Topdog has raised $2.5 million in seed funding to expand its real-time multiplayer skill-gaming platform for sports fans and gamers. Boston Seed Capital led the round, with participation from The Raine Group, Bullpen Capital, Versus Ventures, Spoondrift Capital and Permit Ventures.
Topdog previously raised $1.6 million in pre-seed financing from Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing total funding to $4.1 million.
The company is also backed by gaming industry entrepreneurs and executives including FanDuel co-founder Nigel Eccles, Revenant VC founder Ryan Moore and gaming consultant Dustin Gouker.
Topdog is developing real-money games in which participants compete directly against other players in real time rather than playing separately and comparing scores after the fact.
Its games are designed around synchronous interaction, strategy and adaptation to opponents.
Topdog’s portfolio includes Basketball Hustle, where players draft basketball teams and make strategic decisions during a match, along with 21 Hustle, Tilt, Pinfall and other titles.
The company’s underlying infrastructure manages matchmaking, player liquidity, payments, fraud detection and live operations.
Topdog plans to use the seed funding to accelerate customer acquisition and launch additional real-time multiplayer sports, card and strategy games.
The company was founded by Aman Agarwal and Jatin Narang, who together have more than a decade of experience in skill gaming.
KEY QUOTES:
“Sports fans spend countless hours thinking about lineups, matchups, strategy, and what is going to happen next, yet most gaming products only give them something to do for a short time period, while a game is actually being played. We see a much bigger opportunity here. Topdog is building real time multiplayer sports skill games that let fans compete directly against each other and stay engaged with the sports they love even during off-peak hours. We believe real-time multiplayer can redefine what sports gaming looks like.
Consumers already expect multiplayer competition everywhere else in gaming. Real money skill-gaming should be no different. We want Topdog to become the place where sports fans and gamers can compete against each other, in real time, whenever they want to play.”
Aman Agarwal, Co-Founder of Topdog
“Topdog is attacking an arena of gaming that has enormous potential but has historically been difficult to execute. Aman, Jatin and the team have built technology that makes real time multiplayer gaming scalable while pairing it with games that are intuitive, competitive and designed specifically for real-money audiences. In doing so, they have cracked several codes that we were unable to when I was leading WorldWinner’s skill games business. We believe they have an opportunity to build an important new category.”
Peter Blacklow, Managing Director at Boston Seed Capital
