Heyzap just received seed funding from Union Square Ventures. Let's take a look at what it's up to.
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!
Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs
Heyzap
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Heyzap allows any website or blog to take the most exciting flash games and put them into their website. This results in the website/blog having increased traffic, user time of site and engagement. When youtube got video out everywhere over the internet, it changed the entire experience of the internet.
Jude Gomila
Joined Vator on
An entrepreneur and angel investor who has invested in over 150 startups over the past ten years.