The mobile game technology startup, based in San Francisco with an office in Oslo, Norway, is creating a seamless way to share mobile game moments through GIFs, boosting game downloads through digital word-of-mouth marketing. Norselab and Olympic medalist winner Aksel Lund Svindal also contributed to the seed round.

"Traditional user acquisition is incredibly expensive as pricing has been driven up by the largest and richest publishers on the App Store, making it difficult for the majority of mobile devs to gain traction. Traditional ads are also obnoxious and intrusive, breaking gameplay and pulling the player out of the game," said Nicolaj Broby Petersen, co-founder and CEO of Megacool. "We want to replicate word-of-mouth in mobile games by giving players a quick and easy way to record GIF moments within their games and seamlessly share them via text messaging and other social channels."

"Player acquisition and game discovery are huge pain points for mobile game developers, the biggest and fastest growing segment of the games industry. We believe solving this problem to be a great opportunity to create value for the ecosystem as a whole. We are very impressed by Megacool's approach and deep industry expertise, which is why we wanted to work with this great team," said Arne Tonning, Partner at Alliance Venture.

The seed round will be used to expand the Megacool team, particularly the engineering and development team based in Oslo, Norway. Funds will also be used to accelerate product and business development as the company continues to expand their API and bring developers into the current beta. Developers interested in joining the Megacool beta and using GIF sharing to drive downloads for their games can sign up at dashboard.megacool.co/signup.

Megacool's API gives mobile game developers a new and unique method for driving downloads and engaging users, utilizing one of the fastest growing media formats on the internet. Developers can set parameters within the API that determine when GIFs are recorded, based on high scores or other in-game activities and accomplishments, so that players don't have to toggle a record button.

"We are building an entirely new ecosystem of tools that mobile developers can use to grow a player base," Petersen continued. "GIF is a great format for easy sharing of what a player has just experienced in a game, particularly on mobile devices where attention spans are short. But it's just the start for Megacool and we look forward to sharing more unique ways to boost downloads and grow a player base soon!"

Megacool was founded in June 2015 by founding members of Dirtybit, a pioneering mobile game studio in Norway that developed and published some of the industry's first synchronous multiplayer racing games with the Fun Run series of games.

First launched in September 2012, Fun Run reached #1 in US Apple App Store without any marketing spend. In total, Fun Run games have been downloaded more than 100 million times all over the world and played by more than 15% of the US population.

To learn more about Megacool please visit www.megacool.co. Stay up to date by following the company on Twitter at @Megacool_co, Instagram at @Megacool.co, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/megacool.co. Developers can sign up to learn more and access the Megacool API beta at dashboard.megacool.co/signup.

About Megacool
Megacool is a mobile game technology startup based in San Francisco with an office in Oslo Norway focused on bringing word-of-mouth marketing to the digital world of mobile games. Megacool's API allows players to record brief clips of gameplay and share them via SMS message and other social channels as GIFs. Megacool gives developers and publishers an alternative to traditional advertising networks for acquiring new users. To learn more, please visit megacool.co.