Ukrainian startup Mobalytics won the legendary Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2016. There was not much news from the company from then on, but the project has been developing. And now Mobalytics has announced an investment of $10 million. Here we share the details of the deal.
About the project
The co-founders of Mobalytics are Ukrainians Bogdan Suchyk and Mykola Lobanov. Suchyk had already launched Motify.me, a startup aimed at building a service helping people to achieve their personal goals (but the project was closed in 2013) and myTips, a company providing SaaS companies with an easy way to create onboarding tutorials for new users.
Mobalytics was intended to be an online gaming assistant that analyzes gamers’ performance and weaknesses and helps them to improve their skills (its name consists of references to the MOBA game genre and analytics).
The service evaluates a gamer’s skills and displays them in visuals: there are skill evaluations, map passability, data about opponents, etc.
The first game the service worked with was League of Legends.
In September 2016, the startup won the TechCrunch Disrupt and received $50,000.
In November of the same year, the company attracted $2.6 million in investments from Almaz Capital, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and GGV Capital. In August 2017, the company launched an open beta of its “coach for gamers.”
“We spent a lot of time in 2017 improving and optimizing the GPI (Gamer Performance Index), which is the core of our analytics platform, as well as the future industry-wide skills evaluation standard for gamers. In August 2017, we launched an open beta and surpassed the 500,000 user mark during the first three months,” said the co-founder of the project.
“We spent a lot of time in 2017 improving and optimizing the GPI (Gamer Performance Index), which is the core of our analytics platform, as well as the future industry-wide skills evaluation standard for players. In August 2017, we launched an open beta and surpassed the 500,000 user mark during the first three months,” said the co-founder of the project.
During the whole year of 2018, the team was engaged in product enhancement, improving the GPI, and also launched the first experiments with monetization. In 2019, Mobalytics began working on a service for other games.
Details of the deal
As the company told AIN.UA, in this Series A round, the company raised about $11.25 million from the same investors as in 2016.
“We’re not fans of fundraising, and we’ve always tried to stay out of it. But when the product grows, fundraising goes smoothly and almost without difficulties. Our current round was led by an existing investor. Most of the existing investors and several new ones participated in the round,” the company said.
Among new investors of the project, there are also companies related to the field, for example, South Korean esports company T1. The shares and other details of the deal are not disclosed.
The company is going to spend the raised funds on the growth of the product and technical team, as well as on further development of the service.
Company performance
Currently, the company employs 36 people from all over the world (Ukraine, Russia, Uzbekistan, Germany, Great Britain, Turkey, Israel, Australia). It is headquartered in Los Angeles, and the head office team consists of 11 employees.
Interestingly, from the first days, the company was created on the principles of remote work. As the company works in the gaming industry, new employees are given a bonus of $2,000 to make their workplace more comfortable (for example, to upgrade or buy game accessories).
The year 2020 was started with 1.6 million active users per month. In May, at the height of the COVID lockdown, the project’s MAUs figure was already 7 million. Now, the online assistant is available for League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, and Valorant.
In the near future, the team plans to expand premium features for existing games and add simulators for new game disciplines.
