I’m thrilled to share the news that Seriously has joined Playtika. It’s been an incredible journey working with the team since 2013 when it was just Andrew, Petri and a deck, to now a talented roster of 80+ designers, engineers, data scientists, marketers, finance and ops specialists, along with experienced and supportive fellow investors and board members in Marta Sjögren (Northzone), Jimmy Fussing Nielsen (Heartcore) and Michael Montgomery. Congratulations Andrew, Petri and the rest of the Seriously team!

When we led the first financing round in Seriously in 2013, it was because of the unfair advantage of founding duo Andrew and Petri. They are the rare combination of creative vision and operational chops that was able to unite the best IP and marketing expertise in Los Angeles with the engineering and creative design sensibilities of Helsinki. The two had previously worked closely together at Rovio (Angry Birds), where Andrew headed up all strategy and business development, and Petri headed up all game studios, helping build a mobile game IP that has seen over 1B+ downloads. With Seriously their goal was to take all those learnings and create original, iconic IPs that can withstand the test of time. The key is in leveraging the direct customer ties of mobile games plus scalable video content (both in-house and user generated) that help expand the game world and characters. With that we became strong believers and jumped on the journey.

Since then we’ve invested in every financing round. When the Best Fiends mobile game launched holiday period of 2014, it had just a couple dozen characters and 80 levels built by 12 people. 100 million downloads later, the franchise now has over 500 characters and over 3,500 levels, built by a team of 80 plus. In addition to the game, the Best Fiends franchise counts 5 quality animated shorts with over 20 million views, and a broad social following of over 3 million subscribers who watch regular video series leveraging influencers and user generated content. All of this was achieved with less than $33 million of financing. Seriously became profitable in 2017, 2018 was the biggest year at $69 million in revenue, and 2019 is well on its way to surpass that and accelerate the 65% plus year on year growth rate.

The team has laid the foundation for an incredibly efficient and scalable business. Joining Playtika will help pour fuel on the fire and surround Seriously with enormous scale in marketing and data science. Playtika started in social casino games in 2010, and now has a team of over 2,800 across 17 offices around the world. Their ambition is to become the largest Western-facing mobile games company, and Seriously provides a critical accelerant with their creative expertise. Playtika is also experienced in combining and merging disparate and diverse teams, having successfully acquired and accelerated numerous successful startups such as Bingo Blitz, World Series of Poker, House of Fun, Jelly Button Games, Supertreat and Wooga from all over the world.

Thank you Andrew and Petri for sharing the journey with us so far. We will be cheering you on as you and the rest of the team run Seriously within the broader Playtika family and continue on the mission to build the next generation of lasting entertainment franchises.