Yesterday at the Startup Lessons Learned conference in San Francisco, Brett Durrett, James Birchler and Timothy Fitz from avatar-based social network and 3D virtual world IMVU took the stage and talked about scaling startups (worth your time).
IMVU CEO Cary Rosenzweig didn’t come speak at the event, but was featured in a video preview on the event website (third video on that page).
In this video – I’m not sure how long it has been online already – Rosenzweig boasts about the company’s profitability and cites its annual revenue run rate, which he says is now at $40 million.
This means that if you multiplied the company’s current monthly revenue times 12, you’d get $40 million. Notably, that’s up from a $25 million annual revenue run rate back in October 2009. That’s a lot of growth in income in roughly half a year.
So how did revenue increase? Simple: more users buying and earning credits in the 3D world and buying virtual goods, such as clothing for their avatars to furniture for their virtual rooms.
On a sidenote: in charge of revenue generation at IMVU is Lee Clancy, formerly Senior Director for Community Products at Yahoo.
IMVU was founded in 2004 and is backed by $29 million in venture capital, raised over 4 rounds. The company employs 60 people in Palo Alto, California, according to its website.
In October, the company claimed more than 40 million registered users and 6 million unique visitors per month (numbers they also use on their about page), but I’ve been unable to retrieve more recent numbers.
(Thanks to Kyle Mulka for the heads up)
Founded in 2004, IMVU Inc. (www.imvu.com) is an online destination where adults and teens meet new people in 3D. IMVU won the 2008 Virtual Worlds Innovation Award and was also named a Rising Star in the 2008 Silicon Valley Technology Fast 50 program. Still in public beta, the company has already reached major milestones, including 25 million registered users, 100,000 registered developers and $1 million in revenue each month. Members of IMVU have fun meeting new people with similar...
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