Startup Sessions episode

An inside look at Heyzap

Heyzap just received seed funding from Union Square Ventures. Let's take a look at what it's up to.


Innovation show by Chris Caceres
June 3, 2009 | Comments (7)
Short URL: http://vator.tv/n/8b2

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Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund, Co-founders of Heyzap, decided it would be best to store their recent round of seed funding, safely away in the office refrigerator.

Huh?  You may be saying to yourself, but the two clever young fellows, who’ve just moved out to San Francisco from the UK, have all the reason to.  “Because the banks are not in a very good shape right now…with the credit crunch, you’ve got to keep your money indoors, not in the bank,” said Gomila firmly.

I asked the two if VatorNews could take a look inside the fridge to find out exactly how much the obscurely described round of somewhere, “between $500,000 to $1 million dollar” investment exactly was…but the door wouldn't budge.

All joking aside, Heyzap is on its way to building a great product. 

Launched in January of 2009, Heyzap is looking to become the “YouTube for Flash games.”  Heyzap offers a widget which can be embedded into pretty much any website or blog.  It includes a catalog of over 12,000 games right now and is adding more.   At the moment, Heyzap says it has more than 20,000 sites embedding its video game player - Current.com, being one of the many, which has the player embedded in its gaming section.  

Fresh out of Y-Combinator,  Heyzap received funding from Union Square Ventures, whos portfolio companies include the familiar Twitter, Tumblr, Zynga, Boxee and Meetup.   Heyzap plans to use to funding to hire on a few top knotch programmers and continue building the product while keeping the company, “lean.”

As for business model, Heyzap offers a platform for game developers to make cash through advertising.  Developers who upload their games to the platform share revenues with Heyzap as well as Mochi Media, which embeds the ads into the player.

In this premier episode of ‘Startup Sessions’, you’ll get the pleasure of meeting Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund, as they guide us through Heyzap.

If you are a Silicon Valley startup and would like to be featured on ‘Startup Sessions,’ feel free to contact Chris Caceres on Vator.tv.

***update*** Please leave your comments on what you think of video and who we should feature next!

 

heyzap.com - embed games

Related companies, investors and entrepreneurs

Plogo_www-heyzap-com_logo_usv_180
www.heyzap.com
Startup/Business
(0 ratings)
1273 views
Description: Heyzap allows any website or blog to take the most exciting flash games and put them into their website. This results in the website/blo...
6563
Jude Gomila
Co founder,
Heyzap
Bio: Entrepreneur

7 comments

Bambi Francisco
Bambi Francisco, 170 days ago
"I asked the two if VatorNews could take a look inside the fridge to find out exactly how much the obscurely described round of somewhere, “between $500,000 to $1 million dollar” investment exactly was…but the door wouldn't budge." - Nice line.

Login to reply Bambi


Bambi Francisco
Bambi Francisco, 170 days ago
This piece is getting a lot of attention on Twitter. Seems people think storing funds in the fridge is fine. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=vator.tv

Login to reply Bambi


Ezra Roizen
Ezra Roizen, 169 days ago
Nice job Chris - this is really great stuff.

Login to reply Ezra


Gary Silver
Gary Silver, 169 days ago
I guess cool cash goes in the fridge, and in the freezer... frozen assets? Nice production Chris.

Login to reply Gary


Rene Merzius
Rene Merzius, 169 days ago
Lol, indeed it is a humorist line.

Login to reply Rene


Bambi Francisco
Bambi Francisco, 169 days ago
good one, Gary

Login to reply Bambi


Chris Caceres
Chris Caceres, 169 days ago
Glad you guys liked, wanted to try something different with this video and it seemed to have worked! We'll definitely do another episode in the next few weeks. If you have any ideas of startups to cover, let me know.

Login to reply Chris


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