Hiber has raised €1.9 million in a second round of seed funding for its web platform that makes it easy to create user-generated games. The investors of the round include Luminar Ventures, Wild Sloths, Bumble Ventures, Rasmussen, Sybo, Konvoy Ventures, and the GFR Fund.
Founded in 2017, Hiber is building a next generation social gaming platform. The platform is free to use and designed for social interaction – users can create and play together and share their content with the rest of the world, without needing to code. The games created on the platform (either on PC or iOS/Android) range from traditional game content, to memorials, personal messages, challenges, among others.
During the height of the coronavirus lockdown earlier this year, the startup launched and actually accelerated its growth, as more influencers created their own games for their followers. “We were coming out at the worst possible time you could,” said Hiber‘s CEO Michael Yngfors. “We started outreach when COVID-19 hit the world in March. But users have been coming to express themselves and hang out with other friends. So our metrics went through the roof.”
Due to its social nature, users can express themselves with what they create. The platform now has more than 300,000 games from 250,000 monthly active users.
Subway Surfers game publisher Sybo participated in the investment, and additionally their CEO Mathias Gredal Nørvig joined Hiber’s board of directors. He said, “Joining the board of Hiber is an opportunity to be a part of something that is changing the way a generation communicates using games. Our goal is to help Hiber achieve all of the success possible and to support the company through this important time in its evolution”.
“We had a lot of interest in the round, which gave us the opportunity to ensure we have the right investors on board at this stage,” said Hiber’s CEO and co-founder Michael Yngfors. “Each of the new investors brings additional expertise and guidance to our business. With regards to GenZ, SaaS platforms, Asian Markets, not to mention the people responsible for the largest mobile game franchise ever created, we feel like we have a really deep bench of knowledge to draw upon.”
Hiber is free for now, but the company is set to introduce monetization next year.
