Venture Capital News: GameOn Secures $10.5M
2020-03-03
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, GameOn Technology today announced it has raised $10.5 million in growth capital.
GameOn Technology, the industry-leading conversational application platform company, today announced it has raised $10.5 million in growth capital with an issue of convertible notes to a consortium of investors, led by Andrew Ogawa of Quest Ventures with participation from Mirae Venture Partners and Jim Davidson, founder of Silver Lake, through his investment vehicle called Paxion. The capital will fuel development of GameOn's proprietary ChatOS platform, expansion into new content verticals, and increase sales efforts. The latest funding round brings the company's total to $18.5 million to date.
The note offering follows a successful 2019 in which GameOn partnered with blue-chip sports and gaming organizations, including the NBA, NHL, PGA TOUR, FIFA, ATP Media and PUBG to launch exclusive chat applications. The year also saw a significant increase in engagement with its existing chat application partners, including the Arsenal Bot, GameOn's most popular chat application by total and daily users.
"Chat applications let fans connect with their favorite content when, where, how, and with whom they want to, while enabling brands with huge fan bases to provide content-rich experiences customized for each fan," said Alex Beckman, founder and CEO of GameOn. "As businesses continue to transform into mobile-first digital organizations, chat-based applications have a huge opportunity to enhance the brand-to-fan experience by being more natural and less robotic. This additional round of funding allows us to enhance our platform's capabilities, expand into new verticals, and help more brands connect with their fans in meaningful ways."
Chat applications are growing industry-wide, and according to a Gartner study companies are employing them for customer service and support at an accelerated rate. GameOn's ChatOS platform helps brands realize new opportunities, enabling them to connect with fans organically, where they are, on the platforms of their choosing, and with content they want. GameOn builds a dynamic user experience within the most popular chat and voice applications, allowing fans to engage with brands in natural conversation while delivering rich content like scores, live updates, highlights, gifs and unique videos.
"I've been an investor and board member for GameOn for multiple years now and it's safe to say it's grown up along with the chat-based application market," said Andrew Ogawa of Quest Venture Partners. "The company has proven again and again that it's fluent in the behaviors and needs of today's fans, while proficient in delivering a viable chat tool that lets major global brands communicate in new, engaging ways with their evolving fan bases. Chat solutions are quickly becoming a key digital arm of brands' mobile strategy and GameOn is well-positioned to continue leading them on this journey."
In addition to investment from Quest, other investors participating in GameOn's note financing round include Ed Zander (former CEO of Motorola), returning investors Innovation Global Capital, Asahi Media Lab Ventures, Claytonia Capital, as well as first-time investors and NBA stars Mo Bamba and Andre Iguodala. GameOn's $2 million seed round in 2016 and $6.5 million Series A round in 2017 included investment from Quest Venture Partners, XG Ventures, Next News Ventures, and notable sports business investors including, Joe Montana, Snoop Dogg, Gary Payton, Lawyer Milloy and Mark Attanasio.
GameOn applications are powered by ChatOS, the company's proprietary end-to-end development and integration platform designed specifically for the future of messaging and voice services. It dramatically streamlines the creation of robust, content-driven premium user experiences. ChatOS connects directly to brands' Content Management Systems (CMS), data sources and API feeds; allowing them to effortlessly deploy this content across a wide array of platforms and applications through highly engaging messaging experiences.
About GameOn Technology
GameOn was founded in 2014 with a shared passion for building innovative messaging products that serve the world of broadcast media. Using its proprietary bot platform, ChatOS, GameOn has designed, developed, and launched business solutions for many of the world's largest sport, lifestyle, and media companies becoming an industry leader in user retention, engagement, and monetization in the applications space. Some of the world's most notable brands like the NBA, NHL, PGA, Arsenal F.C., Sky Sports and TIME Inc. partner with GameOn to provide customized, rich customer experiences on the world's major chat application platforms. To learn more, visit www.gameontechnology.com.
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