Mino Games

Mino Games Inc. is a developer of free-to-play mobile games, founded in 2011 by Josh Buckley and Sasha MacKinnon. Both founders had prior entrepreneurial experience in the gaming sector as teenagers before establishing the company. The venture originated in San Francisco and participated in the Y Combinator accelerator program in the summer of 2011. In 2016, the company relocated its headquarters to Montréal, Canada, to access the city's talent pool of game developers.

The company's business model is centered around developing character-driven, collectible free-to-play games that generate revenue through in-app purchases and advertisements. Its target market is the global mobile gaming audience, with games available on both iOS and Android platforms. Mino Games has secured significant funding over its history, totaling $48.5 million over six rounds, with backing from prominent investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, and Standard Crypto.

The company's first major success was "Mino Monsters," an early entrant in the monster RPG genre on the iPhone, which launched in 2012 and garnered over 10 million downloads in its first year. A sequel, "Mino Monsters 2: Evolution," was released in October 2015 and achieved notable financial success, generating $1.7 million in revenue in its first month. Following this, the company launched "Cat Game" in the summer of 2019, which also proved to be a global hit, quickly entering the App Store’s Top 100 Grossing Chart and generating over $2 million in its first month. The success of "Cat Game" was supported by a $30 million user acquisition funding deal with Tilting Point. The company has also released "Dog Game" and partnered with Playco to launch "Cat Life," a version of "Cat Game" for Facebook Messenger.

More recently, Mino Games has ventured into Web3 gaming. In February 2023, the company raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Standard Crypto to develop a new franchise called "Dimensionals". This upcoming title is planned as a PC-based RPG with collectible NFT characters, aiming to build a community-led ecosystem. Initially promoted with Web3 integration, the company has since clarified that the PC game will be a premium experience without crypto elements at launch to avoid polarizing players, with a focus on creating an RPG roguelike game for Steam.

Keywords: mobile gaming, free-to-play, F2P, in-app purchases, game developer, Cat Game, Mino Monsters, Josh Buckley, Sasha MacKinnon, Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, collectible character games, RPG, Montréal tech, Dimensionals, Web3 gaming, PC gaming, casual games, mobile entertainment, video games