financing?

I spoke to CEO and co-founder Mika Tammenkoski, who told me: “Yes, it is a credit line. We are more about scaling up the company as we are scaling up revenue. We already have meaningful revenue, we can invest the money, and we can expect a certain kind of return on investment. So this is the cheapest investment that we can get. Equity investment would dilute us. So this makes sense from that point of view. With Supercell, we have a really great partner backing us. They know exactly what is ahead of us. They know exactly the kind of challenges that we have, and that makes us aligned in that sense… We both think long term, we both want to scale the game as big as possible. And with Supercell we get the best terms overall.”

So there you have it. Metacore and Supercell are locked in an embrace which any other outside investor is going to have to invest in big to get a look in on the action.

6 investors on 2021’s mobile gaming trends and opportunities