Founded in September 2015, Stockholm-based mobile studio Like a Boss Games (or LAB Games for short), have already received their first VC investment, and is now ready to attack the smartphone sports game market.
It’s not every day you hear about a mobile game developer receiving a Venture Capital investment during its first month of existence, but then again, LAB Games is not your everyday mobile studio.
The Swedish 4-man team behind the studio has plenty of experience within the games industry already, coming from positions at EA, Stardoll, King, and the like. And this experience is something LAB Games CEO Alex Aguilera believes has played a big role in landing the VC investment so early.
The LAB Games founding team
“Raising money for an early stage gaming startup is never an easy process. Luckily, I’ve been around for a while and had some already established investor contacts. And most importantly, we managed to put together a very experienced team consisting of top talents with backgrounds from some of the world’s most successful gaming companies.”, he says to NordicGameBits, and continues:
“When you have the team and plan, it’s all about going out and pitching your company to the right investors. Then they will decide if they believe in you or not based on various factors from their end, past experience, fund size/status, personal believes etc.”.
The total seed investment amount has not yet been disclosed, but Aguilera reveals that it is enough for the team to fully develop the first game, do a proper soft launch at the end of next year, and then do the actual launch the coming months after that.
“We are keeping the team size small and focusing more on getting the right people onboard at this stage.”, Aguilera adds.
With the investment in hand, LAB Games has set out to develop its first game in a series of free-to-play social sports games developed for a core target group of sports fans across the globe – a niche that has been overlooked by most major mobile studios until now, Aguilera says.
“Sports is a games category which in terms of the amount of the volume of passionate sports fans there is, isn’t as big or evolved as it should / could be.”
“What separates us from most gaming startups is that LAB Games is targeting very niche communities within the sports sector so we are laser focused on who our games needs to attract and entertain.”
And focusing on a specific niche within the crowded mobile games space is a strategy LAB Games not only follows themselves, but would also recommend to other developers finding the increasing competition in the mobile space frustrating.
“I’m not a Gandalf of gaming but from my past experience both in gaming and other industries is that when things get really competitive, it is often a good idea to avoid everything that is casual / broad and go as niche as possible to grow.”, Aguilera concludes.