London-based mobile games company Tripledot Studios is the latest British tech company to achieve unicorn status after it closed an investment round valuing it at $1.4 billion. The company, on the UK’s fastest growing with 200 staff and games it says are played by 25 million a month, raised $116 million.
The cash will be used to fund the development of new games Tripledot hopes will prove as popular as its wood block-style puzzle Woodoku. The company plans to grow both organically through the internal development of new games titles and will also now look at potential acquisitions of other studios.
The investment round was led by the venture capital firm 20VC that resulted from a popular podcast on the start-up world, funding and valuations created by Harry Stebbings, a 25-year-old entrepreneur. Other backers, Access Industries, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Eldridge, were all repeat investors who took part in Tripledot’s previous raise a year ago which brought in $78 million.
Despite being a high-growth start-up backed by venture capital, Tripledot actually already makes a profit. Its pre-tax profit for its last financial year was $21.1 million compared to $3.3 million a year earlier. That revenue growth saw the company recently picked out by the management consultants and “Big 6” accountants and auditors PriceWaterhouseCoopers as the UK’s fastest growing tech company.
Tripledot co-founder Akin Babayigit commented that the start-up’s ambition is to “build a generational, once-in-a-lifetime company”.
Tripledot’s strategy is based on the quick release of high numbers of simple, addictive games rather than the long, expensive production of blockbuster gaming titles. The company has already launched 4 new titles this year alone and Babayigit says it has a “robust pipeline of games”.
He continued:
“We also plan to be very active on the mergers and acquisitions front. Our expertise allows us to scale our games quickly and very profitably.”
The start-up has certainly proven it can make quick progress having only been founded in 2017 by Babayigit and his co-founders Eyal Chaneides. It has development studios in Barcelona, St Petersberg and Minsk with the head office in London. Revenue is mainly generated by in-game advertising.