Community Crowdfunding Platform brings multiple benefits to Social Gaming Startup
Funding strategy plays an important role in how much and how quickly a startup receives funding. The founding team of the user-generated gaming platform Overplay, gained timely and sizeable backing through its Wefunder campaign, a Regulation CF community investment round.
In a matter of hours, the gaming startup raised $1 million from retail investors with a minimum investment of $100. The capital will be used to expand Overplay’s team and accelerate product development and user acquisition.
Needless to say, the Wefunder results excited co-founders Dan Projanksky and Caroline Strzalka.
“We’re thrilled to see such a positive response from investors and creators,” said CEO Projansky. “Overplay is all about democratizing game development, and we’re excited to welcome our community as co-owners on this incredible journey.”
Prior to the retail raise Overplay raised $1.8 million from institutional investors: Village Global, Sound Media Ventures, Plus Eight Equity Partners, Gaingels, Red & Blue Ventures, Band of Angels, Stampede Ventures, Outlander Capital, and others.
Investors banked on the impressive accomplishments of both co-founders who have a track record of success in media, entertainment and finance.
Projansky is an award-winning game designer who has created games for Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo. Strzalka is a two-time founder and business development executive who has built partnerships with Netflix, Hulu and YouTube. She is also a former investment banker and has experience taking multiple companies public. They have the backgrounds that attract startup funding.
The team has introduced a major innovation to social gaming. Its AI-powered, patented technology merges the personal connection of social media with the fun of hyper-casual games. Players have the ability to create and share short games from any video quickly and easily—and that has not been done before!
Their patent for unique UI, playing your game into existence, and live streaming games gives them an advantage. Having thousands of creators on their waitlist to use its game maker also catches investors’ eyes.
The Wefunder campaign gave the founding team more than the $1 million raised. It put Overplay in front of prominent industry insiders that helped their startup’s selection into Mercury Bank’s Seed program that spotlights them to top VCs in the world. They also were featured in the crowdfunding space Angels & Entrepreneurs Network and in KingsCrowd, an independent ratings and analytics platform for online private markets.
The founding team is very satisfied with the results of their Wefunder campaign, both in terms of dollars and connections. In addition, when entrepreneurs show that they know their market, investor confidence rises—something that COO Strzalka appreciates given the social gaming platform already has over 1 million games played and 150,000 alpha app downloads.
“So many different audiences are asking us to build this, from media companies and professional sports leagues to advertisers and TikTokers. Overplay is going to change how we interact with video forever. This round of funding will help us bring our platform to even more users, content creators and brands around the world.”
