Bionic Panda Games, a startup building Android mobile games, has raised seed financing from investors including SoftTech VC, Norwest Venture Partners, GoogleVentures, 500 Startups and angels Craig Sherman and Kal Vepuri.
The company’s first game, Aqua Pets, has more than 3 million downloads and is a top 100 grossing app on the Android market. The company was founded by Charles Hudson and Mike Jimenez, who both came from game startup Serious Business, which produced Friends for Sale, the popular Facebook game that enabled you to “buy” your friends. Serious Business was acquired by Zynga in February 2010.
In late 2010, Hudson and Jimenez saw the growth of Android decided to go all-in on the platform with its free-to-play, microtransaction games. The company doesn’t advertise in its games. Android is the company’s preferred platform but Hudson says he hopes to explore other platforms in the future. ”We’ve found a great tailwind because so many people are activating (on Android) every day,” says Hudson, CEO of Bionic Panda and also a venture partner at SoftTech VC. “The market opportunity keeps growing.”
Android is different from iOS because it has so many more devices to account for but also more distribution options, Hudson notes. Bionic Panda is focusing just on the Android marketplace at this point–not on places like the Kindle Fire yet, though Hudson sees a potential big opportunity there. The company’s distribution includes the Android market itself, social tools built into the game and a small amount of paid advertising. More
