Back in August, I wrote about an interesting new company called SCVNGR. Their goal? To turn scavenger hunts into a business by offering companies, universities, and other organizations a platform on which they can build city (or campus) spanning activities. Since then, things have really started to take off for SCVNGR: the startup has crossed “well over” $1 million in revenue in its first full year in business, with monthly revenue up 40% month over month for the last six months. And it’s now cash-flow positive. In other words, it’s one of the first location-based game companies that’s making money.
SCVNGR now has over 400 clients, including dozens of large universities (Princeton, Yale, Duke), who often use them for orientation activities. Major companies like MetLife and HSBC use them for team building. And conferences have used the platform to create event-specific games. Also impressive: SCVNGR reports a 91% client repeat rate. You can see a longer list of the site’s clients here.
At its peak the platform has supported over 7,000 concurrent players, who were simultaneously engaged in 24 ongoing games spanning two different countries. That’s simultaneous usage, mind you — SCVNGR says that number is far higher if you look at the number of players who participate over the course of an entire weekend.
Looking forward, CEO Seth Priebatsch says that the company will be exiting beta this Feburary, and will soon roll out an API to help encourage further development. SCVNGR may not be as sexy as games like Foursquare and Gowalla, but it sure seems to be carving out a nice niche for itself.