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Nix Hydra, a female-oriented mobile gaming company, raised $5 million last week from Foundry Group to build upon the success of its Egg Baby game and to develop two more games.
Down the line Nix Hydra has an even bigger vision as it increases its stronghold with the young female demographic (as it inevitably will).
“If we do a fantastic job and we are lucky, we will be the parent company behind a wide range of awesome media and entertainment brands popular with young women,” CEO and co-founder Lina Chen said. “We would be the first company you think of when you are looking for resources (funding, people, knowledge) or an audience for products made for this demographic. This company will also be the place where people who like eccentric, pop and irreverent things gather.”
Nix Hydra already has that eccentric reputation going: its famous Egg Baby game, a mobile game where a virtual pet egg hatches into gift-giving creatures, has been described as funny and edgy. So far it has had 9 million downloads.
LA is the perfect place for Nix Hydra team to embrace its eccentricity: “LA is the worldwide headquarters of dream manufacturing and export, so it’s a great fit for our software construction crew.”
Other LA startups in particular have been instrumental to Nix Hydra’s growth. Chen said the Riot Games team has given her some great advice along the way as well as Snapchat’s team, whose product overlaps demographically with Nix Hydra’s.
The team's LA location hasn’t been a hindrance to fundraising either: they met Boulder-based Foundry Group through one of their angel investors and then “went from initial call to term sheet in about 10 calendar days,” Chen said.
Now, with Foundry Group’s support, the 10-person team will become a 30-person team by the end of the year. The hires will mostly be on the product end, as Chen said advertising is “not a focus or priority" even as they venture into new types of games.
“Starting our next game is something a little strange and maybe a bit risky, but it’s a dream game for us,” Chen said. “We look forward to redefining what it means to be a casual or hardcore game. When we make a hardcore game, it will look nothing like the hardcore games you are used to and actually, we probably won’t name it as such, either.”
The fact that Nix Hydra is looking to blur the line between casual and hardcore gaming isn’t a surprise: following status quo has never quite been the team’s thing. Chen and Naomi Ladizinsky, two Yale graduates, co-founded Nix Hydra because there was a “missing voice” in the gaming industry. They said there were a few games and apps aimed at the young female demographic, but none whose founders are from the same demographic as their players.
The fact that Nix Hydra is founded by females and is made up of game enthusiasts poises the company for exponentially growing its user base, Chen said: “We are in the best position currently to take the biggest share of the young female market in mobile gaming.”
