Bunch’s Series A
Congratulations to our portfolio company Bunch, who have raised a $20m Series A round led by General Catalyst. Reflective of their mission to bring friends together through video chat for games, Bunch has brought in the great and the good within the gaming industry in raising capital, including new investors Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive Software, Krafton (PUBG), Ubisoft and Mixi, who every year serve hundreds of millions of gamers.
Since we led Bunch’s first funding round in 2018, we have been working closely with the team to help realise their vision and have been blown away by how quickly they have been able to achieve product-market fit. Selcuk’s pitch reflected our own viewpoint of games as increasingly social activities: the metaphorical fireplace for friends to gather around and hang out. Indeed, we explored our investment thesis into Bunch in a previous post (for our deep dive, see here), and feel that – what with the small matter of a global pandemic occurring between that blog post and the announcement of this round – our view has been vindicated. Games more than ever, bring us together. If you can’t take our word for it, then read some of the testimonials that users have left on Bunch’s app store page.
For developers and publishers, social integrations and play within a game isn’t just a ‘nice-to-have’ any more but a commercial necessity. Superdata estimates eight out of the top 10 grossing titles of 2019 were multiplayer games (the exceptions being Candy Crush and Fate/Grand Order, both of which have social features). This trend is not just limited to PC and console games: App Annie calculate that more than ⅔ of the top 50 mobile games in the US have at least one social feature, a figure that continues to grow. In a time when games have gone mainstream, as long as you have a phone, you’re a gamer. And as a gamer, you want to be able to enjoy games with your friends. Bunch provides that social layer for the mobile generation as they look beyond solo entertainment, and empowers developers to create new experiences.
In raising this round, Bunch has brought on further games industry leaders to support their cause and establish themselves as the go-to solution for mobile live chat. This unprecedented coalition of games industry titans uniting and investing into such a young company is descriptive of the potential we all see in Bunch. Over the course of the past six months, Bunch has experienced phenomenal user growth and with this new injection of capital, are primed to enable the next generation of mobile games. We can’t wait to see what they’ll build over the next six months and beyond.
For more information about Bunch, please visit http://bunch.live. Bunch can be downloaded by visiting the App Store or Google Play.
