TinyCo racks up $20m in funding

San Francisco-based mobile developer TinyCo revealed the close of a $20 million round of funding and the appointment of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O’Brien to its board.

TinyCo is best known for Tiny Monsters and Tiny Castle, and recently picked up former Mobile Pie creative director, Develop columnist, and free-to-play expert Will Luton.

The company’s games have been downloaded more than 85 million times on Google, Amazon, and Apple’s mobile platforms.

The investment, led by Pinnacle Ventures with Andreessen Horowitz contributing, is supposed to help TinyCo create deeper, higher quality games through the hire of design and production talent.

"Mobile gamers aren’t stupid – they want more from the market than uninspired clones and low production values," said TinyCo CEO and co-founder Suli Ali.

"The only path forward is to produce games that bring something special to the table. That’s why we’ve taken the time to improve our processes and tighten our focus. We have to develop bigger, better games."

O’Brien might be a newcomer to the board, but he’s anything but a new face in the industry. While president and co-founder of ArenaNet he was executive producer of the Guild Wars games, and at Blizzard he worked on such big-name franchises as Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo.

“Mike is an incredible executive who has built great games businesses,” said TinyCo’s head of business operations Andrew N. Green.

“With his breadth of experience we will expedite our learning and strengthen TinyCo’s growth over the long term.”