Big Fish Games, the world’s leading online destination for games and interactive entertainment, announced on Friday, Sept. 12, that it closed $83.3 million in common stock financing. To see the full announcement, click here.
The financing from Balderton Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Salmon River Capital is significant as it reinforces how, despite the economic downtown, venture funding is still available for companies that are proven and scalable, with talented and experienced management teams. According to the National Venture Capital Association, the deal is one of the top 15 in the non-life sciences area (in size of funding) in the United States and the largest in Washington State thus far in 2008.
Although Big Fish Games plans to use the funding to accelerate its global expansion, the purpose of the funding was not to gain capital finances. Rather, as Big Fish Games strives to strengthen its leadership position in the industry, it will use the capital to build functionality and mature the company.
To fully leverage the significance of the news and highlight the long-term vision of Big Fish Games, Communiqué PR conducted media outreach in advance of the announcement and facilitated interviews with key journalists from publications including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle Times, Puget Sound Business Journal, Fortune and KOMO 1000 Radio.
This allowed the journalists to speak one-on-one with Big Fish Games’ CEO, Jeremy Lewis, providing him with an opportunity to paint the larger picture and illustrate the obstacles Big Fish Games overcame to achieve industry dominance. The story surrounding the funding announcement was not just about the amount of the financing, it was about the strides Big Fish Games made to grow from a bootstrapped start up to a profitable company, growing at a rate of 120% to 220% annually since its founding in 2002.
The funding announcement received immense media attention. Communiqué PR’s efforts helped garner more than 45 positive articles in print newspapers, blogs and radio broadcast. Below we have included links to 10 articles about the funding announcement which highlight the great effort made by Big Fish Games and Communiqué PR.
Dow Jones Venture Wire
Gamasutra
Puget Sound Business Journal
Red Herring
Seattle Times
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
TheDeal.com
The New York Times
VentureBeat
Washington Post Tech Crunch