Plexchat Raises $7 Million to Provide a Home for Mobile Gamers

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., July 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Plexchat, the company building a communication platform for mobile gamers, announced today that it has raised a seed round of $7 million led by Raine Ventures, the venture capital arm of The Raine Group. Additional investors include First Round Capital, Dream Incubator, Lumia Capital, Macro Ventures, Singularity Ventures and Hany Nada (founding partner of GGVC).

The funding will be used to establish Plexchat as the premiere application for mobile gamers to connect and communicate about the games they love. Gordon Rubenstein, Managing Partner at Raine Ventures, will join Plexchat's board of directors.

"Shawn is the most brilliant mind in the gaming sector—no one understands and appreciates the communications needs of the gaming community better," said Mr. Rubenstein. "Entertainment products succeed when they are shared, and we saw a major opportunity to help Shawn and his authentic team expand Plexchat and play a pivotal role in the next evolution of how mobile games and communities are discovered."

Despite it being the largest segment of the video game industry by revenue and number of players, mobile gaming has no dedicated platform for community. Providing this type of platform gives millions of gamers a new communication channel that leverages the unique aspects of the phone, and provides mobile developers with new mechanisms to reach their audience. Plexchat is ideally situation to serve both needs.

"The lack of community is an existential crisis for mobile games," said Shawn Foust, CEO of Plexchat. "This industry needs connective tissue, between games and between players, to thrive. Our job is to be the communication conduit that builds these bridges before the industry is hollowed out by performance marketing. Raine and our other investors clearly have the ability to help us do just that."

"Successful entertainment businesses in the 21st century undertake fan management," said Hideaki Ono, Senior Manager at Dream Incubator. "Plexchat is a rare and solid company that brings fan management to mobile gamers, mobile gaming companies and mobile gaming developers around the world. We are thrilled to work with Shawn and his team to help mobile gaming communities especially Japanese gamers, Japanese gaming companies and Japanese gaming developers expand their global reach."

Available on iOS and Android, Plexchat is a chat application designed to facilitate rich, live conversations within large, open communities of gamers. The company focuses on making it easy to add context to chat messages and move beyond pure text. Key features include:

• Smart Messages: Users can leverage multiple types of messages (replies, polls, galleries).
• Community Building Tools: Ranks, roles, participation limitations, bans, squelches, invite-only rooms, and more.
• Responsive Rooms: Chat rooms respond to a user's interests and provide tools specific to those games.
• Game Wiki: Embedded wikis that allow players to quickly reference and link information related to the games they play.

In addition to rapidly expanding the variety and depth of communication available within the application, Plexchat is an active supporter of content creators, ranging from streamers to wiki builders. These partnerships allow Plexchat to encourage the growth of the influencer ecosystem while simultaneously providing access to high quality content for consumption within the application.

Plexchat has sponsored dozens of tournaments with an ever-growing roster of creators. These efforts have been recognized and actively supported by numerous top grossing developers.

About Plexchat
Plexchat is a chat platform dedicated to building a home for mobile gamers. Plexchat's unique technology allows it to provide large, open communities (thousands of chat rooms are already active on the platform) that are simultaneously responsive to the context surrounding those communities. Founded in 2015, Plexchat recently launched its application on the iOS and Android stores and begun building a community designed to facilitate and grow word of mouth.  

About The Raine Group
The Raine Group is a global merchant bank focused exclusively on technology, media, and telecommunications. Raine has in excess of $2.5 billion in assets under management. The firm has offices in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, and Shanghai. With a global reach, Raine focuses on investment and advisory opportunities where its deep industry experience and unique network of strategic relationships can create value for portfolio companies and clients. For more information visit http://www.raine.com/.

About Dream Incubator Inc.
Dream Incubator Inc. (TYO: 4310), "the Business Producing Company," is a strategic consulting and business development firm primarily for corporate clients and governmental institutions. Dream Incubator provides both capital and professional services to next-generation companies to support their growth and expansion, while also operating their own businesses.

Media Contact:
ASC Advisors
Mary Beth Grover / Taylor Ingraham
203-992-1230
[email protected] / [email protected] 

SOURCE The Raine Group

Related Links

http://www.raine.com