Kleiner Perkins is adding to its iFund portfolio of iPhone-focused startups. It’s latest investment is a series A round in stealth gaming company ngmoco. Kleiner partner Bing Gordon, formerly chief creative officer of Electronic Arts, will join the board (he is also on the board of Zynga, which KP also recently invested in through its regular fund).
Ngmoco’s CEO is another EA refugee, Neil Young (not the aging rock star). Young oversaw the development of hit totles at EA such as Lord of the Rings, The Sims 2, and the about-to-be-released Spore. He left EA in June, and wants to both develop its own games and finance and produce games from other developers. He is applying the same studio model that’s worked so well for EA to a new class of mobile games for the iPhone and future devices that have similar characteristics.
The iFund is a $100 million fund set aside to invest in startups targeting the iPhone as a platform. Other announced investments include mobile social networking service Pelago (which makes Whrrl) and iControl (which lets you control you home security through your home network and your iPhone).
The size of the round was not disclosed.
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moco is un unfortunately sounding name in spanish. means snot
They’re so stealth they don’t even want people to be able to pronounce their name.
I dont have an iphone, or for that matter an app store, but do have some questions about iphone apps. How are these apps making money; I’m assuming a combination of advertising and premium services? … http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
some good games for the iPhone would be excellent to see.
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
Want games? Play them at Harryballs.com
http://www.harryballs.com
The iPhone gaming market will be a monster, and no doubt ngmoco:) will be one of many new entrants at its cutting edge. However, iPhone adoption rates still have a tremendous growth ahead of them, and I wonder what type of burn rate these start-ups must plan for…