Brain trainer Memorado stealthily collects $1.3 million in funding, 1 million users

Two ex-Wimdu employees received a $1.3 million seed round for a brain training games website called Memorado (or memorado, as the company spells it).

The company also announced that it already has 1 million users.

Investors

Different from other startups, Memorado kept quiet and decided to stay under the radar until it could announce reasonable user numbers.

According to TechCrunch and Gründerszene, the list of investors is filled with Berlin founders: Former Wimdu founder Arne Bleckwenn, eDarling founder Lukas Grosseder and David Khalil, Home24 founder Philipp Kreibohm, Fox & Sheep founder Verena Delius, as well as Zalando’s founder Robert Gentz and David Schneider. Some invested through funds and others as private investors, memorado states.

Sunstone Capital also joined the round.

Sunstone Capital has concentrated on investing into two markets: Technology and Life Science. As its portfolio shows, it has invested in many bio tech companies, but also in some that focus on gaming: Amen, bought by undisclaimed terms by tape.tv in August 2013 and GameAnalysis, which provides, as the name says, analytics for games.

Investing in a software like Memorado seemed to fit the portfolio.

The platform

Having never played any of these games before, I gave this one a shot and have to say it’s addictive. It starts out asking the user what to focus on in terms of memory, concentration, speed, reaction, and logic, and offers different options in each category to pick from. After that you are asked to create a profile. That is a clever move because by then the person playing already knows what (s)he will be expecting.

Below is an image of a memory game:

Expanding

The website is as of right now available in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Netherland, Poland, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, China, Japan, the United States, and Canada. The iOS app is available in English, French, and German.

According to Memorado, the company now counts over one million users six months after it launched.

Business Model

Memorado offers a free trial, but lets users pick from one of subscription models below.

Competition

Memorado is not the first and will not be the last company to offer brain training software. Lumosity has been around for years now.

However, from what I’ve seen until now, the software seems fun, easy to use and useful. Let’s see how fast it can learn how to be better than its competitors.

This story originally appeared on VentureVillage. Copyright 2014