Farmville veterans raise $1.5 million for mobile games
Red Hot Labs seeks to create a mobile development platform
New startup Red Hot Labs has raised $1.5 million to create a new mobile development platform. According to VentureBeat, the San Francisco-based company was founded by two former Zynga employees who were behind Farmville: Amitt Mahajan and Joel Poloney. The pair originally founded social game company MyMiniLife, which was purchased by Zynga in 2009. MyMiniLife's technology was then used to develop FarmVille.
The proposed platform will allow developers to quickly create games and publish them on multiple platforms. The team - which consists of six employees - will be creating a suite of initial titles to show that the platform works.
"It's an approach where we're eating our own dog food," Mahajan told VentureBeat.
"In the last few years, the combination of powerful technology combined with intuitive user interfaces built on top of Facebook has disrupted the industry and changed the way consumers interact with one another. We believe mobile is the obvious next disruptive platform, but the tools to realize its potential do not yet exist. Our focus is on creating better ways of building and distributing applications that will be essential to companies and consumers in an increasingly mobile-centric world."
Investors in this round of funding include Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, SV Angel, General Catalyst, and Japan's IT-Farm. The company's previous seed round included angel investors Keith Rabois, Chris Dixon, Bill Tai, Charles Huang, and Kai Huang.
[Image via Forbes]