Mobile games start-up Vollee Ltd. has raised $7.5 million in its second financing round from existing shareholders Benchmark Capital and BlueRun Ventures.
The company has also made a number of management appointments, including Martin B. Dunsby as president and CEO and William R. Beyer as CFO. Dunsby was previously an executive at Openwave Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:OPWV); Beyer previously served as CFO at BlueRun Ventures portfolio company Bitfone Corporation, which was acquired by Hewlett Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ) in February.
Vollee was founded 18 months ago. The company develops technology for the transmission of games to 3G handsets with the same quality as games on PCs. The company currently employs 50 people, and has raised $11.5 million since it founded, including the present round.
Volee is collaborating with games developers and is currently making modifications, which company co-founder and BRV partner Yossi Hasson says will not take more than a few weeks to complete.
Globes: What sort of business model have you adopted?
Hasson: "If we market the game independently, the preferred model for us would a charge per subscriber. If we opt to work together with the operators, we will draft a suitable model that could be either payment by game, by game stages, or for a monthly subscriber fee, with unrestricted playing time. At present, two Israeli operators are set to launch the platform, a large US operator is about to make a major launch, and another will launch it in Europe. The demand we face at present is more than we can handle."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 16, 2007
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