Press
September 27, 2012
Upstart: Peter Relan relishes YouWeb incubator
September 7, 2012
VentureBeat: YouWeb incubator founder launches Q&A forum for tech entrepreneurs
Vator News: YouWeb creator Peter Relan debuts FounderQuorum
August 24, 2012
Techcrunch: Agawi reveals Version 2.0 of Cloud Gaming Platform
July 26, 2012
Bloomberg TV: Relan: Future of Gaming Is On Mobile
Crowdstar CEO Peter Relan discusses why his company stopped making new games for Facebook. He speaks with Sara Eisen on Bloomberg Television’s “Money Moves.” (Source: Bloomberg)
July 20, 2012
Bloomberg TV: Crowdstar Targets Younger Female Gamers, CEO Says
Peter Relan, chief executive officer at CrowdStar, talks about the company’s business strategy and plans for mobile games. Relan speaks with Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg)
July 13, 2012
VentureBeat: Finally, an incubator that doesn’t treat entrepreneurs like expendable ‘spaghetti’
Every incubator has a formula, and most of those formulas involve throwing “spaghetti” of some kind against the proverbial wall to find out what will stick.
July 10, 2012
VentureBeat: Jason Citron’s Phoenix Guild prepares for the post-PC world of gaming
Consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony may still rule the living room, but Aurora Feint (and OpenFeint) founder Jason Citron has his eye a time on when tablets will take over. Hardcore tablet gaming is the purview of his latest game startup, Phoenix Guild, for which he’s raised $1.1 million in funding.
July 5, 2012
VentureBeat: Here’s what you’re missing from YouWeb and TapJoy at GamesBeat and MobileBeat 2012
We’re pleased to have YouWeb and Tapjoy joining in on the fun at MobileBeat 2012 andGamesBeat 2012 next week in San Francisco. YouWeb shines the spotlight on its portfolio of companies across two breakout sessions, and TapJoy CEO Mihir Shah helps us to figure out the mysteries of monetization, distribution, and discovery.
June 11, 2012
NPR: (Audio)Game Maker Stunted By Facebook Turns To Mobile
Audie Cornish talks with Peter Relan, CEO of social media gaming company CrowdStar
May 22, 2012
ReadWriteWeb: Mobile Devices and Browsers Aren’t Ready for HTML5
It is one thing to say that apps built in HTML5 function across every device on the market. It is another thing to run those apps.
Development studio Spaceport.io used its PerfMarks II testing platformto determine which browsers and devices run HTML5 best. PerfMarks II tests “attempt to translate, scale, or rotate as many objects as possible on various devices while maintaining 30 frames per second or better,” according to the studio’s report.
May 16, 2012
VentureBeat: iSwifter launches full-featured mobile Facebook app — with social games included — on iPad
The problem with Facebook’s mobile app is that it doesn’t run games. The web-based site is built with Adobe Flash, but that runs poorly on mobile devices. As a result, Facebook can display its news feed and photos on its mobile app, but not the social games that are played by more than half of the social network’s users.
May 1, 2012
VentureBeat: OpenFeint founder Jason Citron unveils new post-PC social game company
Jason Citron scored big when he sold OpenFeint to Japan’s Gree for $104 million. Now the entrepreneur is back again with a new company called Phoenix Guild.
April 30, 2012
VentureBeat: Crowdstar teams up with Gree for social mobile games
Shifting from Facebook to mobile, Crowdstar is announcing today that it will publish games through Gree‘s worldwide mobile social network.
Venture Beat: YouWeb and StartEngine incubators to hold Double Demo Day for 20 startups
When it comes to startup demos, more is better. So incubators YouWeb and StartEngine are combining their efforts to host a joint demo day for 20 startups funded by the two.
March 5, 2012
VentureBeat: iSwifter makes iPad game streaming available to all PC game companies(exclusive)
iSwifter found a niche for its cloud streaming service by enabling Flash games to run on the iPad. Now it is extending its platform so that a wider swatch of PC game companies can stream their games to Apple’s tablet.
March 5, 2012
All Things D: The iPhone and iPad Tops for HTML5, With Google’s Galaxy Nexus a Distant Second
While many people talk about HTML5 as a potential long-term threat to Apple’s mobile dominance, it turns out that, these days, iOS does the best job of rendering the Web standards.
January 27, 2012
Forbes: Social Movies: Three Start-Ups That Might Boost Hollywood’s Box-Office Prospects
MoviePal: Scan Movie Trailers Like You Would A Song
MoviePal’s notion is similar to Watch It, but they add the sound-tagging touch. Much like Shazam, which is also creating entertainment databases, your iOS device can listen to a few seconds of a movie trailer and log that movie. The app, developed by YouWeb’s Suneet Shah and Rohan Relan, not only lets you share your intent, and remind you when the movie is released, but it also finds the trailer online to share that as well.
December 22, 2011
TechCrunch: YouWeb’s MoviePal Wants To Be The Shazam For Watching Movie Trailers
A new startup is launching out of incubator YouWeb today that aims to make watching movie trailers more social. MoviePal, an iOS app, allows you to watch movie trailers and share them with friends.
December 22, 2011
VentureBeat: MoviePal helps mobile users discover and share film trailers
Startup incubator YouWeb has launched a new iPhone app called MoviePal that lets you identify and find trailers on the web while sitting in a movie theater.
December 9, 2011
VentureBeat: YouWeb’s Pluto Games raises $500K for tablet-based music education games
Pluto Games is spinning out of game incubator YouWeb today, raising $500,000 in seed money in the process. Pluto Games will use the money to foster its business of creating tablet apps that teach kids how to play and enjoy music.
December 9, 2011
TechCrunch: Mobile ‘Edutainment’ App For Kids Pluto Games Raises $500K From YouWeb And Others
Pluto Games, a mobile ‘edutainment’ platform for kids, has raised $500,000 in seed funding from incubator YouWeb and angel investors including co-founder and chairman of Silver Lake Dave Roux; Brett Wander, Chief Investment Officer at Charles Schwab; and Praful Shah, former VP Marketing at WebEx. As part of the investment, Pluto Games is spinning off from YouWeb as an independent company.
August 23, 2011
TechCrunch: OpenFeint And CrowdStar Incubator YouWeb Raises $2 Million
YouWeb, the social incubator behind OpenFeint, CrowdStar, Sibblingz and iSwifter, has raised another $2 million in funding from a number of angel investors including Dave Roux (the co-founder and chairman of Silver Lake Partners, Dave Whorton (the founder of Tugboat Ventures), Praful Shah, Brett Wander, Winston Cho and YouWeb founder Peter Relan. The company had previously raised $700,000 in funding.
August 22, 2011
TechCrunch: Streaming Flash Games Startup iSwifter Says Revenue Will Pass $10M This Year
iSwifter, an iPad app that allows developers to stream flash games to the tablet device, is announcing that revenue for 2011 will past $10 million. That’s impressive considering the company is only a year old.
July 20, 2011
Bloomberg TV: Crowdstar Targets Younger Female Gamers, CEO Says
July 15, 2011
TechCrunch: CrowdStar And YouWeb Launch $10M StarFund For Mobile Social Game Development
Social gaming company CrowdStar is teaming up with the incubator which it was spawned from, YouWeb, to launch a $10 million venture fund, called the StarFund. The fund will make investments in promising mobile game developers.
Entrepreneur: (Video) The Innovators: YouWeb’s Peter Relan
April 21, 2011
TechCrunch: Japanese Company GREE Buys Mobile Social Gaming Platform OpenFeint For $104 Million In Cash
Mobile gaming startup OpenFeint, has been acquired by Japanese mobile gaming company GREE for $104 million in cash plus additional capital for growth of the OpenFeint platform. OpenFeint and its team will remain with long-term incentives, including CEO and founder Jason Citron, says the company.
January 14, 2011
VentureBeat: Peter Relan takes over as CEO of social game firm CrowdStar
Novemeber 18, 2010
Forbes: Exclusive: YouWeb, Billion-Dollar Incubator?
But basically, if you go by YouWeb’s comparison estimates, Relan has turned $700,000 into around $1 billion in value in just three years, and created close to 200 jobs in the process.To be sure, the $1 billion isn’t all YouWeb’s. Relan says the incubator takes about a one-third stake in each startup, hefty compared to Y Combinator’s 5% stake of pure equity. But Relan’s involvement is also higher — he joins each startup as a co-founder in the incubation phase.
September 16, 2010
VentureBeat: iSwifter can stream Flash games to iPads and other mobile devices
iSwifter has created a Flash streaming service that is operated in the cloud, or web-connected data centers. With iSwifter, game developers can find a way to get their content from one platform to another, even if there is an obstacle standing in their way.
July 8, 2010
TechCrunch: Open Feint Brings Plug-And-Play Social Gaming Platform To Android Phones
Last year, Aurora Feint launched a comprehensive social gaming platform dubbed OpenFeint that has seen success in attracting independent iPhone game developers to its rapidly growing community. But Android also has potential as a vibrant social gaming platform with its growing community of gaming developers. Today, OpenFeint is announcing a soon to be released platform for Android apps.
June 29, 2010
VentureBeat: Social game firm Crowdstar embraces Facebook Credits in five-year agreement
Crowdstar plans to get rid of its own in-game currencies and exclusively adopt Facebook Credits in all of its games said Niren Hiro, chief executive of Crowdstar in Burlingame, Calif., in an interview. Crowdstar is a big player on Facebook, with more than 50 million users in games that include the hit titles Happy Aquarium, Happy Island, Zoo Paradise, Happy Pets and Hello City.
June 15, 2010
Wall Street Journal: Some Game Developers Don’t ‘Like’ Facebook’s New Virtual Currency
Two-year-old CrowdStar began accepting Facebook Credits in December for virtual goods sold through its five games, which are exclusively on Facebook. Sales of the Dublin, Ireland-based company’s virtual items—which range in price from 50 cents for a rainbow-colored cat to $129 for a mystery box containing a dragon—have since doubled, says Peter Relan, chairman and co-founder.
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May 12, 2010
TechCrunch: Sibblingz Launches Multi-Platform Social Game Engine To The Masses
“Developers already using Sibblingz include social games company, CrowdStar, and game development studio, SiXiTS. CrowdStar’s Happy Island, which has 12 million monthly average users, was built off of the Sibblingz platform”
April 9, 2010
Touchgen: OpenFeint Responds to Apple’s Game Center
(BURLINGAME, CA) April 8, 2010- Aurora Feint, creator of the OpenFeint platform, welcomed Apple’s launch of Game Center today and endorses it as a major step forward in online mobile games for the Apple gaming ecosystem. Aurora Feint runs OpenFeint as a free online service primarily for leaderboards and achievements, which currently reaches 19 million iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch gamers. The company will drive revenue growth for the mobile gaming industry with its OpenFeint X virtual goods social gaming platform for operating free to play micro-transaction based games with no server operations. All OpenFeint player accounts will automatically become OpenFeint X Player accounts when OpenFeint X goes live for the general public, so the OpenFeint community will continue to thrive.
March 5, 2010
VentureBeat: Crowdstar launches rapid expansion to gain ground in Facebook games
Crowdstar came out of nowhere last fall to become one of the biggest game publishers on Facebook. Now it plans on holding onto that position with a rapid expansion.
March 2, 2010
Gamasutra: GamesBeat@GDC Announces Startup Competition Finalists
“The finalists are Desura, which is creating a developer- and community-driven digital distribution platform for commercial and indie PC games; Minor Studios, developer of the user-generation-heavy 3D platformer Atmosphir; Sibblingz, which connects social games across multiple platforms; Turiya, an analytics platform for online games; and BeanJar, which incentivizes online prizes with real-world rewards.”
