Dreaming the Dream (Games)

By Karthik Ramakrishnan, Parsa Saljoughian, Eric Liaw, and Somesh Dash

Today, IVP is thrilled to announce our investment in Dream Games, a next-generation mobile gaming company and developer of the fast-growing casual puzzle title Royal Match. IVP is participating in Dream Games's $155 million Series B financing alongside existing investors Index Ventures, Makers Fund, Balderton Capital, and new investor Kora. At IVP, we have had the good fortune of partnering with some of the most successful gaming companies over the past decade, including Supercell, Niantic, Discord, and Zynga. We are looking forward to partnering with Soner Aydemir and the entire Dream Games team to bring high-quality games to millions of people across the world.

A Team Built to Scale

We have found that the most transformational gaming companies are led by intensely passionate founders who are not afraid to defy conventional wisdom. After our first conversation with Dream Games CEO, Soner Aydemir, we found him to embody this spirit. Soner, along with his 4 co-founders, started Dream Games after spending years at Peak Games, a mobile gaming company in Turkey that was acquired by Zynga for $2.1 billion. Soner and his co-founders played a key role in creating and scaling two of the company's most successful games to hundreds of millions of revenue. His belief is that the highest-quality games are built with small but highly-focused and talented teams, reminding us in many ways of Supercell, a company we invested in 8 years ago. The Dream Games team today encompasses some of the best and brightest minds in mobile gaming across product, design, creative, and marketing.

Hypergrowth Mode

Casual gaming remains the largest and fastest-growing category within mobile gaming, with puzzle games representing the largest sub-genre and over $5 billion in annual in-app purchase revenue. Dream Games released its first title Royal Match globally just 3 months ago in March 2021 and has experienced hypergrowth ever since, with some of the most impressive early adoption and retention data we've ever seen for a new game. As of today, Royal Match is already a top 20 grossing game in the US!

What sets Royal Match apart from other puzzle games? The game builds on the best attributes of the most successful titles in its genre and it is clear from the gameplay that the team has paid meticulous attention to game mechanics, speed, design, and social features. Despite being so early in its release cycle, others have noticed, as you can see here. And the data speaks for itself: the game's monetization and user retention metrics are unparalleled for the category.

Download Royal Match here on iOS or Android.

A Major Opportunity Ahead

Dream Games's mission has remained the same since Day 1: to build an enduring gaming company that delights millions of users with the highest quality games. Following a $7.5M Seed in November 2019 and a $50M Series A in February 2021, this Series B financing represents an opportunity for the company to continue to execute on its strategy. We believe this team has the perfect combination of technical, design, marketing, and visionary gaming expertise to create and scale multiple games into top-grossing titles and to create long-standing franchises. IVP is thrilled to partner with Soner and the Dream Games team to build the next iconic gaming company.

Karthik Ramakrishnan, Parsa Saljoughian, Eric Liaw, and Somesh Dash are Investors at IVP, a later-stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA.

LINK:	https://www.ivp.com/news/blog/dreaming-the-dream-games/...
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