Gaming startups, especially those making casual mobile games, are hot in Turkey right now, and today, another one is announcing a massive round after just nine months of its existence.
The Grand Gamespublisher behind Sort of magical And car match, raised $30 million in funding — money it will use to repeat the pattern it set up to create its first two titles: recruit more talent whom it will set up in small clusters to take ownership of developing their own games.
Bekir Batuhan Chelebi (AKA Batu), CEO and co-founder of Grand Games, says that while his company uses AI technology to speed up development, the concept of inspiring its teams and giving them the freedom to implement their ideas – Supercell is based on. The casual gaming behemoth from Finland — makes technology work as well as does it.
“It's all about the team culture we're building,” Batu said in an interview.
London-based Balderdon is leading the Series A, which includes participation from previous backers Beck Ventures (formerly Earlybird Digital East) and Latton Ventures (which led a $3 million seed round last year), as well as angel investor Mert Gurr.
Grand Games isn't disclosing its valuation, but for some general context: We heard from sources that the round was oversubscribed and investors were competing to participate; One of the larger Series A rounds for a gaming startup from the funding country; And notably, less than a month ago, Agave Games announced an $18 million Series A (also co-led by Balderton) at a nearly $100 million valuation.
A title of Grand Games, magic pick, Apple's best-selling casual gaming has broken into the charts, and its two titles together generated more than $4 million in total app revenue in the six months since their release, the company said.
Any money Grand Games is raising makes it somewhat out of its category.
Because many casual gaming startups generate revenue early on and are often built on a modest cost basis compared to larger games, many such companies (or sole-trade developers) remain off the radar when it comes to funding.
Instead, they choose Bootstrap. In the current chart of the most popular casual and puzzle games in Apple's App Store, only a few are venture-backed. That list includes Dream Games and Supercell.
Dream Gameswhich raised $255 million In 2022, here's an original name. It also hails from Türkiye and is a cluster of companies that grew out of the success of Peak Games, which Zynga acquired in 2020 for $1.8 billion. Peak and Dream set the bar for other founders in terms of business growth, and others in the ecosystem include Tripledot, Spike (raised $50 million last year, and Launched with $55 million), Agave and works well.
Good job where the three founders of the Grand Game got their start. Batu, Mustafa Firtina and Mehmet Calim were working together there when they came up with the idea to build the Grand, Batu said.
As Batu describes, typically in the Turkish gaming world, game design decisions are made by the founders. They may be smart and ambitious, but that approach leaves a lot on the table. “Really capable, high-powered people” — their employees — had very little license for what they were doing, he said.
Grand's bet was that if they could create a structure where smart people could make most of the decisions clustered around a single title, it would lead to greater productivity, better games, and ultimately, happier employees.
The culture Grand is trying to implement, Batu said, has become the “biggest divider” among gaming companies in Istanbul.
“It's not unwanted, by the way. Supercell has been doing it for more than 10 years, but I don't think it's seen in the Turkish gaming industry,” he added.
For some of the time-consuming tasks involved with artwork ideas and writing code, Grand leans heavily on AI tools to give his team more time to be creative.
“I intervene in 5% to 10% of the decisions they make,” Batu said, referring to Grand's two clusters. These interventions may be if there are fundamental disagreements that cannot be resolved, or to call time on a project that has not worked.
So far, the company, less than a year old, hasn't had much of a challenge in its structure. It has only worked on two games and both are doing very well. (Cue investors knocking on its door.)
The big question is whether Grand Games can maintain its track record as it brings in more workers and sets up more of these manufacturing clusters. Investors are willing to bet that it has a good chance of doing so.
“Istanbul is home to some of the best gaming studios in the world, and it's within that ecosystem that Grand Game's founders stood with their vision to create world-class genre-defining casual games that players love to play,” Balderton general partner Suranga Chandratilke told Capital, in a statement. “The speed with which they have built a brilliant team culture and achieved success in their first two games demonstrates their talent and commitment. We are excited to be working with a team with sky-high ambitions and passion for gaming.”