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Scopely chief business officer Andy Kleinman is stepping out to launch his own mobile startup studio called MobLabs. Kleinman had been with Scopely a little over two years, and before Scopely he had been with Zynga.
“What I wanted to do was get out of games,” said Kleinman to TechCrunch. “It’s been too many years of games.”
Even before Scopely and Zynga, Kleinman co-founded Vostu, a gaming company in Latin America, and was part of Three Mellons a gaming company that was acquired by Playdom. To MobLabs, Kleinman said he is bringing executives with backgrounds at companies like Scopely, Zynga, Yahoo and Disney.
“Our team has many years of experience building mobile products and understanding the mechanics that create the highest levels of engagement for users, lower marketing costs through organic viral growth, and maximize opportunities for monetization,” MobLabs said on its Linkedin page.
Many of the techniques MobLabs will be using mimic Scopely’s organization. Kleinman’s now former gaming studio, Scopely has found a lot of success developing games internally while also making strategic partnerships with independent developers. The studio uses its gaming expertise to perfect games, then uses its promotional expertise to give games a movie-like launch.
“I was thinking about how to leverage all the stuff I learned from games,” said Kleinman. “I thought, why don’t we put a team together with competencies around these areas in mobile.”
Though mobile apps and games are very similar in terms of the mechanics of being launched, the demographics around mobile apps may be more difficult to tap into. Much of Scopely’s success relied on nurturing a network of Scopely games enthusiasts who wanted to be notified anytime a new game came out. It remains to be seen how MobLabs will tackle the same network concept with mobile apps.
MobLabs has 14 employees already located in the US as well as China. Once everything is finalized it will have three co-founders. MobLabs is currently in stealth mode.
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