Pocket Change, a startup offering a virtual currency platform for Android games, has raised $5 million in a Series A round of funding.
Creating a currency platform that works across Android games is already pretty ambitious, but the company describes its goals in an even more grandiose way: “Our mission is to build the world’s first universal virtual currency.” PocketChange says that it has already been integrated into more than 100 games, reaching more than 2 million users in total. It also says the integration process only takes one or two hours.
The round was led by Google Ventures, with existing investors First Round Capital, Scott Banister, and Baroda Ventures also participating. Google Ventures partner Joe Kraus will be joining the PocketChange board of directors, which also includes former Myspace CEO Mike Jones.
Pocket Change was founded by CEO Ari Mir (co-founder of in-image ad network GumGum) and CTO Amos Elliston (formerly CTO of Geni and SVP of Engineering at Yammer). The company was originally called Lunch Money, but renamed itself Pocket Change (see what they did there?) last November. It has now raised a total of $6.4 million.
Founded in 2011, Pocket Change is in San Francisco, California. Our mission is to build the world’s first universal virtual currency. We want to drive more value for game developers while improving the experience for users.
Google Ventures is the financially motivated venture capital arm of Google Inc., founded in 2009. Google Ventures invests in startups in industries including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and others. They aim to invest about $100 million a year, with deal sizes ranging from seed to late-stage investments of tens of millions of dollars, depending on the stage of the opportunity and the company’s need for capital. Google Ventures currently invests in the U.S. and has offices in...
First Round Capital is a venture capital firm that primarily makes early round investments. They look to play an active role in the operations of most the companies they invest in.
Scott is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is best known as a co-founder of IronPort and an early advisor and board member at PayPal. Scott Banister started his career as a pioneer in the email business. He was Founder and VP of Technology at ListBot, the largest ASP for business email list hosting. ListBot was acquired by Microsoft. After ListBot, Scott spent his time working with other start-ups as a board member and investor. These start-ups include eVoice,...
Baroda Ventures is a Los Angeles based venture capital firm founded in 1998 by philanthropist and technology entrepreneur David C. Bohnett, the founder of GeoCities, an Internet-based media company, publicly traded on NASDAQ and subsequently acquired by Yahoo! They are focused on early stage venture investments (Seed and Series A) in the consumer internet, SaaS, and digital media industries ranging from $100K to $5M with a particular focus on Los Angeles and Southern California based companies. They love working side-by-side...
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