Social Point is
a social game developer providing social networks and mobile devices-enabled
games. The company is now part of the American Holding Take-Two Interactive. Social Point began creating free online games for Facebook in 2008.
Today the company is the 3rd largest game developer on Facebook, with a reach
of more than 50 million players worldwide every month.
Now, let’s see some
figures: The company’s biggest hit is Dragon City, which boasts over 24.7
million monthly active users (MAUs). This year alone, the game’s MAUs are up
65.5 percent, and its daily active users (DAUs) are up over 20 percent. The
developer boasts over 38.5 million MAUs on the platform, an increase of 172
percent year-over-year. DAUs are at almost 7.8 million, up 283 percent
year-over-year. DAU/MAU engagement has increased almost 6 percent
year-over-year, showing that more users are playing one of Social Point’s games
on a daily basis. The company says it’s on pace to break $100 million in
revenue in 2014.
What are the 5
Reasons for success when so many other similar start-up failed?
1. Following an
opportunity: The disrupting market of Social games
Answering a need is the key to growth and
raising interest among the targeted consumers. Social Point with free online
Social games perfectly succeeds to answer a need. The worldwide
revenue of social gaming is increasing by 25% every year and is expected to
keep doing so until 2016. They followed the growth of social networks like
facebook. They start to follow an opportunity at the good timing.
2. Founders with
Talent, Market knowledge and Vision
Horacio Martos and Andrés Bou co-founded Social Point
in 2008. Prior to founding Social Point, Andrés and Horacio worked as computer
analysts and consultants in the tech sector. They both hold Bachelors degrees
in Computer Science from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and Masters
degrees in Entrepreneurship from the École de Management de Normandie.
The founders also have a vision which is to connect
players through social gaming, and providing the most enjoyable, immersive
playing experience. They keep the same vision today.
3. Flexible Strategy
and business model
They understood the market and the best business model
to apply in their beginning. As a result they focused on producing games you
could play for free and where users could go premium. Now, they also succeeded
to adapt themselves to the evolution of the technology. In the last years, they
clearly understood the boom of the mobile technologies. As a result, they have
developed a new category of gaming they call “MASS”, short for mobile action
social strategy.
4.
The scalability of the business in different markets
beyond native borders:
The possibility to scale a business model in any
market is also one of the major sources of success for a tech startup. It is
one of the major advantage of being a small and dynamic company like a startup:
the traditional boundaries existing for “regular” companies don’t exist anymore
or at least don’t concern such structures as long as your model can be easily
adapted to different markets and cultures. Same is Social Point is based in
Spain, today, they are getting 98% of revenue outside Spain.
5. Technology
The use of technology has been
key to the success of Social Point. Technology has provided the businesses with
platforms to be more accessible, reach a larger number of customers, and
expedite the interaction between the business and the customer .Thanks to the
evolution of the Web and the mobile technology they were able to acquire new
users on a viral way, and to measure and improve the engagement of their games.
They made use of the technological strength of social networks and they apply
the latest A/B Testing and user testing tools to optimize their revenue.
As a result of their successful
growth and at the same time, Social Point succeeded to set experienced investors on board to
keep growing fast and on an organized way.
In June 2011, they raised $3,4M from Nauta Capital. In
June 2012, they raised $7,4M from IDInvest Partners, BBVA and Nauta. In
February 2013, they raised $3,9M from Greylock partners.It was just announced
on July 22, 2014 a further investment of $30M from Highland Capital to further invest on Mobile and in
the Asian market. In 2016, it generated $90 million in annual revenue and $20
million in profits according to parent company Take-Two Interactive.
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