Game dev studio BebopBee has announced a $4 million funding round led by Bitkraft Ventures to inspire “real-world connection” through mobile game brands.
Other investors included Courtside Ventures, Andover, and Goal Ventures, with angel investors Akin Babaygit (TripleDot Studios), Affan Butt (Aream.co) and Charles Chapman (Touch Games) also having participated.
Growing a team
The funding is set to be used towards growing BebopBee’s player base and growing its creative marketing and data science teams.
Currently the company’s focus is on Travel Crush – formerly known as What a Wonderful World – introducing audiences to new locations every month. BebopBee is also introducing new social features such as Team Chat to bring real-time text translations and cultural image sharing.
The studio was founded by veterans of Zynga, TinyCo and Jam City, and has made three key new hires in Robert Parviainen, Tess Thormodsgaard and Andrew Stalbow.
Parviainen previously built mobile entertainment company Seriously’s data science team – a company co-founded by Stalbow, now an advisor for BebopBee. Stalbow also has experience working at 20th Century Fox and Rovio, the latter of whom recently revealed the secrets of its level design.
Thormodsgaard was previously VP of marketing at Seriously, now taking on the head of marketing role at BebopBee.
“With our community-first approach, we are relentlessly pursuing our vision of building billion-dollar IPs that delight our lovely players for decades to come,” said BebopBee CEO Rajeev Nagpal.
“We initially invested in BebopBee in 2021 and have watched them prove that wrapping culture around proven game mechanics can deliver best-in-class results. We are excited to continue backing Rajeev and the team as they push the boundaries of casual mobile forever franchises,” said Bitkraft Ventures founding general partner Scott Rupp.
Courtside Ventures partner Kai Bond commented: “We’ve been incredibly impressed by the efforts of the team at BebopBee, and we’re investing in the company because we believe in their distinct focus of building valuable brands and experiences for their players that stand the test of time.”
According to Investgame, gaming deals cooled down significantly in Q1 2023.
