Plain Vanilla Games Raises $22 Million in Round Led by Sequoia as QuizUp Communities Take Off

REYKJAVIK, Iceland, Dec. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Plain Vanilla Games, the studio behind QuizUp, the fastest growing iPhone game in history, announced today that it has raised $22 million in funding. All existing investors participated including Tencent Holdings and Sequoia Capital, who led the round. These funds bring the total investment in Plain Vanilla Games to more than $27 million, which will be used to support the company's continued growth and expansion.

"The popularity of QuizUp has been as exciting as it has been overwhelming," said Thor Fridriksson, founder and CEO, Plain Vanilla Games. "We built social elements like messages and discussions into the social trivia network from the beginning because we wanted to help people connect over shared interests. But we've been blown away by the number of people who are already creating communities in QuizUp to discuss and debate their passions."

Since the release of QuizUp in November, there are already more than 5 million people using the app. The typical player is highly engaged: on average, users are spending 30 minutes in the app per day playing matches, browsing topics, messaging friends and participating in discussion boards. To date, over 11 million messages have been exchanged through the QuizUp app. People are participating in communities around topics ranging from Physics to the Walking Dead to Nintendo Titles, and discussing everything from suggested trivia questions to scientific theories to in-depth character studies of their favorite historical figures. The discussion boards, which are broken up by topic (currently 280 topics and counting), have already racked up 2.3 million total posts since launch.

"The level of engagement in QuizUp is stunning," said Roelof Botha, partner, Sequoia Capital. "Thor and his team struck the perfect balance of human interaction and gameplay to create an experience that is resonating with millions of gamers around the world. We're thrilled to support Plain Vanilla's continued growth and can't wait for all that's to come in the new year."

About Plain Vanilla Games:
Plain Vanilla Games was founded with a plan to develop beautifully designed, user-centered and addictively entertaining games. Based in San Francisco and Reykjavik, Iceland, the Plain Vanilla team consists of amazing illustrators, motion artists, musicians, graphic designers and programmers who are passionate about creating amazing games. Plain Vanilla Games released QuizUp, the biggest trivia game in the world in 2013. QuizUp is available for free on the iTunes App Store.

About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital helps founders turn imaginative ideas into enduring companies. As the "Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs," the Sequoia team has worked closely with legendary founders such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner of Cisco, David Filo and Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, Max Levchin, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel of PayPal, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley of YouTube, and Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn. Sequoia is now helping the next generation of innovators build the lasting companies of tomorrow.

SOURCE Plain Vanilla Games